Norwich

Norwich lies on the Wensum in Norfolk, with a Norman castle and a cathedral begun in 1096 from stone shipped in from Caen. It had two royal charters, from Henry II in 1158 and Richard I in 1194, and after a riot between citizens and monks in 1274 it became the only English city ever excommunicated. Between 1280 and 1340 a wall of about two and a half miles was built round it, enclosing more ground than the City of London, and the wool of Norfolk's sheepwalks made it one of the richest and most populous towns in the kingdom, second only to London. The Great Hospital was founded in 1249.

In 1549 Robert Kett's rebels took Norwich on 29 July and held it until an army defeated them; Kett was hanged from the castle walls. From 1567 Flemish and Walloon Protestant weavers, called the Strangers, settled in the city in such numbers that they came to make up about a third of its population, and Strangers' Hall recalls their first base. After the Restoration the cloth industry enjoyed a golden age, comparable only to the West Country and Yorkshire, and Norwich weaving drew a large urban society around the city. Loyalties stayed divided: in 1648 Parliamentary troops put down a Royalist riot in "the Great Blow".