A 2-hour guided walking tour with Paul Dickson celebrating CJ Sansom’s best-selling novel Tombland, featuring Tudor lawyer Matthew Shardlake’s visit to Norwich at the time of Kett’s Rebellion (1549).
The tour starts outside the Maids Head Hotel and includes Tombland, the ancient Anglo-Scandinavian Market Place, Augustine Steward’s House, Norwich Cathedral Close, Bishopgate (Holme Street in the novel) and the Great Hospital, Bishop’s Bridge, the site of Bishop’s Gate and Lollards Pit, followed by a climb up to Kett’s Heights, the remains of St Michael’s Chapel, with its fabulous view across the city.
The return journey follows the north side of the river with views of the medieval Cow Tower and surviving city walls, near the location of the Pockthorpe Gate, before crossing the river and finishing at the Adam and Eve pub, where Lord Sheffield was taken after he had been mortally wounded, and seeing the site of the Battle of Palace Plain.
We will then take a short stroll to The Red Lion on Bishopgate for drinks and grazing boards.
Paul Dickson has worked in the tourism industry in Norfolk for 37 years, initially for the National Trust and then as an independent PR practitioner. Eleven years ago he fulfilled a long held ambition by qualifying as an official City of Norwich tourist guide. Since then he has developed his own guided tours business in Norwich and has expanded into the Broads National Park and Cromer. Paul additionally works as an independent guide for the Maids Head Hotel in Norwich.
