Manual Ref* NFnrNOR090 Show 9 images 68
Title*

Bronze doors to City Hall
County Norfolk   District Council Norwich City Council 
Civil Parish or equivalent Norwich City Council  Town/Village* Norwich - City Hall 
Road St Peter’s street 
Precise Location Doors of main entrance to City Hall 
OS Grid Ref TG227086  Postcode NR1 
Previous location(s)  
Setting On building  Access Public 
Artist/Maker Role Qualifier
James Woodford  Designer(s)   
J. Starkie Gardner of Putney  Foundry worker(s)   
James and Pierce  Architect(s)   

Commissioned by

 James and Pierce on behalf of Norwich City Council 

Design & Constrn period

 1936-8 

Date of installing

 12 March 1938 

Exact date of unveiling

 29 October 1938 

Category
Abstract Animal Architectural
Commercial Commemorative Composite
Free Functional Funerary
Heraldic Military Natural
Non-Commemorative Performance Portable
Religious Roadside, Wayside Sculptural
Temporary, Mobile Other  

Object Type
Building Clock Tower Architectural
Coat of Arms Cross Fountain
Landscape Marker Medallion
Mural Panel Readymade
Relief Shaft Sculpture
Statue Street Furniture War Memorial
Other Object Sub Type: Set of three bronze doors

Subject Type
Allegorical Mythological Pictorial
Figurative Non-figurative Portrait
Still-life Symbolic Other

Subject Sub Type
Bust Equestrian Full-length
Group Head Reclining
Seated Standing Torso
Part Material Dimension
Bronze doors  Bronze  H 260 cm, W(when shut) 170cm 
Eighteen roundels  Bronze  Dia 45 cm 

Work is
Extant Not Sited Lost

Owner/Custodian

 Norwich City Council 

Listing status
Grade I Grade II* Grade II Don't Know Not Listed

Surface Condition
Corrosion, Deterioration Accretions
Bird Guano Abrasions, cracks, splits
Biological growth Spalling, crumbling
Metallic staining Previous treatments
Other  
Detail: Restored and waxed October 2009

Structural Condition
Armature exposed Broken or missing parts
Replaced parts Loose elements
Cracks, splits, breaks, holes Spalling, crumbling
Water collection Other
Detail:

Vandalism
Graffiti Structural damage Surface Damage
Detail:

Overall condition
Good Fair Poor

Risk
No Known Risk At Risk Immediate
Signatures/Marks James Woodford ARA on on door of each of the set of three doorways 
Inscriptions On City Hall: Base of left central pier: THIS STONE WAS LAID BY COUNCILLOR WALTER RILEY / LORD MAYOR SEPTEMBER 1936 To right: CHARLES HOLLOWAY JAMES & STEPHEN ROWLAND PIERCE WERE THE ARCHITECTS 

Description (physical)

 Six reliefs on each of the three sets of doors - eighteen in all. The roundels show: Left door (reading across each door); Top: Bottling wine; filling soda siphons Middle: Building the rusticated base of City Hall; Vat for brewing beer Bottom: Manufacture of aeroplanes (propeller); Manufacture of wire netting. Centre door: Top; Building the castle with a hand winch; Vikings Middle: Silk winders, cobblers bench and wool comber; old plough, silk winder and cobblers stand Bottom: Black Death, 1349; Thomas Kett hanged, 1549 Right door: Top: Piping chocolate (Woodford's identification on his preparatory drawing); Soldering mustard tins on the production line Middle: Horse and cow; Bull, pig and sheep (for the Cattle market) Bottom; Shoe press; Artificial Silk weaving (the original drawing was for filling Odell toothpaste tubes) On the website the doors are displayed in three composite photographs. In each case the top two reliefs are combined with one from the centre and placed over the remaining central relief and the two bottom ones.  

Description (iconographical)

 James Woodford must have been chosen to produce the doors in the light of his success with a huge pair of doors for George Grey Wornum’s headquarters of the RIBA at 66 Portland Place, completed in 1934. James and Pierce's initial drawing for the main facade, preserved in a corridor just to the side of the Council chamber, showed round arched doorways, which were replaced by the present ones, designed to make a feature of the new doors. The roundels, developed from those on the RIBA doors, show the trades of the city of Norwich in the 1930s to left and right, and commemorate the city’s history in the centre. Boulton and Paul’s aircraft division (bottom left) – famous for the Sopwith Camel during the first World War- had already moved from its Riverside factory to Wolverhampton in 1936 (see NFnrNOR077). Barnard, Bishop and Barnards invented wire netting, at first produced by hand, later by machinery. The only trace of the great breweries is the Anchor just off Westwick Road from the chimney of Bullards brewery. There are reminders of the shoe industry, once one of the city’s major industries, in the shell of Sexton Sons and Everard’s factory, (NFnrNOR088) and in Colegate the tower over Water court, former Norvic factory of 1894 (NFnrNOR168). Fizzy drinks were produced at the Corona factory on the old Caleys site near Mousehold, mineral water on the north side of St Benedicts, to the west of St Margarets, marked by one of the Lanes pavement signs, and Caleys chocolate manufacturing on Chapelfield had been rescued by Mackintoshes in 1932, before being closed in 1994, when the site was converted into a shopping mall. The roundels also record the building of Norwich Castle, completed by the 1120s, the placing of the foundation stone for City Hall as well as the Cattle markets, then flourishing on Castle Meadow. One roundel dramatizes the Black Death, first noted in the City in 1349 when, as a contemporary account records 'God almighty visigted mankind with a deadly plague...for it was believed that there was not a greater number of souls destroyed by flood in the days of Noah, than died by this plague' while another shows the fate of Robert Kett, hung from Norwich Castle after the suppression of the rebellion which as a small landowner he had led in 1549 against the practice of enclosures. For a period the rebels camped out on Mousehold Heath, before the rebellion was put down by the Earl of Warwick. A folder, (56' high by 48' wide) of twenty-one preparatory drawings for the doors was purchased by the Castle Museum from Woodford in 1971. The drawings of the whole doors were worked up into detailed drawings of the trades squared for transfer and with the centre-point pricked. Woodford prepared full scale plaster models of each of the roundels for casting, shown in the photograph of him in his studio working on the aviation roundel by Alan Webb dated 22nd September 1937 (Getty Images) 

Photographs

 Date taken:  14/5/2006
Date logged: 

Photographed by:
Sarah Cocke

On Site Inspection

 Date:  25/2/2006

Inspected by:
Richard Cocke

Sources and References

 BOE I, 262-4; www.the-plunketts.freeserve.co.uk, 26/02/06; Annotations on Woodford's preparatory drawings Norfolk Museums and Archeology Service Acc. 1974.463, brought to our attention by Norma Watt; Richardson, M. revised by Hind, C., 66 Portland Place. The headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects, London, 2004, 7-24; Meeres, F., Norwich A History, Chichester, 53-54, 60-64. 

Database

 Date entered:  15/5/2006

Data inputter:
Richard Cocke