HALLSUCKLING


With the huge thrust to promote Norwich 12, some of the city’s other great buildings can be overlooked. Elspeth Rushbrook begins a series looking at our other important medieval heritage buildings.


Written by Elspeth Rushbrook S uckling Hall is – unlike others I will look


at – well known, mostly because it is part of the refurbished Cinema City, the county’s arts cinema, and only one of


two cinemas in Britain to have a medieval hall in it (the other is the Salisbury Odeon). But I have never found a comprehensive description of the medieval house, and I made it my mission to find one...


Professor Eric Ives said that ‘frustration is the lot of Anne Boleyn’s biographer’; the same is true of one tracing the history of Suckling Hall. The reason that there is no comprehensive history or description is because evidence is so unclear.


I had hoped to present a fairly definitive picture of the hall at the time that Robert Suckling died. I am unsure why this merchant and mayor names the hall, for he is one of a string of similar occupants; and his life nor his building contribution seems to single him out. In fact, it hasn’t always been known by that name.


Unlike nearby and comparable Stranger’s Hall, it isn’t easy to list who made what changes to the house since its 14th century origins.


The task involved the thrill of an archive – 12 Fine City Magazine 2010


touching the very tracing paper that architect Edward T Boardman and his staff drew their 1920s plans on and the rough notes made by historian FR Beecheno for his paper a few years earlier. The other main sources are the 1589 inventory – the year of Robert Suckling’s death – and several accounts made around the time of Cinema City’s involvement, including an archaeological dig.


Boardman didn’t fully explain what amendments he made to the ruinous house that first the Norfolk News Company and then the Colman sisters commissioned his office to revitalise, nor what was already there. The conjectural plans of the house in late Tudor times only pinpoint a few key rooms, although the inventory names twenty-three areas; the plans do not entirely agree.


So this tour of mine involves some imagination, based on my knowledge of Norwich and countrywide architecture.


Stand with me on St Andrew’s Plain, facing Cinema City. Let four centuries roll back. The front of Suckling House is much closer to you now. It nestles by Garsett/Armada House (painted pink in our time) and has been newly built, just as Robert has died. The front from here (the north


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side) is a warehouse and a counting house. I think these were two storeys, as few buildings (especially locally) were higher until the 17th century. However, 19th century photographs show four jettied storeys and it is possible that the third one was here at this time. I believe they are slightly jettied with timber and brick. The bottom floor has a long mullioned window (see picture) on the counting house side and open wooden windows on the warehouse side.


St Andrew’s Hill runs into the plain; it is called Seven Steps. Much of the left (east) side is part of Suckling House, and it is all knapped flint, cut beautifully with its dark faces to the street. The main entrance to the house is here, under an arched little passage, with a coat of arms and


BACKDROP TO ONE OF THE AREA’S CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS, AND,


SUCKLING HALL MAKES AN AMAZING


FOR ME, REMAINS THE DEFINING EMBLEM OF WHAT MAKES


OUR CITY SPECIAL


more mullioned windows. Inside the yard would have been a large court with workshops and warehouses, usually busy with kitchen staff and tradesmen, though all is still today due to the death of the master.


We are in a covered walkway between the workshops and the Great Hall, standing in today’s roadway. I have always thought that the patched up scruffy flint and rubble exterior is ill-fitting for a merchant and leading citizen’s home. It is my belief that the Great Hall was rendered, as research has shown this was common elsewhere and also a local tradition. I wonder if the East Anglian palette was there in 1589 and what colour the Great Hall might be painted and plastered in.


We go into the Hall from the covered way; through the same large pointed door we can today (the stone bit over is called a ‘moulded hood’). Inside, we are in the screen passage,


The bar at Cinema City


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