As one of the country's oldest and most historical cities, Norwich has its fair share of strange folklore and tales.
Cathedral's Mysterious Musket Ball
If you wander down to the Cathedral and head to the very back where the choir stand in the chancel, you might find something curious in the walls of one of the tombs.
The tomb in question belongs to James Goldwell who was the bishop of Norwich from 1472 to 1499, but the interesting detail is the musket ball shot into its side.
It's believed to have been fired by a member of the Puritan mob loyal to Oliver Cromwell who ransacked the cathedral during the first civil war in 1643.
To this day, the ball remains in place, but who actually fired it, and why, has remained the greater mystery.
Father Ignatius & the Elm Hill Monastery Scandal of 1866
Father Ignatius was a preacher and a 'mystic' who sought to establish a Benedictine monastery on Elm Hill but there was plenty of controversy in the process.
The mysterious man attracted a wave of support and donations that allowed him to expand his preaching to new premises.
However, a 'Norwich Scandal' featuring an inappropriate relationship between a novice monk and a young boy in the care of the monastery and the unexplainable death of a woman who had blasphemed Father Ignatius saw to the monastery's undoing.
Father Ignatius spent the following 12 years unsuccessfully trying to regain a foothold in Norwich and died in 1908.
Even today, Elm Hill is thought to still be haunted by the mad monk ghost of Father Ignatius.
Norwich's Lost Rivers
A number of rivers, now lost, used to run through the city, including the Great Cockey, Muspole, Dalymond and Freshflete.
The lost River Cockey (a colloquial term for stream) originated somewhere around Jack’s Pit on All Saint’s Green and flowed down Red Lion Street and then along the back of the inns and down little London street, finally crossing St Andrews Street where it entered the Wensum, near the modern-day Playhouse.
A plaque dedicated to this once-river is in place in All Saints Green, where you can follow a trail of blue stones that showed where once it flowed.
Peter the Wild Boy
A strange man who was assumed to be homeless was arrested in 1751 near Norwich and was imprisoned at the Bridewell gaol in the city, which is today a museum. The man was described as looking dishevelled and scruffy and could only make strange grunting noises.
On October 22, 1751, a fire broke out in St Andrew's that quickly spread to the gaol which became engulfed in flames. The inmates were released except one who was fascinated by the fire and not at all scared.
This man drew considerable attention, and was written about in the London Evening Post: "a black hairy man, about five feet eight inches high, he cannot speak to be understood but makes a kind of humming-noise, and answers in that manner to the name of Peter".
Peter's history could be traced back to the forests of Germany and King George I.
No Tombs in Tombland
Estimates for deaths as a result of the Black Death in Norwich are around 7,000, which is more than half of the total population as it was then of 13,000. So where were all these bodied buried?
Not Tombland, as it turns out, which never turned up any significant evidence that the area was used as plague pits. Its name is also something of a red herring, with Tombland meaning in old Scandinavian 'empty space', and was likely the site of a marketplace which was later moved by the Normans to where it stands today.
Norwich is famed for once having a church for every week of the year, and the most likely place the plague victims were buried would be in the multitude of churchyards in and around the city, with each parish managing its own dead from the families who used the churches.
The Legend of the Demon Dog Black Shuck
The first known account of Black Shuck dates back to 1577, when the creature was reported to have burst through the doors of a church to the clap of thunder in Blythburgh, Bungay, and killed a man and a boy and left scorch marks on the floor and doors which can supposedly still be seen today.
Ever since then, sightings of a demon dog with blood-red eyes have been reported all over East Anglia and as far west as Cambridge, with its appearance thought to be an omen of impending death.
Reports of sightings continue to this day, however, and Black Shuck's legacy in the region is so well known that it has even been immortalised as a weather vane in the village to which it is thought to have originated, and an effigy burned to mark its 445th-anniversary last year.
Norwich the Computer Capital & the Concrete Keyboard
Norwich's pioneering history with computers is very well documented, being one of the first municipal buildings in the world to use one.
However, the origins of a keyboard imprinted in the concrete of an Elm Hill pavement had people stumped for over two decades, a mystery that has only recently been resolved.
Only in 2020 were the origins of the keyboard uncovered, having been solved by a YouTuber by the name of NostalgiaNerd, who was contacted by a woman named Molly Sole who turned out to be the original artist.
Mrs Sole made the imprint using a keyboard mould that she created while studying at NUA – then known as the Norwich School of Art and Design – between 1999 and her graduation in 2001.
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