20-22 Market Street

Summary

A shop built in 1921 for the Norwich Co-operative Society.

Reasons for Designation

20-22 Market Street, a shop built in 1921 for the Norwich Co-operative Society, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Historic Interest:

* as a good example of the new style of fashionable bright and airy stores built for the Co-operative Society, with its large, angled shopfront windows;

Architectural Interest:

* for the decorative quality of the exterior of the building including the windows, gables, cupola, and tiled lobby floor;
* for the quality of the interior of the upper floor social hall or dance hall with its separate access, wood panelling, doors and stage.

Group Value:

* for the strong functional group value it shares with the adjacent shops at number 18 and 18A Market Street (NHLE 1281105, listed at Grade II) and opposite at number 1 Mundesley Road (NHLE 1373938, listed at Grade II).

History

The settlement of (North) Walsham was owned by the Abbey of St Benet at Holme by the early C11 and was recorded in the Domesday survey (1086). The town had an established market by 1275, helped by the local wool trade, especially following the arrival of Flemish weavers in the C14. Lightweight ‘Walsham’ cloth reflects the town’s significant position in the wool and weaving industry. The large size of the medieval parish church of St Nicholas expresses some of the prosperity derived from the trade.

Much of the town’s medieval fabric was destroyed by fire in the summer of 1600, including 118 houses, 70 shops and warehouses, and even more barns, stables, malthouses and outhouses. The town changed in the reconstruction, with new building styles and materials used, but the layout of the marketplace and the narrow width of plots remained. Despite the declining wool trade, the town remained a significant market centre as an agricultural trading point and, from the early C19, a place of manufacturing. The North Walsham and Dilham Canal was opened in 1826, and by the end of the C19 the town had two railway stations.

Many C19 industrial towns had a co-operative society, based on the principles of Robert Owen (1771-1858), whereby profits were shared among members. By 1900 there were 1,439 co-operatives covering virtually every area of the UK. The ‘Co-op’ was often the only shop, or the only one of any substance, in a village or town until the 1960s. Most were modest, if purpose-built premises, but architecturally more ambitious examples were commissioned, especially in larger towns and cities. In the late-C19 and early C20 shop designs for the Co-operative Society were relatively ornate and often displayed the beehive or wheatsheaf motif as symbols of industry. The 1920s saw a change in fashion, with lighter and brighter stores favoured and the beehive and wheatsheaf symbols were abandoned.

20-22 Market Street was built in on the site of a previous pair of shops (of which photographs survive on North Walsham Archive.) The Norwich Co-operative Society opened in 1906 in one of the pair shops on the site. They were requisitioned by the military in 1915 and it is reported that they burned down in 1916.

The new Co-op building for the Norwich Co-operative Society opened in 1921. Downstairs it was divided into two separate areas; possibly for food and non-food sales. Upstairs was a social hall. The building continued in use as a Co-op store until 1983, when it became known as Heatherdown House, and was divided into a pet shop, a hairdresser, a restaurant and a motor spares shop. The upstairs function room became known as the Paston Room. In the 1990s the ground floor reverted to use as a single premises and was in use as a restaurant at the time of survey (2023).

Details

A shop with a social hall above it, built in 1921 for the Norwich Co-operative Society. It is unknown who designed the building.

MATERIALS: Red brick mostly laid in Flemish bond, with the upper storey rendered, and a plain-tiled roof with curved ridge-tiles.

PLAN: The building is rectangular on plan.

EXTERIOR: The principal elevation faces Market Street to the south. The upper storey is rendered, the lower storey is bare brick. The building has a hipped roof with dentilled eaves, with four gablets: one at each end (east and west) and two on the principal elevation. There is a small, central, hexagonal cupola. The building has two storeys and five bays to the front and three to the west elevation on Mundesley Road.

The gablets to the front elevation contain multi-paned arched windows with a brick hoodmould with voussoirs at sparse intervals forming a radiating pattern. Each end bay contains a two-light rectangular, multi-pane window and the central bay contains a three-light multi-pane rectangular window. The five bays are articulated at ground floor level by six, panelled-brick pilasters laid in English bond. There are shop fronts between all except the easternmost bay, which contains a pair of double doors. All shopfronts, and the double doors, have a dentil course above horizontal diamond-paned top windows, and beneath these there are larger panes. The main shop fronts form shallow, canted bays in the second and fourth bays. The central bay contains a recessed entrance with glazed shopfronts containing angled multi-pane glass doors in each side. The entrance recess contains black and white chequered ceramic floor tiles and a decorative panelled-wood ceiling.

The side elevation to Mundesley Road has three bays articulated by similar pilasters to those on the front, but with three horizontal three-light multi-pane windows to each bay on both storeys.

INTERIOR: The ground floor is mostly one open space inside, with a room containing C21 restaurant kitchen fittings at the rear, and C21 cloakrooms. There are wooden floorboards and a wooden plank ceiling. Centrally there is an arched divide with scars of a previous walled partition on the floor.

The easternmost bay contains a separate entrance to access the upper floor. It contains a wood-panelled stairwell with a dogleg staircase with stick balusters. There is a small room containing C21 toilets off the half-way landing.

On the upper floor a set of double doors containing plain glass windows is set in a large wooden doorcase with reed panelling and a canopied lintel. This leads into the main function room space. The room is panelled throughout and has a wooden dance floor. To the west end is a stage accessed by three central steps, with a balustrade around the edge with splat balusters (which are likely to have been a later addition).

Sources

Books and journals
Storey, N, North Walsham Past and Present (1989),
Pearson, L, England’s Co-operative Movement: An Architectural History (published on behalf of Historic England) (2020),

Websites
North Walsham Archive , accessed 1 March 2024 from https://www.northwalshamarchive.co.uk/photo/norwich-co-operative-society-market-street-north-walsham

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