FILLING YOU UP WITH EVERYTHING GOOD IN NORWICH EACH MONTH

I Love Norwich

Norwich Market

by Jessikart

27/01/17

Norwich Market

 

Let’s play Norwich photo bingo, shall we? Cathedral spire as seen from the cloisters? Yup. Norwich Castle framing the skyline? Got it. City Hall? Of course. The tops of Norwich Market stalls, a multicoloured patchwork quilt of stripes spreading down to Gentleman’s Walk? Now that is Norwich. Castles, cathedrals, and civic centres are found everywhere, and as special and iconic as ours are, there’s nowhere else like Norwich Market. 

There just isn’t, you know it already. For a start, it’s one of the oldest and largest open air markets in the country, which considering the size of Norwich is pretty damned impressive. But really, the best thing about it is not it’s age, size, or eyepleasing nature, but the downright odd and brilliantly unexpected nature of it. You just never know what you’re going to get. But you can pretty much get it all. 

Spices and flowers and phone fixers and ice cream and clothes and books and vinyl and haberdashery (never waste an opportunity to use the word ‘haberdashery’, it is one of the glories of our language). I’m Norwich bred and born, yet every time I go to the market I find a new stall I’d never noticed before and instantly find a new favourite place. 

Thing is, with the market, we don’t appreciate it, not as much as we should. In these days of identikit main shopping streets clogged with all of the usual chain stores, we have right in front of us a fantastic display of what the spirit of Norwich is – a banding together of wildly disparate, fiercely independent, beautifully local traders, selling everything you need, and quite a lot of what you want. We shouldn’t take it for granted, because it’s something unique to the city, that couldn’t really exist anywhere else. Gwarn, have a wander round, it will almost certainly surprise you. 

And then of course, partake of one of life’s greatest pleasures: eating chips at the top of the war memorial, looking out across the awnings and think ‘hell, yeah, Norwich Market. You do what no one else can. BINGO.’