Old Assembly Rooms and the remains of St Mary's College

Summary

The buried remains of St Mary-in-the-Fields, originally founded by 1248 as a religious hospital, developed as a secular college by 1278, and dissolved in 1544. The remains comprise the foundations of the church and north cloister along with a crypt and three cellars.

The Assembly House (listed Grade I) is excluded from the scheduling, but the ground beneath it is included.

Reasons for Designation

The buried remains of St Mary-in-the-Fields, founded as a religious hospital by 1248, becoming a secular college by 1278, and dissolved in 1544, is scheduled for the following principal reasons:

* Rarity: as one of only 300 separate colleges known from historical sources to have existed during the medieval period, it is a rare surviving example;

* Period: given the rarity of known surviving examples, all identified colleges which retain surviving archaeological remains are of considerable importance to our understanding of ecclesiastical history during the medieval period;

* Survival: it survives as buried remains, including most of its original plan, which will provide information on the development and operation of the site;

* Documentation: it is well documented in historical sources from its foundation in the C13 to its Dissolution in the C16, information which provides a valuable contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the site and its importance in a national context;

* Potential: the site holds a high level of potential for the range of structural, artefactual and environmental remains dating from the medieval period onwards, which will provide evidence about the lives of the inhabitants of the college and the duties they undertook;  

* Group value: with the Assembly House (listed Grade I), which is built on the site of and incorporates fragments of the medieval hospital and college, along with a large concentration of scheduled monuments and listed buildings in the south-west part of Norwich’s historic city centre.

History

A hospital dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary was founded by John le Brun, the parish priest of St Stephen, by 1248. As it was built in the open country on the south-west edge of the Norman settlement, before the city walls had been constructed, it was known as both Chapel-in-the-Fields and St Mary-in-the-Fields. Le Brun settled upon the hospital the Church of St George in Tombland (listed Grade I), while his brothers Geoffrey and Matthew respectively gave the Church of St Andrew (listed Grade I) and the Church of St Mary Unbrent (demolished by 1558). Although the hospital was established as an act of family piety, the patronage given to Bishop Suffield’s St Giles’s Hospital (founded 1249) prompted le Brun to change his mind, and by 1278 it had developed into a secular college.

Evidence from appropriations and testamentary bequests confirm that the College’s main period of expansion took place between the late C14 and early C15. Royal approval was given for the annexation of the Church of St Peter, Moulton, Suffolk, in 1362, along with one half of St Peter and St Paul, Fressingfield, Suffolk. In 1374, St Andrews, Eaton, Norwich, was similarly acquired, and in the same year Roger Middleton, the Rector of St Peter Mancroft, Norwich, gave £10 towards the cost of the cannons’ new kitchen and precinct walls. Further money for this work along with funds for the construction of the cloisters was given in 1377, 1378 and 1379. St Andrew’s, Field Dalling, Norfolk, was appropriated in 1381, 40 marks (£26 13s 4d) was paid to the Crown for a licence to annex St Peter Mancroft in 1384, and the rectorial income from the other half of the Fressingfield church was added in 1420. In 1428, Richard Fatman, William Sedman, John Cambridge and others gave £20 towards the leading of the chancel and choir roof, with a similar sum being given in 1433. As the Augmentation Office Certificate drawn up at the Dissolution states that the original C13 church was built without a chancel, the bequests suggest an early-C15 date for its addition. By 1444, the C13 church was in so much decay that Thomas Wetherby and others gave money for its repair while William Martyn left a legacy towards its rebuilding in 1458. Thomas Bachcroft gave £40 for the construction of a new rood loft in 1501.

The surrender of the college to Henry VIII was signed on 29 January 1544 by Dean Miles Spencer and the Bishop of Norwich. Just three months later, on 22 April 1544, Spencer was fortuitously granted the college for a nominal sum. He immediately demolished the church and other college buildings but kept the south, east and west cloistral ranges, which he remodelled to suit his new domestic requirements.

Following Spencer’s death in 1569, the property was bequeathed to his nephew, William Yaxley. It was subsequently sold to Thomas Cornwallis of Brome, Suffolk (1518/19-1604), who, in 1573, set about converting and rebuilding Spencer’s mansion, then known as ‘Chapel-in-the-Field House’, forming a new hall, kitchens, gallery and porter’s lodge, which was completed in 1586.

In 1609, Cornwallis’s mansion was acquired by Sir Henry Hobart (1560-1626) of Blickling Hall. It remained with the Hobart family until December 1753 when Sir John Hobart (1693-1756) agreed a 500-year lease with seven aldermen who, along with 24 local notaries, formed a business company to use the house as an entertainment venue. It was subsequently remodelled by Thomas Ivory (1709-1777) of Norwich to accommodate a series of assembly rooms. The central part of the building, believed to have been Cornwallis’s late-C16 house, was pulled down and rebuilt, whilst the south, east and west wings, all incorporating medieval and Tudor fabric, were retained and remodelled.

The renamed Assembly House (listed Grade I) reopened in July 1755. In 1855, its lease was purchased by new trustees who sold the main house and east wing to Benjamin Bond Cabbell of Cromer Hall, who primarily used it as a Freemasons’ Hall, while the west wing was acquired by Frank Noverre (1807-1878), who occupied it as his own house, to which he added a ballroom in 1858.

From 1876 to 1939, the building was occupied by the Girls Public Day School (now the Norwich High School for Girls). In 1901, when drainage trenches were dug in the forecourt by local contractor George Hawes, the foundation walls of the medieval church were uncovered along with two brick graves containing human skeletons and several human skulls. The whole of the forecourt was subsequently excavated the following year and exposed further wall foundations belonging to both the church and north cloister. Glazed floor tiles were also found in situ in the south transept and north porch along with fragments of stained glass and several pieces of plain and moulded stone from windows and arcade arches.

After the Second World War the Assembly House was restored as an arts centre to designs by S Rowland Pierce of Norwich. In 1950, Pierce produced a conjectural plan of the College of St Mary based on information derived from the Augmentation Office survey of 1544 along with the findings from the excavations of 1901-1902 and the historic building fabric he had uncovered during the recent restoration work. His plan shows that the medieval church, which survives under the Assembly House’s forecourt and lawned areas fronting Theatre Street, stood on an east to west alignment and comprised: a four-bay nave with a north aisle; single bay transepts; a three-bay chancel with north and south aisles; a long north porch extending to the south side of Theatre Street; and a tower with a spire at the west end. Adjoining at right angles on the south side of the church were the east and west cloistral ranges of which the west range was angled away from the church so that the south side of the cloister was wider than the north side. The Assembly House's east, west and south wings were found to stand on the foundations of, and incorporate fragments of, the medieval cloistral ranges along with fabric from their remodelling as Tudor mansions for Spencer and Cornwallis. Pierce also depicted a rib-vaulted crypt beneath the south wing’s east end (now restaurant), which he dated to around 1300, along with a series of barrel-vaulted cellars, of which two lay beneath the east wing and one under the forecourt. Although Pierce gave no date for the cellars, their position beneath the north and east cloistral ranges suggest that they were probably constructed between the late C14 and early C15.

Details

PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS: the buried remains of St Mary-in-the-Fields, originally founded by 1248 as a religious hospital, developed as a secular college by 1278, and dissolved in 1544. The remains comprise the foundations of the church and north cloister along with a crypt and three cellars.

The Assembly House (listed Grade I) is excluded from the scheduling, but the ground beneath it is included.

DESCRIPTION: the buried remains of the east to west aligned medieval church survive beneath the Assembly House’s forecourt and lawned areas and comprise a series of stone rubble foundation walls which are flint-faced on the exterior and plastered on the inside. The identified walls include: the majority of the church’s buttressed north wall; the nave’s south wall of which a small section is also believed to survive beneath the north wall of the Assembly House’s east wing; the north-west corner of the west tower and a buttressed section of its south wall; the nave’s east wall; the north and south piers of the chancel arch; the column bases to the nave’s north aisle arcade; the column bases to the chancel’s north and south aisle arcades; the west wall of the north transept and parts of its east wall; and the east and west walls of the north porch. Although the remains of the church’s east end and north porch doorway have not been identified, their conjectured positions are beneath Chantry Lane and Theatre Street respectively. Also surviving beneath the forecourt is the buttressed south wall of the north cloister.

Located beneath the south wing’s east side room (currently used as a restaurant) is a rectangular-shaped crypt, probably constructed around 1300. It consists of two rib-vaulted bays, aligned north to south, with the chamfered ribs springing directly for the wall at the south end, from vaulting shafts on the east and west sides, and from the wall and a corbel at the north end. The walls and ceiling are constructed from random flint rubble and brick, all plastered, and the floor is of brick. Set within the south wall is a brick-lined chute and a round-headed niche. The east and west walls have trefoil-headed niches, and the north wall has a splayed niche. The north wall also has a flat-headed doorway on the opposite side of which is a brick staircase with a barrel-vaulted roof which was inserted in 1744-1745. This door also leads through to the first of a series of three cellars of which two lie beneath the east wing on a north to south alignment whilst the third lies under the forecourt on an east to west axis. Although all three cellars are now connected, Pierce’s conjectural plan suggests that the cellar under the forecourt was originally detached but connected sometime between 1546 and 1754.

All three cellars are identical in their construction, with coursed flint rubble walls to springing level and pointed barrel vault brick roofs. The southernmost cellar, which adjoins the north side of the crypt, is rectangular and measures around 11m north to south by 6m east to west. Its east and west walls have large cellar chutes, with the former wall also having a pointed-arched side chamber to which a later doorway stands immediately to its right-hand side. It is adjoined to the north by the second cellar which is square and measures around 6m north to south by 6m east to west. Adjoining its east side is the third cellar which is rectangular and originally measured around 3m east to west by 2m north to south. A later extension at its east end, which connected it to the second cellar, has increased its length to some 4.5m.

EXTENT OF SCHEDULING: the area of protection is shown on the accompanying map extract and is designed to protect the known extent of the buried remains of the medieval hospital and college of St Mary-in-the-Fields, the church, cloister, crypt, and cellars.

EXCLUSIONS: the Assembly House (listed Grade I) along with the gates, railings, gate piers and boundary walls fronting Theatre Street are excluded from the scheduling, as are the boundary walls, railings and gates fronting The Chantry. Also excluded is the fountain in the forecourt along with the paved, tarmacadam and lawned surfaces. However, the ground beneath all these features is included.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

NF 14

Legacy System:

RSM - OCN

Sources

Books and journals
Hawes, GE, Recent excavations at the college of St Mary in the Fields, Norwich in Norfolk Archaeology, Vol. 15 (3), (1903), 293-315
Blomefield, F, The History of the City and County of Norwich, (1745), 607-617
Page, W, A History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 2, (1906), 455-57
Stone, N, A History: The Assembly House, Norwich, (2017)
Stephenson, A, King, J, A History of the Assembly House, Norwich, (2004)
Rawcliffe, C, Wilson, R, Medieval Norwich, (2004), 115-118

Websites
Information on the Assembly House from the Assembly House Trust website, accessed 18 November 2024 from https://www.assemblyhousetrust.org.uk/
Information on St Mary in the Fields from the Norfolk Heritage Explorer website, accessed 18 November 2024 from https://www.heritage.norfolk.gov.uk/record-details?MNF618-Assembly-House-Theatre-Street&Index=2&RecordCount=1&SessionID=32228bab-b4ea-426f-b5aa-614139d00d26

End of official list entry

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