This year the Stirling Prize for architecture went to the Elizabeth line but five years ago it went to council housing in Norwich. They could have built flats but instead they packed 105 energy-efficient houses into a handful of dense terraced streets, aligned east-west to maximise solar gain. Extra-thick walls help to keep heating costs way down, and so net-zero-friendly was the project that it achieved full Passivhaus status. In 2019 RIBA's judges described Goldsmith Street as a "modest masterpiece", rating it above a Speyside distillery, a Leicestershire opera house and the new London Bridge station. I liked it too.
Despite being barely ten minutes from the city centre you wouldn't stumble upon these houses by accident, tucked as they are behind Victorian terraces and typically dull postwar flats. The light-coloured brick frontage shines out, highlighted at ground level by a sequence of brightly-coloured doors. Behind the two central streets is a shared alleyway with picnic tables, PIN-code protected, and round the front on the green a single ancient tree brings some welcome asymmetry. In a signature touch from Riches Hawley Mikhail the original 1840s street name Greyhound Opening is celebrated in the paving near a rumblestrip. But after five years this is no longer just an architect's drawing, it has a proper lived-in look as the stamp of reality has caught up with the project.
The first sign of assimilation is a St George's flag flapping limply from an upper balcony. Round the corner four chairs have been left out in case anyone wants to take them, and the parking bay is occasionally drenched by a householder washing her car with a hose (which I niftily dodged). One particular front garden has become a mess of plastic toys with three Nerf guns spilling out onto the street, because every estate has one family like that. And behind the scenes is the unpalatable truth that the first houses on Goldsmith Street are now eligible for sale under the Right to Buy scheme, potentially bleeding away this precious resource until Norwich council has nothing to show for it bar a nice prize. Social housing may be broken but it is sometimes brilliantly done.
✉ Radio Norfolk
The local BBC radio station has its studios inside The Forum, Norwich's great millennium project, most of which is library. Head up to the first floor balcony and you can stare in through the glass and see the programme makers at work, but don't come after 2pm because budget cuts mean the microphone is syndicated elsewhere. You get some sense of the BBC's regional austerity from the abandoned reception desk downstairs, the blandest possible counter bedecked only with a nigh-empty bottle of hand sanitiser, not a flurry of colourful images celebrating local talent. Also before anyone nips in and makes an Alan Partridge comment, this is Radio Norfolk but Alan was at Radio Norwich which doesn't exist but sounds like it does which is why Steve Coogan chose it.
✉ Wensum River Parkway
Norwich's medieval city centre was located strategically inside the last big bend on the river Wensum, just before it flows into the Yare, and a lot of it is walkable. Two miles of this urban meander has been designated the Riverside Walk or perhaps the Wensum River Parkway, it's hard to say given that the council appears to have given up on supporting all its previous rebrandings. But it's still a fine and proper walk through history, passing medieval city walls, timbered cottages, towered churches, industrial woollen mills, newbuild flats and England's last surviving swan pit. I started at the tidal limit and weaved round to the Championship football ground via 12 photogenic bridges. [12 photos]
(1) New Mills marks the head of navigation and supports a former water-powered air compressor station used for moving sewage. The only similar contraption in the UK is inside the Houses of Parliament. It's currently up for renovation/replacement so I got to admire it just in time. (2) Coslany Bridge started out wooden in the 12th century, was rebuilt in stone in 1521 and replaced by the current cast iron structure in 1804. The Anchor Brewery alongside is now heritage flats. (3) Duke's Palace Bridge is a dull but necessary 1970s road bridge, whose cast iron original has been cunningly relocated and repurposed above an entrance to the car park at the Castle Mall shopping centre. (4) St George's Bridge was designed by Sir John Soane and these days is pedestrians and bikes only. This is where the waterfront becomes inaccessible so the Riverside Walk briefly falls apart as a coherent concept. (5) Fye Bridge has a characterful pub-side setting and also the very best backdrop, a row of pastel cottages along the quayside with Norwich cathedral's spire launching high above the rooftops. (6) Whitefriars Bridge will be 100 years old next year but looks older because the council were careful when they widened the original. St James' Mill alongside was Norwich's first steam-powered factory, looks amazing and is suddenly in line to become an 88 bed hotel.
(7) Jarrold Bridge is a low swooshing footbridge and is the first of the newbies, opened 12 years ago. It was instigated by the chairman of the local independent department store as a welcome shortcut to Mousehold Heath. (8) Bishop Bridge, in sharp contrast, is by far the oldest Wensum bridge and dates back to 1341. Local conservation groups stopped the council rebuilding this one in the 1920s and we thank them. (9) Foundry Bridge became more important when the railway station was built alongside. These days the riverside path passes through a pub terrace. It's the first road bridge in almost a mile. (10) Lady Julian Bridge commemorates England's first female author who lived in a secluded cell at a nearby church. This swing bridge is 600 years younger than her not-quite bestselling Revelations of Divine Love. (11) The Novi Sad Friendship Bridge, named after one of Norwich's twin towns, is another modern swing bridge designed to ensure that the lower Wensum remains navigable. (12) Carrow Bridge carries Carrow Road where Delia's football team play. It's a double bascule lifting bridge and the lowest road bridge on the Wensum, the lowest of all being the Trowse Swing Bridge which carries the mainline railway but you can't walk to that.
(I know some people hate it when I animate multiple photos so this time I've put a big version of each bridge on Flickr so you can take your time working though)
✉ M&M Convenience Store
I can never walk past a shopfront which sells paper goods but can't spell, so this is the front of an offending corner shop on St Martin's Road.
