V. D Lipman

A book of three parts. First the history proper, in English. I’ll come back to this in a sec. Second, transcriptions of the Latin documents which chronicle the Jews’ business dealings from the Muniments Room at Westminster Abbey. A particularly useful resource for historians, but, apart from the precis in English, unintelligible to me. The documents are subjected to extensive analysis in part one. Finally, turn the book over and read right to left and there is an edition of the Hebrew poems of Meir of Norwich. Again unintelligible to me, but I have just borrowed a dual language edition of them from the library and will be reading them as soon as I’ve written this.

The history itself is mind-bogglingly interesting and I’m going to bang on about it at length.

I don’t think the Norwichites will mind me saying that their city has one of the most ridiculous layouts of any in the country. When I first moved here I had to learn the city section by section and then had trouble relating each section to the others. I kept getting lost. In the opening chapter Lipman describes the development of the city. When you understand that there are three Anglo-Saxon/Viking/Danish towns that have been disfigured by a later Norman town it all makes sense.

I used to live not far from where William of Norwich was found dead and would walk past the site on my way in to town. There’s a horrible road to the north, but it’s otherwise a beautiful site and well worth a visit. So I was aware of the case and had come to the conclusion that William had been killed by a paedophile. Lipman subjects the known facts to an impressive analysis and comes to the same conclusion. Rather pleasing to find myself in agreement with what is obviously a first-class brain.

Lipman covers the Jurnet family in some depth. As it happens I last year read Jocelyn of Brakelond’s Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds. If you want to read a first-hand eye-witness account of the Jurnets in action take a look therein. It’s useful to read the two books in conjunction as you’ll get a human glimpse and a clear picture of the scale of the Jurnets’ business.

But the real jewel of this book is Chapter VII “Houses and Families in the Jewish Quarter”. The layout of the city in this area today is largely the same as it was 800 years ago. Take the block of buildings on the west side of the Haymarket. This was the main Jewish block with the Synagogue. Many records exist of the owners/owner-occupiers of this block. Lipman provides a fold-out of the 1885 Ordnance Survey and superimposes the positions of the Medieval dwellings. The accompanying text tells you who lived there and when. The ground plans of the modern shops are still the same as they were 800 years ago. I repeat, the ground plans are still the same 800 years later. Do you copy that, C3P0? How do I know? I’ve just had one of the most enjoyable days I’ve had in a long time exploring this block of shops with this book in one hand and my imagination in the other.

Most of the properties are small but at the present time they are building the new Primark. The previous property on this site has been totally removed and you can see deep into the bowls of the block. The footprint of Primark exactly matches Medieval plots, 12, 13 and 14 in the plan, the long homes that run back some distance from the road.

Moving next door to Fatface it matches plots 10 and 11 on the map. The sales assistant there told me there is still a Medieval well in the basement. Apparently there’s a tour of the whole block some time this summer. I’ll be on that.

Moving next door to the opticians, plots 7, 8 and 9. You’ll see there’s an odd dog-leg in the line of the wall on the plan. That dog-leg still exists in the line of the optician’s wall. We know the names of all the people that lived in these homes.

Moving round on to White Lion Street we come to plot 1 and another proof that the modern footings of the buildings are the same as the medieval. In 1266 Samuel, the grandson of the famous Jurnet, sold it to John Butte. John measured the building and found it was equal in length to 52 of his own feet. The 1885 map shows this property to be 40 feet or 12.192 metres in length. That would make John’s feet 23 centimetres long. Small, but well within human range. I worked it out and John Butte took a size 4 1/2 shoe. We don’t have his bones but we know the shoe size of a man who was alive in 1266.

Moving back round the block, back past the new Primark, there’s a passageway leading into the centre of the block. Originally this passageway was entirely open to the sky. In 1249 Isaac of Warwick was given permission to build a flat above the entrance. A building above the entrance is there to this day. Entering the passage brings us to the Lamb Inn. This is the site of the Synagogue. So the Synagogue was built in a defended position, surrounded by Jewish homes. There were three approaches, all narrow alleys to limit the size of the mob. Not that this stopped the English burning it down in 1286. The three approaches meant that if a mob did gather, people could always escape from the other side of the building and take refuge in the castle behind.

I could go on.

This is a fantastic book. You could sit and read it and get a lot from it, but really you need to be in Norwich in a clement day so you can get out and use it. It’s not always an easy read. I did wonder if Lipman were a chess player because his analysis of the evidence is so good. He’s particularly good at applying reason to the facts and charting a course between them while still holding the variables in mind. In other words you have to pay attention to some very close reasoning, but doing so will repay you ten-fold.… (altro)