NORFOLK. 



217 



tlie cathedral precincts, and a grammar school lodged in an ancient charnel-house. 

 There are also fragments of the old walls and gates. The town possesses a public 

 library of 40,000 volumes, a museum, and a Literar}^ Institution. Placed in the 

 centre of a fruitful agricultural district, famous for its cattle and the beauty of its 

 horses, it is only natural that Norwich should have become a great mart of 

 agricultural produce ; but it is at the same time a manufacturing town of no 

 mean importance, although in this respect it is now merely the shadow of its 



Fig. 108.— Norwich. 

 From the Ordnance Map. Scale 1 : 30,663. 



1 Mile. 



former self. In the sixteenth century about four thousand Flemings, driven from 

 their homes by the Spanish Inquisition, settled in Norwich and introduced the 

 woollen trade. These were subsequently joined by French Huguenots skilled in 

 making brocades and velvets as well as clocks and watches. In Defoe's time the 

 city and its neighbourhood employed 120,000 workmen in its woollen and silk 

 manufactures. In the present day the staple trade of Norwich is boot and shoe- 

 making. Besides this the manufacture of bombasins, crapes, camlets, and other 

 fabrics of worsted, mohair, and silk, is carried on, and there are oil-cake factories 



