Rogers' Directory of Norwich and Neighbourhood

Transcribed from the c1858 Jarrold and Sons edition, using scans from the British Library, by David Price.
(ENTERED AT STATIONERS’ HALL.)
PRINTED FOR THE PROPRIETOR, BY JARROLD AND SONS, LONDON STREET, NORWICH.
It is never pleasant to have to make apologies; and yet there are some circumstances under which an apology is a duty, and therefore, whether pleasant or not, should be tendered cheerfully. The present is a case in point. The work should have been published earlier, and would have been had it been possible. The truth is that the “Guide to Streets, &c.,” was a novel experiment, and the compiler—having nobody’s experience to guide him—thought the task an easier one than it turned out to be. It was at first imagined that the matter for this “Guide” could be obtained simultaneously with the information for the Directory itself. The attempt proved the mistake. It was found that to do both well they must be done distinctly and independently. Hence chiefly came the delay, to say nothing of the fact that for many “local habitations” it was very difficult to find the “name.” In yards and courts not a few, and in some out-of-the-way streets even, not one of the inhabitants could give his whereabouts a designation! The task, however, has been achieved at last; and it is trusted that upon the whole the public will think that it has been achieved well. A few errors have crept in, doubtless; but no labor and no care have been spared to avoid them. The hope is confidently cherished that the faults of the work will be forgiven for the sake of its excellencies, especially as the compiler promises to “do better next time.”
Norwich, a city and county, situate in the centre of the Eastern Division of Norfolk, consists of 35 parishes and 10 hamlets, covers 6,638 acres, is nearly 14 miles in circumference, and contained, in 1851, 15,000 houses and 68,195 inhabitants. The undisputed metropolis of the Eastern Counties, it has communication both by water and rail with the seaports of Yarmouth and Lowestoft, while it is doubly connected with London by the Ipswich and Cambridge lines; and has access to the midland and northern counties, by way of Peterborough. Having thus indicated the locale and dimensions of the “old city,” it is but right that before proceeding further we should give a brief sketch of its history. And this we the more readily do, inasmuch as Norwich has borne a by no means undistinguished part in those great political and social movements which have made England what she is.