Doug moved into King Street in 2011 but has lived in and around Norwich since the 1980s. He is a member of the King Street Neighbours group. He tells the story of his time with Wensum Lodge, the positive impact it’s had, and about living in King Street.
Growing up in Norwich
I was born in Chester. We moved to Norwich in 1980 because my dad started a new job for the county council. He ended up working for them for 17 years. As a young parent, my mum wasn’t working at the time. She had worked before and was hoping to get back to work.
We initially moved to Poringland in South Norfolk, where we lived from 1980-1984. From there I mainly grew up around Brundall in Broadland. The site of the primary school I attended in Brundall, as well as its main field, looked down onto the river. This meant we could see the commercial shipping boats coming up from Yarmouth to the port in Norwich and out again.
For high school, I went to Thorpe St Andrew School. The first match I went to at Carrow Road was in about 1981. I went with friends of mine as a teenager to the Waterfront when it first opened in the early 1990s. My first work experience was on Prince of Wales Road in 1991. So, I’ve known Norwich and the area around it on and off since about 1980.
Development of the Riverside area
There’s been a lot of development in Norwich in the Riverside area. I can remember when the Boulton & Paul Factory was where Morrisons is now. When the site was being demolished, there was quite a high wall on the site facing over to Carrow Road. Young people used to climb on it to try and watch the football for free. I can remember being in the stands and watching that happen. I can vaguely remember seeing the flour mill in that area as well. During the miners’ strike, commercial boats from somewhere like Durham came up to drop the coal off in Norwich not far from where the Riverside was.
From my perspective, it’s nice to have seen the area improve over the years. Its character has improved, and it’s a more pleasant place for people to live in. I think it’s good to encourage the history of the place as well.
University and work
I left Norwich in 1995 to go to university in Southampton. About a fifth of the people I grew up with went to university. Quite a lot of them had interactions with the University of East Anglia (UEA) and thought it was a good local university, but they were interested in seeing what life was like in other parts of the country.
When I was a student I also spent a little bit of time in Nottingham, Oxford, and Cambridge. So, I’ve experienced a variety of places. After graduating I initially came straight back to Norfolk. I did temporary work for companies like Norwich Union. I did benefits administration for a company called Medical Services. I worked for Virgin Direct as well.
I went back to university in Southampton to do a postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE). I left there formally about June 2001 and came back to Norwich. I lived off Dereham Road for a few years, which is not far from UEA.
Living in King Street
I’ve lived in King Street since 2011, so it’s been about 13-14 years. But I had previous work and social experience in that part of the city before actually living there. I can remember that in the 1980s and 1990s, there were a lot of crime problems there. When the Waterfront first opened, some people I knew were nervous of going to that part of the city because of its reputation. The area has had a lot of development and improvement over the years, but some problems still persist.
I always thought that Wensum Lodge had quite a positive influence on the area. It’s a part of the city that tends to be busier at the weekends. During the week there will be some people, but it will be a different kind of tempo. Having a facility like Wensum Lodge there made it feel a nicer, more liveable space. I feel it’s a great shame there isn’t a facility like Wensum Lodge there at the moment.
When I moved in, I would go to Jurnet’s bar, which was below Wensum Lodge. Some of my neighbours liked going there. We used to go about once a month. On a Friday evening, they would have music events which were quite popular. There was sometimes a poetry or storytelling group there. It was nice to have something to do in that area that didn’t cost too much and was quite creative focused.
King Street Neighbours
I’m involved in a community group called King Street Neighbours. It started in about 2011, initially meeting once a month to discuss some of the developments and issues in the area. Its aim was to try and help foster a sense of community. There was a recognition that a lot of people didn’t know their neighbours. There was a sense of isolation, and also quite a few people on low incomes.
We’d hold a few events each year, like a big lunch event in the summer and a Christmas party. There were monthly meetings which we were allowed to hold in Jurnet’s Bar, where we’d be able to buy drinks and snacks at a fairly low cost. Quite early on we had good links with local facilities – Waterfront and Dragon Hall also let us use their facilities at a low cost to help do things for the local community. I can remember also going to one or two open studio events at Wensum Lodge as well.
Not everyone turns up to every meeting. We’re part of the Thorpe Hamlets ward of Norwich, which I’m told has the highest population density in Norfolk. We have some people living in the area who only stay for a short space of time before moving elsewhere. So as a proportion of the local residents, only a small proportion come to the Neighbours Group. We tend to get more people for the social events. We have Facebook and other social media so people can dip in and out as they like.
The group is run as a small scale community group. It has a constitution. We’ve got a small charity bank account. It’s survived longer than I expected, and I think that’s because it’s just as relevant as when it started. Like a lot of community organisations, it’s obviously reliant on volunteers who are often retired people who put in the time and effort.
I’m the treasurer of the group. I’ve been involved since the organisation started. They needed someone to help with it, and I just happened to end up being that person. So I’ve been involved in helping run the group. The job involves doing an annual report for an AGM, paying some money into local bank branches, and writing out cheques. Financially, it’s mainly dealing in three figure sums of money rather than hundreds of thousands.
Wensum Lodge
All the way back in the early 1980s, I can remember relatives of mine mentioning Wensum Lodge and what a positive thing it was to have good quality adult education. At the time, my family also knew someone who’d worked as a senior lecturer at Keswick Hall College, which was a teacher training establishment near Norwich before UEA took over in 1980. They’d recently retired and I can remember them singing a lot of praises about Wensum Lodge.
About 2006 or 2007, I was doing some voluntary work and I just happened to find some leaflets for the adult education. I ended up doing a variety of courses at Wensum Lodge over the years.
Some of the people I knew on the courses were younger people that hadn’t gone to university, some had similar life experiences to myself, others were older. There were series of courses going on each day and the facilities ran through the week. If I remember, there’d be about five or six courses going on at the same time during the day, each lasting an hour or two and three or four evening courses as well – Monday to Friday. So, my understanding is that the facility was used continuously on some level.
It was well developed, with a range of courses and facilities. There was a whole suite of computers which I used when I did a computing course. There was a series of spaces they were able to use for the arts and crafts courses, all fully equipped, quite good quality. I mainly did language courses and wellbeing courses which didn’t tend to use much equipment, but there were a variety of classrooms available which had screens for PowerPoint presentations.
I think most courses had to have a minimum of six people to effectively run. A lot of the language courses I did often had about 10-15 people, sometimes more. Some of the wellbeing courses had quite a number as well. I think before I moved into King Street, possibly early 2000s, I did an evening AS-Level maths course there and it had about eight to ten people on it. I can remember starting an A-Level English course there, also in the early 2000s, and there were about 15 people on that. A lot of the courses I did in the evening would have a high proportion of people of working age involved, but the daytime courses would be a mixture of people who were either unemployed, had health issues, or were retired.
The quality of the courses was good. There was a little café just down by the river where people could go if they were having a break. There was an information centre in the Lodge once you walked in where you could get information about courses and fees.
Some of the courses were provided for free for people on low incomes and people who hadn’t done higher qualifications. There were some practical work-based courses that led onto national vocational qualifications (NVQs). The courses you paid for, the fees were based on people’s income. My memory is that you could either pay as a lump sum or quarterly or monthly, so you didn’t necessarily have to pay it all in one go. I think when I did a week long intensive French course it was about £50-£60. The idea was to get as many people in and base the fees on their financial situations, which I thought was a really good thing to do. It made it as inclusive as possible.
The older blocks of the building had quite a long history like Dragon Hall. The main part where Jurnet’s was, is part of quite an ancient merchant house that dates right back to Henry VIII.
Friends of Wensum Lodge.
My understanding is that Friends of Wensum Lodge was set up when the actual Lodge was set up. There’s a lady in the Neighbours Group, Jenny, who’s lived in the vicinity of Wensum Lodge since it opened. She told us that apparently the Friends initially did a lot of fundraising to help provide the equipment for the facility. I think there was an anniversary of some sort about the Friends and the Lodge four or five years before the pandemic. At the time they decided to wind up the Friends of Wensum Lodge group, but that was based on the assumption the facility would be staying open for the long term. I think when they realised there was a possibility it might shut, they were quite upset.
Closure of Wensum Lodge
I think there were one or two things mentioned about the fact Wensum Lodge was under threat of closure in the Neighbours Group, since we discuss the developments in that part of the city. But I can also remember hearing about it on the local news and in the Eastern Daily Press. The local governments finances were quite limited, and there were some people after the pandemic who preferred to do courses online. My own experience was that whilst the quality of teaching online was good, you just weren’t getting the same level of social interaction out of it.
There’s a mixture of views amongst the residents, and a mixture of views from other people that did courses there as well. A lot of people I knew in that area were quite sad about the potential of it shutting. From their point of view, they didn’t want the building to end up derelict because of previous anti-social behaviour. They’d rather have it used in some way than simply lay idle. A lot of developments in the area at the moment seem to have stalled. There was one on the old ferry boat site where there are rumours going around that the company has gone bust.
Some of the residents did courses there, others I knew didn’t. Some of them are retired people that downsized and moved into Norwich, so they may do courses with other organisations like WEA. Some of them were less interested in the courses available at Wensum Lodge. But a lot of the people I knew that used to go to the meetings in Jurnet’s Bar were sad at its loss and at the loss of the events there. For a lot of people, it’s the loss of the actual Lodge itself as the physical location people can go to for the courses. I know with adult education they’ve come up with some other locations, but those are not in as relaxed and quiet parts of the city and perhaps in areas where people aren’t as at ease going to.
The King Street Neighbours helped convene a meeting at Kings Church which was to discuss the situation with Wensum Lodge. We had some senior people come along from the council, some people who worked as tutors at Wensum Lodge, and quite a few people who had done courses there. Some of them were from our part of the city, some were from wider urban areas. There were also people there from as far away as Harleston, Waveney Valley, Diss, almost out to Yarmouth or Lowestoft. A lot of the people who’d done courses said they found it a really useful facility. It’s in a quieter part of Norwich with good quality teaching.
The people from the county council did show some of the King Street Neighbours around the site before it was completely shut down, along with some other interested parties. It was interesting for us to see. There were classrooms and other areas that were very sophisticated, with good quality tech. The arts and crafts areas had a lot of good quality equipment. But there were some areas underneath the building or towards the river that seemed to have issues. Our understanding is that means there will be expenses and complications for whoever develops it. For example, there was an area that was used as an air rifle shooting range which was a bit rundown, and there was an area under the main arts and crafts section that seemed susceptible to downpour.
There were ideas suggested about people as a community group trying to take over and run Wensum Lodge. They were talking about getting quite large scale grants for that, and when we looked at the building, not being particular experts in buildings or surveying, we realised it would be complicated. It would require a high level of skills and money management that most of us probably couldn’t handle even as a group.
The uncertain future of Wensum Lodge
My understanding is that it’s not defined what’s going to happen to Wensum Lodge. It’s uncertain. At the moment as far as I know, Wensum Lodge is locked up, it’s run by Norse, and there’s a sign outside it for the estate agent saying its up for sale. When we looked around there was about four or five other interested parties, but none of us have heard what the future holds.
As residents, a lot of us would like to see it saved in some shape or form. We’ve got quite a few other places they can build flats and housing. But given the history of the building, its long links with education, and how many people its benefited, myself and a lot of other residents agree it would be nice to have it used as a community museum or community facility.
In an ideal world I’d like to see it redone as an adult education centre. From my perspective it’s been a real asset to Norwich and has helped a lot of people, whether that’s people who had problems with education growing up or people who sought to learn new skills later in life. The impact might not be as quantifiable as say the National Writing Centre or the John Innes Research Institute, but I feel it has been a real positive influence over a long space of time. It would be nice to maintain that in some way. I think it would be nice for it to continue if the resources and will were there.
I feel it’s quite a shame that there is this big level of uncertainty about it really. Whether its community groups, adult education or reskilling people for later in life, I would see those as things that have a great positive impact. It improves the quality of people’s social networks, gives people self-confidence, gives them life skills they can move on for other things. Just doing courses online is not as useful.
King Street
I would say there’s quite a wide spectrum in this part of Norwich both in terms of people’s working lives and their attitude to education and educational achievement. I’ve got some neighbours who’ve grown up locally and gone to university themselves, and others that don’t have much interest in education at all. There are some of my neighbours I very rarely see buy a newspaper or read a book. I suppose it’s almost like a microcosm of Norwich and Norfolk, there’s quite a mixture. But it’s certainly not somewhere I’d associate with being the most intellectual part of Norwich.
I would say that as the development in this area has happened and as more people have migrated in, people’s general attitude both to education in later life and to community has improved. I think at some points in history this has been both the richest and the poorest area in Norwich. I don’t think there’s that many areas in Norwich and Norfolk that have had such huge changes over time. For example, somewhere like Newmarket Road has been a wealthy upper middle-class area all the time I’ve known Norfolk, whilst other parts have always been traditionally poorer.
As an area it’s quite a mix of people, and I think for me that’s one of the values of community groups or adult educational facilities. It’s the mixing of people. I think it’s a great irony that as Wensum Lodge has been declining you’ve had Dragon Hall that’s now been turned into a National Writing Centre. They have a lot of great links with schools and are a great asset to UEA and to that part of the city.
I’m hoping to stay around Norwich in the short term. From my perspective, having grown up nearby, it’s been nice to see it develop. Certainly, if I were to move out of King Street tomorrow, I’d miss quite a few of the neighbours, I’d miss Wensum Lodge, I’d miss some of facilities. I find it a convenient part of the city. But later in life I’ve developed asthma a bit, and the air quality isn’t great in the city centre, so that’s a bit of a limiting factor for me. Hopefully I’ll be staying around Norwich.
Final thoughts
Wensum Lodge has had a greatly positive influence on people’s lives over the years. Quite a few of the language courses I did there, some of the people on them travelled to those countries subsequently, some of them had second homes there. There were a few people who were trying to learn the language because their children had partners from the country. I can remember doing a Polish course there about six or seven years ago and there were some people from a local company who were trying to develop their company in Poland. They were able to use what they learnt on the course for that. With the arts and crafts courses, it was really nice to see the art and things people have created when they had open studios.
When I lived in other parts of the UK, I had a level of civic pride in Norwich. I think it’s a place that is a bit underrated. There are a lot of talented and skilled people here, more than people might think. It wasn’t by any means the richest or most vibrant part of the UK, but it certainly wasn’t a backwater. I felt it had quite a positive attitude when I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s. And certainly for me growing up in Norwich I always found it quite family friendly. It was supportive of disabled people, older people, people with English as a second language. UEA had good links with the local community, and even though I didn’t go there, there was always a great pride in it for me growing up. It’s been really nice to see how the University of the Arts has developed over the years as well.
I think one of my main things is just hoping there is a facility like Wensum Lodge in the future. Having some online courses is good and it gives people flexibility, but they’re not getting the same level of social mixing. Even in the modern world, it’s something to encourage and nurture. I think it’s one of the great ironies of the modern world. In a way we’re a lot more connected, and some people are really benefitting from it and others it’s increasing their isolation.
Doug Walters talking to WISEArchive in Norwich on 11th October 2024. © 2024 WISEArchive. All Rights Reserved.
