History of the Parish of St Peter Permountergate, Norwich

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Upper King Street. It will be convenient for the purpose of making our survey, to take the district in blocks, and to begin with the northernmost block, bordered by Upper King Street, Rose Lane, and St. Faith's Lane, to the Horse Fair. A line drawn from Grey Friars' Lane to the Horse Fair would form the...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Upper King Street. It will be convenient for the purpose of making our survey, to take the district in blocks, and to begin with the northernmost block, bordered by Upper King Street, Rose Lane, and St. Faith's Lane, to the Horse Fair. A line drawn from Grey Friars' Lane to the Horse Fair would form the northern boundary of this block, and on this side it joined the parishes of St. Cuthbert and of St. Mary in the Marsh. 1 To begin then in Upper King Street. Where Grey Friars' Lane is now, the land was held by Roger le Marescal (the farrier.) He rather belonged to St. George Tombland, where he had a 2 farrier's shop. Next to him came John the goldsmith, of whom I know nothing more, except that his mother's name was Johanna de Lenn. Who joined on to him I cannot say; but a little further towards Rose Lane came a certain 3 Adam son of Gervase the tanner, who, as we shall see, belonged to a family party who owned a good deal of property in this immediate neighbourhood. His next neighbour was a man 4 of some importance, Seman the Nedler. His name occurs very frequently in deeds at this time, and is a curious illustration of the times in which he lived. There were then three languages in use. The language of writing was Latin, the nobility and gentry used NormanFrench, and the common people spoke English. So when a person was distinguished by his occupation, he was sometimes described in one language, sometimes in another. Thus, Seman is sometimes called Seman Acuarius in Latin, sometimes Seman le Agulyer in French, sometimes Seman le Nedler in English; all three words having the same meaning. By way of a little further variety he appears also as Seman Wrinel (a surname which probably had some meaning), and Seman de Blyburgh, from the place whence his family had first co...