Barrack Street Slum Clearance, Norwich

Barrack Street Slum Clearance, Norwich, originally uploaded by Colonel Blink.

From my collection Part of a map from the City Engineers entitled
CITY OF NORWICH
BARRACK STREET CLEARANCE AREA,
JANUARY 17th 1933
[SECTION B]

I thought it would be interesting at this time when the flats on Barrack Street are awaiting final demolition to post this plan of what the area was like before they were built.

Tiny houses, crammed together, sharing outside WCs and wash houses. An old boy once told me that the whole area was so infested with rats they did not even bother to run away if you approached them in daylight. This kind of housing would have been the lot for the majority of citizens of most of the country. All this is only eighty years away from the lifestyle we have now.

To give you some idea of scale this portion of the map shows about a 300 foot length of Barrack Street. This is about a third of the area shown on the map and features the T-junction formed by Barrack Street and Silver Road. I have been told the area was nicknamed Bottlegate but would like to have this confirmed.