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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Norwich
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(125,000 in 1991)
City on the river Wensum; administrative centre of Norfolk. It has been a regional centre of importance since *Anglo-Saxon times and the city centre retains a medieval feeling, particularly around Elm Hill. The cathedral, begun in 1096, is notable from a distance for its soaring 15C spire (at 96m/315ft second in England only to *Salisbury); its interior is distinguished by the way the sturdy Norman arches of the lower levels merge into the delicate Gothic *fan vaulting above, added in the 15C to replace the earlier timber roof. The 14C cloisters are unusual in consisting of two storeys.
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The castle, begun like the cathedral shortly after the Norman *Conquest, has housed since 1894 the city's museum and art gallery. This is particularly strong in its holdings of the so-called Norwich School of landscape painters, prominent among them John Crome (1768–1821) and John Sell Cotman (1782–1842). Another distinguished art gallery just outside the city is the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, the gift of Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, in which a collection ranging from tribal art to modern painting and sculpture is displayed in a hangar-like structure by Norman Foster (completed in 1978 with an extension in 1991); it is part of the university of East Anglia, founded in 1961 in Earlham Park with buildings designed by Denys Lasdun.
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The Norwich Players are a long-established amateur theatre company, performing in the Elizabethan-style Maddermarket Theatre designed for them in 1921 within an older building.
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