Peterborough Business Park
Lynch Wood
Peterborough
Cambridgeshire PE2 6WZ
United Kingdom
Company Perspectives:
Our Mission: To be the best independent regional building society in the UK. Our values: To create a business environment within which staff display initiative, maximise opportunity and provide our members and customers with a professional, prompt and caring service. To provide imaginative, competitive and high quality products and services. To maintain a strong financial position, providing security and stability in the interests of investors and mortgage customers.
History of Norwich & Peterborough Building Society
One of the largest of Britain's remaining mutual aid building societies, Norwich & Peterborough Building Society has set itself apart by offering a variety of niche products in addition to a full-range of banking services and banking products to its members. The member-based financial company is one of the early proponents of the so-called "green" mortgage, which provides loans and special interest rates for increasing energy efficiency and reducing the carbon dioxide emissions of new homes. Another of Norwich & Peterborough's products is its "carbon neutral" mortgage--the firm promises to plant 40 trees over a five-year period as a means of balancing out the carbon dioxide emissions of a typical home. While Norwich & Peterborough's target area remains the eastern region of England, the company has an international component as well, with an office on the island of Gibraltar, through which the company is able to offer "expatriate" mortgages for British homebuyers seeking pound-based mortgages for homebuilding and buying in Spain's Costa del Sol and other resort areas. Back at home, Norwich & Peterborough has become one of the British market's leading providers of self-build mortgages, which include support services for members building their own homes. The self-build market accounts for 10 percent of the building society's total annual lending portfolio. Commercial loans represent another 10 percent of the group's operations. Norwich & Peterborough services its customers through a network of 59 branch offices, a full-service web site, and a call center. The building society also operates subsidiaries offering brokering services, residential property valuing and surveying services, an insurance brokerage, and, in Gibraltar, an estate agency. These activities have helped the company build an asset base of nearly £2.5 billion by early 2003.
Mutual Aid in the 19th Century
The mutual aid-based building society movement had been responsible in large part for building residential England since the mid-19th century. Once a powerful force in the United Kingdom's financial market, with more than 1,700 individual building societies in existence at the beginning of the 20th century, the movement had barely survived into the 21st century, as most of the societies merged together to form a smaller number of larger operations, many of which later converted to full-fledged bank status, or went public with stock market listings. By the beginning of the 21st century, only 60-odd building societies remained. Many of these were quite small--the smallest had assets of only some £14 million. Norwich & Peterborough was to remain as one of the largest and vigorous of the country's building societies. Like the other holdouts, however, Norwich & Peterborough's strength lay in its commitment to providing local service. Yet Norwich & Peterborough also had established a reputation for innovative products and services.
The mutual aid movement was already a fixture in England by the beginning of the 19th century. Known as "terminating societies," a group of people, typically artisans employed in the same trade, or resident in the same village, joined together to pool their resources so that members were able to purchase land and build their own homes. The pool remained in existence only so long as necessary for the last member to build his home, at which point the society was "terminated."
The mutual aid societies formed by the relatively affluent artisan class were typically small groupings of just 30 or so members, and existed almost wholly for the purpose of directly assisting its members in building their own homes. The emergence of an entirely new population, the urban working class, during the Industrial Revolution, created a need for a different type of mutual aid society.
The lower relative wealth of individual workers was compensated by their growing numbers, as the British population shifted from a predominantly rural to increasingly urban base as people sought employment in the growing number of factories, construction sites, and shipyards appearing across the country. The concept of the mutual society in turn shifted to include the new working class. The new building societies now began providing loans--rather than the direct resources of the terminating society--and members were then expected to repay their loans.
This larger asset base also enabled building societies to begin paying interest on members' deposits, leading the new type of mutual aid society to launch secured savings facilities for its members as well. Building societies began providing more standard banking facilities, becoming mainstays of their local communities. As an added contrast to the earlier terminating society, many of the new building societies added the word "permanent" to their names. Such was the case with the earliest component of the later Norwich & Peterborough Building Society, which was founded in 1852 under the name Norwich and District Provident Permanent Benefit Building and Freehold Society.
As its name implied, the Norwich building society limited its membership for the most part to its surrounding region, a feature common among early building societies. Whereas many building societies originated as entities serving a local community, others represented the interests of specific communities. Such was the case with the Peterborough Provincial Benefit Building Society. The Peterborough society had been launched by a number of railway workers in 1860. The fast growth of the British railroad network had not only created large numbers of railroad workers, it had also led to a shortage of housing in the Peterborough area. The new building society enabled its members to construct their own homes in the region. Although originally limited to railroad employees, the Peterborough society soon became a regional fixture, and opened its membership to others in the Peterborough area.
Merger Movement at the End of the 20th Century
New legislation, particularly the Building Societies Act of 1874, provided more solid financial and legal foundations for the growth of the building society sector at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The social climate of the time played a part in the movement's growth as well, as Britain saw the rise of strong workers unions, coupled with the growing prominence of the cooperative movement, and increasing demands for democratization of the British government. The building society fitted naturally within this climate and played an important role in safeguarding its members' savings, especially during turbulent economic times. By the dawn of the 20th century, the building society movement boasted more than 1,700 building societies in existence throughout the United Kingdom.
At the end of World War II, however, the economic situation in England had begun to change. Faced with growing competition from the country's large and powerful banks, and restrictive legislation that limited the types of products and services that building societies were allowed to offer, the movement saw the stirrings of a drive toward consolidation. By the 1960s, the number of individual building societies had dropped sharply, giving way to the emergence of a small number of large-scale building societies. By the beginning of the 1990s, only 100 building societies remained.
The Norwich building society had begun preparing for this transition since shortly after World War II, when it converted its legal status, reincorporating under the new name, Norwich Building Society. The Peterborough society also joined the industrywide transition, becoming the Peterborough Building Society by the 1960s. Peterborough then began to grow, joining the consolidation effort in 1967 when it merged with the King's Lynn Building Society.
Peterborough sought growth again at the beginning of the 1980s, adding the Stamford Building Society in 1980. The society grew once again in 1985 when it absorbed the Argyle Building Society. This acquisition helped Peterborough step up its asset portfolio, which neared £300 million at mid-decade.
In 1986, Peterborough and Norwich agreed to merge, creating one of the eastern region's largest building societies--and one of the top 20 building societies in the United Kingdom--Norwich & Peterborough Building Society. The new grouping represented assets of more than £450 million and included a newly established surveying and valuing arm, Hockleys Professional Limited, which was incorporated that year. The combined society also offered stockbroking, through subsidiary Waters Lunniss, which later became Norwich and Peterborough Sharedealing Services Ltd.
Norwich & Peterborough, though small compared with the country's largest banks, proved highly innovative. The social commitment that had been the basis of the mutual aid movement continued to play an important role in the new Norwich & Peterborough, particularly in its product development. As such, the company was one of the first in the country to go after the urban renewal market, setting up special "dilapidated" building mortgage products that offered attractive interest rates for rehabilitating rundown buildings.
In 1988, Norwich & Peterborough treated itself to a new home, opening a new headquarters in a greenfield business park outside Peterborough. Two years later, the company explored a new niche market, setting up a subsidiary operation to serve British citizens on the isle of Gibraltar. From there, Norwich & Peterborough became interested in another growing new market of the 1990s, that of the growing number of British expatriates acquiring properties along Spain's Costa del Sol and other resort areas in the south of Spain. To serve this market, Norwich & Peterborough created new expatriate mortgage products, providing pound-based mortgages to overseas homeowners. The group also had been expanding its other products and services, including its sharebroking wing, which expanded in 1994 with the acquisition of a new office in Milton Keynes. That subsidiary grew to a network of nine offices by the end of the century.
Through the 1990s, Norwich & Peterborough remained an innovative mortgage provider. The building society was one of the first to cater to the self-build market, providing not only mortgages but support services for members building their own homes. As such, Norwich & Peterborough became one of the leading providers of self-build mortgages, which came to represent some 10 percent of the group's total assets.
By the late 1990s, Norwich & Peterborough's asset portfolio had risen by more than 300 percent, reaching £2 billion in 1998. In that year, the group became the first mainstream lender to offer so-called "green" mortgages, which provided incentive rates to encourage homebuilders to increase the energy efficiency of their homes. Norwich & Peterborough then prepared to launch a similar product for members acquiring existing buildings. In 2000, the group joined with Future Forests to promote a new "carbon neutral" mortgage, in which Norwich & Peterborough agreed to plant 40 new trees over a five-year period for each new mortgage.
These moves helped Norwich & Peterborough establish its reputation as one of the United Kingdom's most ecologically aware building societies, a description the group saw as befitting its legacy of social commitment. Meanwhile, the building society had not neglected its range of services, opening a call center and launching its first Internet site in 1998.
Branching Out in the Early 21st Century
At the dawn of the 21st century, Norwich & Peterborough began branching out in its efforts to attract additional customers. In 2001, the society signed on with Mortgage Brain, an intermediary service that enabled the electronic filing of mortgage applications, speeding up the application process. Norwich & Peterborough joined a second, similar service, Trigold, in 2002. These moves helped the society mark strong increases in its total assets, which neared £2.5 billion at the end of 2002, despite the prevailing economic uncertainty.
By then, the pool of building societies had continued to dwindle, as the largest building societies took advantage of new legislation granting greater flexibility in the financial industry by going public or converting to bank status. At the dawn of the new century, the United Kingdom counted slightly more than 60 remaining building societies, many of which remained quite small. As one of the largest of the remaining building societies, ranked at number 14, Norwich & Peterborough reaffirmed its commitment to its historic status. As the society's general manager told Money Marketing: "We are staunchly mutual, which we believe gives us an advantage in terms of having competitive interest rates in mortgages and savings. We have no reason to change." Nonetheless, Norwich & Peterborough had by then earned its reputation as one of the industry's most innovative lenders.
Principal Subsidiaries: Norwich and Peterborough Sharedealing Services Limited; Norwich and Peterborough Insurance Brokers Ltd; Hockleys Professional Limited.
Principal Competitors: Abbey National PLC; Northern Rock PLC; Bradford and Bingley PLC; Britannia Building Society; Bristol and West PLC; Yorkshire Building Society; Lombard North Central PLC; Portman Building Society; Coventry Building Society; Skipton Building Society; Chelsea Building Society; Leeds and Holbeck Building Society; West Bromwich Building Society; Derbyshire Building Society.
Related information about Norwich
41º31N 72º05W, pop (2000e) 36 100. Town in New London
Co, SE Connecticut, USA; on the R Shetucket, 20 km/12 mi
N of New London; incorporated, 1662; birthplace of Benedict Arnold,
Isaac Backus, E Annie Proulx, Edith Roosevelt; sports stadium.
52°38N 1°18E, pop (2001e) 121 600. County town in
Norfolk, E England; near the confluence of the Yare and Wensum
Rivers, 160 km/100 mi NE of London; provincial centre for
the largely agricultural East Anglia; major textile centre in
16th–17th-c; University of East Anglia (1964); North Sea reached
via R Yare and Great Yarmouth (32 km/20 mi E); railway;
commerce, engineering, printing, chemicals, electrical goods, silk,
foodstuffs, trade in grain and livestock; Norman cathedral (1096),
Church of St Peter Mancroft (1430–55); football league team,
Norwich City (Canaries).
otheruses
City of
Norwich
|
|
|
Geography
|
| Status: |
City (1195)
|
| Government Region: |
East of
England |
| Administrative County: |
Norfolk |
Area:
- Total |
Ranked 322nd39.02 km²
|
| Admin. HQ: |
Norwich
|
| Grid reference: |
TG232085|100|TG 232 085}}
|
| ONS
code: |
33UG
|
Demographics
|
Population:
- Total (EnglishStatisticsYear)
- Density |
Ranked / km²
|
| Ethnicity: |
96.8% White
|
Heraldry
|
Arms of the City of
Norwich
Gules a Castle triple-towered and domed Argent in base a Lion
passant guardant Or.
|
Politics
|
| Leadership: |
Leader & Cabinet
|
| Executive: |
ONS=33UG}}
|
| MPs: |
Charles
Clarke, Ian Gibson |
Post Office and
Telephone
|
| Postcode: |
NR
|
| Dialling Code: |
01603
|
Norwich is a city
in East Anglia, in
Eastern England, and the
regional administrative centre and county town of Norfolk.
The suburban area of the City expands beyond its borough boundary,
with large populated areas on most sides, particularly Thorpe St. Andrew on
the eastern side. The ancient city was a thriving centre for trade
and commerce in East
Anglia in 1004 AD when
it was raided and burnt by Swein Forkbeard the Viking. The Vikings were a
strong cultural influence in Norwich for 40-50 years at the end of
the 9th century, setting up an Anglo-Scandinavian district towards
the south end of present day King Street.
At the time of the Norman Conquest the city was one of the largest in
England. Quern stones,
and other artifacts, from Scandinavia and the Rhineland have been
found during excavations in Norwich city centre which date from the
11th century onwards.
The main area of the city south of the Wensum was destroyed by the
construction of the Norman castle (see Norwich Castle) during
the 1070s creation of a
"New" or "French"
borough. In the early part of the fifteenth century, Julian of Norwich
wrote her famous work.
In 1144 the Jews of Norwich
were falsely accused of ritual murder after a boy (William of Norwich)
was found dead with stab wounds. On February 6, 1190, all the Jews of Norwich were massacred except for
a few who found refuge in the castle.
The wealth generated by the wool trade throughout the Middle Ages resulted in the construction of many
fine churches. Norwich Market had trading links from Scandinavia to
Spain.
Around this time, the city was made a county corporate.
The great immigration of 1567 brought a substantial Walloon community of weavers to Norwich. Norwich
has been the home of various dissident minorities, notably the
French Huguenot and the
Belgian Walloon communities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
English Civil Wars to Victorian Era
The eastern counties were profoundly Parliamentarian in nature
and Norwich followed suit, at the cost of some discomfit to the
Lord Mayor, a Royalist, and the Bishop Joseph Hall a moderate but
targeted because of his position.
The Norwich Canary was
first introduced into England by Flemish refugees fleeing from Spanish persecution in the 1500s. class=ilnk>Norwich City F.C., nicknamed
"The Canaries".
Until the 19th Century, Norwich remained a major provincial capital
and, alongside Bristol, was rated closely after London in terms of
importance and wealth.
Norwich's geographical isolation was such that until 1834 when a
railway connection was
established, it was often quicker to travel to Amsterdam by boat than to
London. The railway was
brought to Norwich by Morton Peto who also built the line onto Great Yarmouth.
Present day
Culture
The University of East Anglia on the outskirts of Norwich
was one of the New
Universities founded in 1963, following the Robbins Report. established by Malcolm Bradbury and
Angus Wilson, its
graduates include Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan. Additionally, the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital on the city's
periphery at Colney was
opened in 2001.
Norwich Theatre Royal has been on its site for nearly 250 years.
The 1300-seat theatre hosts a mix of national touring productions
including musicals, dance, drama, family shows, stand-up comedians,
opera and pop.
Each year the Norfolk and Norwich Festival celebrates the arts,
drawing many visitors into the city from all over the eastern
England.
The Forum, designed by Michael Hopkins and Partners and opened in
2002 is a building designed
to house the Millennium Library, a replacement for the Norwich
Central Library building which burned down in 1994, and the regional BBC broadcasting offices. The
building provides a venue for exhibitions, concerts and events, although the city still lacks a
dedicated concert venue.
The Millennium Library contains the Second Air Division
Memorial Library, a collection of material about American culture
and the American relationship with East Anglia, especially the role
of the United States Air Force on UK air bases throughout the
Second World
War and Cold War.
Much of the collection was lost in the 1994 fire, but the
collection has been restored by contributions from many veterans of
the war, both European and American.
Recent attempts to shed the backwater image of Norwich and market
it as a popular tourist
destination, as well as a centre for science, commerce, culture and the arts, have included the refurbishment of the Norwich Castle Museum and
the opening of the Forum. Nearby, the football stadium is being
upgraded with more residential property development alongside the
river Wensum.
Castle Mall, a shopping mall designed by local practice Lambert, Scott
& Innes and opened in 1993, presents an ingenious solution to
the problem of sensitively creating new retail space in a historic
city-centre environment - the building is largely buried
underground and in the side of a hill.
The new Chapelfield
shopping mall has
been built on the site where the Caleys (later Rowntree Mackintosh
and Nestlé)
chocolate factory once stood.
Archant, formerly known
as Eastern Counties Newspapers (ECN) is a national publishing group
that has grown out of the city's local newspaper, the Norwich Evening
News and the regional Eastern Daily Press (EDP).
Norwich has long been associated with the manufacture of mustard. Colman's was founded in
1814 and continues to
operate from its factory at Carrow. It exploited the county's reputation as being
somewhat detached from modern trends, past its prime, and rather
peripheral to national life.
Other comic entertainers who have drawn comedy from that stereotype
include Allan Smethurst 'The Singing Postman' and The Kipper Family
lately represented by 'son' Sid Kipper, though these are associated with Norfolk in
general and not just the City. These have been joined by The Nimmo Twins.
Independent radio stations include Radio Broadland (formerly
Broadland 102),
Classic Gold
Amber and 99.9 Radio Norwich. BBC Radio Norfolk and the University of East
Anglia's Livewire
1350 also broadcast to the city.
A new independent radio station, Radio Norwich, was launched at the
end of June 2006, broadcasting on 99.9 FM. The city is host to many
artists that have achieved national and international recognition
such as Bearsuit,
Cord, Tim Bowness, Sennen, Magoo,
KaitO and The Sadtowns. There are
also some established record labels in Norwich such as Hungry Audio, Burning Shed, Wilde Club
Records and Mummy Where's The Milkman.
Sport
The principal local football team is Norwich City FC, also known as the Canaries
(majority-owned by celebrity chef Delia Smith); They have a strong East Anglian
rivalry with Ipswich
Town FC.
Norwich also has a rugby club, the Norwich Lions. There are good rail links from
Norwich
railway station to Peterborough and London, and direct services to Cambridge were added in
2004.
A large proportion of the population of Norwich are users of the
Internet. A recent
article has suggested that, compared with other UK cities, it is
top of the league for the percentage of population who use the
popular Internet auction site eBay. The city has also unveiled the biggest free
Wi-Fi network in the UK,
which opened in July 2006.
Geography
Infrastructure
Roads
Norwich is connected to Peterborough via Kings Lynn by the A47, the port of Ipswich by the A140, and Cambridge (and the motorway M11 to London)
by the A11. Local lines
also run to destinations including Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft and Sheringham.
Norwich formerly had three stations running to a number of other
local destinations, but now the rail terminus is at Thorpe
Station.
Water
The River Yare is
navigable from the sea at Great Yarmouth all the way to Trowse, south of the
city.
Travellers' comments
In 1507 the poet
John Skelton
(1460-1529) wrote of two destructive
fires in his Lament for the City of Norwich.
-
All life is brief, and frail all man's estate. almost all
the works they are employed in being done within
doors.
John Evelyn
(1620-1706) Royalist, Traveller and
Diarist wrote to Sir Thomas Browne-
-
I hear Norwich is a place very much addicted to the
flowery part.
He visited the City as a courtier to King Charles II in
1671 and described it thus -
-
The suburbs are large, the prospect sweet, and other
amenities, not omitting the flower-garden, which all the
Inhabitants excel in of this City, the fabric of stuffs, which
affords the Merchants, and brings a vast trade to this populous
Town.
George Borrow
in his semi-autobiographical novel Lavengro (1851) wrote of Norwich as-
-
A fine old city, perhaps the most curious specimen at
present extant of the genuine old English Town. ..Thre it spreads
from north to south, with its venerable houses, its numerous
gardens, its thrice twelve churches, its mighty mound....There is
an old grey castle on top of that mighty mound: and yonder rising
three hundred feet above the soil, from amongst those noble
forest trees, behold that old Norman master-work, that
cloud-enriched cathedral spire ...Now who can wonder that the
children of that fine old city are proud, and offer up prayers
for her prosperity?
Borrow wrote far less favourably of the City in his translation
of Faust-
-
They found the people of the place modelled after so
unsightly a pattern, with such ugly figures and flat features
that the devil owned he had never seen them equalled, except by
the inhabitants of an English town, called Norwich, when dressed
in their Sunday's best.
In 1812, Andrew Robertson wrote to the painter Constable-
-
I arrived here a week ago and find it a place where the
arts are very much cultivated....some branches of knowledge,
chemistry, botany, etc. General literature seems to be pursued
with an ardour which is astonishing when we consider that it does
not contain a university, as is merely a manufacturing
town.
Famous names associated with the city
Throughout its history, Norwich has been associated with
radical politics,
nonconformist
religion, political dissent and liberalism. Between 1790 and 1840,
many of the famous names associated with the City flourished.
Borrow recollects his youth in the city and conversations with the
philologist and
translator of German Romantic literature, William Taylor in his semi-autobiographical novel
Lavengro.
- Sir Thomas
Browne (1605-1682). medical doctor, polymath scholar, encyclopedist and
philosopher with interests in Biblical scholarship and the esoteric. The stylistic
purity and stupendous learning displayed in Browne's varied prose
in the spheres of religion, science and art
are minor classics of World literature.
- Edith Cavell
(1865-1915) was born in Swardeston, 4 miles south
of Norwich. She was a World War I nurse who was executed by
firing squad by the Germans for helping allied prisoners escape in violation of military law.
She is buried on Life's Green, on the east side of Norwich
Cathedral.
- John Crome and
Joseph
Stannard, along with John Sell Cotman, established the first art
movement outside of London. The Norwich school of painters were influenced by the
achievements of Dutch landscape painting and the beauty of the rural hinterland
surrounding Norwich.
- William
Crotch (1775-1847). Crotch became Organist of
Christ
Church, Oxford and for fifty years he was Oxford's
Professor of Music. Her portrait is upon the Series E (2005)
Bank of
England £5 note.
- Joseph John
Gurney (1788-1847) was a banker and philanthropist who
worked with his sister Elizabeth Fry (see above) in prison reform. He was
also active in the movement to abolish the slave trade and a member
of the temperance movement.
- Robert William Bilton Hornby (1821-1884) was a noted local antiquarian, priest and lord
of the manor from the City of York. He was ordained a deacon at Norwich in 1844.
- Julian of
Norwich. Medieval
Christian mystic and contemporary of
Chaucer. Norwich's
very own Robin Hood
or Wat Tyler. He was
hanged for Treason at Norwich Castle on the 7th December 1549.
- Harriet
Martineau (1802-1876). A
radical in religion she published the anti-theological Laws of
Man's Social Nature (1851) and Biographical sketches (1869).
- Admiral Horatio Nelson attended the Norwich
School from 1767 to 1768. He was born in nearby Burnham
Thorpe.
- Amelia Opie
(1769-1853), Norwich author and
Quaker. In 1825 she drastically changed her life as a socialite, party-goer, and
attendant at literary soirees, to become a Quaker.
- Sir
James Edward Smith botanist, natural historian and one-time
owner of the Linnean collection of Carolus
Linnaeus
- William
Smith (1756 ?
1835), Whig politician,
dissenter and
abolitionist,
M.P. for
Norwich from 1807.
Contemporary names associated with Norwich
- Bill Bryson,
American writer and humorist, lives near Wymondham, near
Norwich.
- Cathy Dennis,
famous Singer/Songwriter who was born in
Norwich in 1969.
- Ralph Firman,
former Formula 1
Driver was born in Norwich in 1975. Currently racing in the A1 Grand Prix series for
Ireland,
for which he qualifies through his Mother's Irish nationality.
- Stephen Fry,
comedian, author, actor and filmmaker, studied at Norwich City
College, and is a Norwich City F.C. fan.
- Trisha
Goddard, talk show host lives in Norwich.
- Andy Green
OBE, a Wing Commander in the Royal Air Force, is
the current holder of the world land speed record, having piloted
the ThrustSSC to the
first ever supersonic speed on land in the Black Rock Desert,
USA on 25 September 1997.
- Paul Jones,
blues singer and BBC Radio 2 presenter.
- Becky Mantin,
ITV Weather presenter
and This Morning reporter.
- Bernard
Matthews, founder of the eponymous meat company.
- Sir John
Mills, born in North Elmham in Norfolk. class=ilnk>Norwich City F.C. in the
1920s before moving into
acting.
- Beth Orton,
Award-winning singer/songwriter, was born in Dereham and spent much of her
childhood in Norwich.
- Philip
Pullman, British writer was born in Norwich on 19 October 1946. Best-selling author of the
His Dark
Materials trilogy of fantasy novels and a number of other
books.
-
Delia Smith,
majority shareholder of Norwich City Football Club (note: she was born
in Surrey and lives
in Suffolk). The
medieval period is represented by the 11th-century Norwich Cathedral,
12th-century castle
(now a museum) and a large number of parish churches. From
the 18th
century the pre-eminent local name is Thomas Ivory, who built
the Assembly Rooms (1776), the Octagon Chapel (1756), St
Helen's House (1752) in the grounds of the Great Hospital, and
innovative speculative housing in Surrey Street (c. The local
architect of the Victorian and Edwardian periods who has continued to command most
critical respect was George Skipper (1856-1948). The neo-Gothic Roman Catholic
cathedral on
Earlham Road,
begun in 1882, is by George
Gilbert Scott Junior and his brother, John Oldrid
Scott.
The city continued to grow through the 20th century and much
housing, particularly in areas further out from the city
centre, dates from that century. Originally designed by
Denys Lasdun
(his design was never completely executed), it has been added
to over subsequent decades by major names such as Norman Foster and Rick Mather.
Twinned cities
The city is twinned with the following
cities:
- Rouen, France
- Koblenz,
Germany
- Novi Sad,
Serbia
- El Viejo,
Nicaragua
References
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