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manner, "the town on the Eure", and are content to leave all others, which are fanciful, legendary, or absurd, to those who have imagined them. The illustrations have much interest in them. We have been able to reproduce those relating to the remains of the Norman church of St. Peter, and the beautiful doorway of Sinningthwaite Priory, now a farmhouse. For these, and for the facsimiles of the MS., the editor deserves the highest praise.

(With five Maps.)

How the City of Norwich grew into shape. By the REV. WM. HUDSON, M.A., F.S. A. (Norwich: Agas H. Goose.) -Mr. Hudson, the editorial secretary of the Norfolk and Norwich Archæological Society, was for many years a Norwich vicar, and he has in this handsome quarto given to the public the result of a longcontinued and painstaking research into the early history of the chief city of East Anglia, from the mists of prehistoric antiquity down to the end of the thirteenth century, when its "growth" ceased for five hundred years, and its "shaping" was accomplished.

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Mr. Hudson has had the advantage in prosecuting his researches not only of excavations on the spot, but of a systematic study of the earliest existing documents relating to the city of Norwich, which are of the thirteenth century, and on the result of this study he bases his conclusions. These documents relate to the conveyance of lands, shops, houses, rents, etc., in the city, and contain a fund of information as to the names of the streets and parishes of that date. From these names, Mr. Hudson argues back to their origin, and is thus enabled to trace the growth of the city. Every visitor to Norwich knows that there are two points of special interest: the Norman Keep (now used as a museum, after having long been a prison), on its lofty mound, which forms the central point of the present city, and the Norman Cathedral, situated in the district known as Tombland", (i.e., "open" or "vacant" land), a little to the north-east of the castle. Mr. Hudson shows that the mound on which the castle stands is artificial, and that it was probably first thrown up by an early Danish chieftain to overawe the Anglian residents in a town which was growing up round the district of Tombland, and known as "Conesford", or King's Ford. Moreover, the castle mound stands right in the track of a Roman road, known as Berstreet (the paving of which has been found at a depth of 12 ft. below the ground-level of the mound), which ran from the Roman camp at Caistor by Norwich northwards (perhaps to Branodunum, the modern Brancaster), and was joined a little to the eastward of the Cathedral by another Roman road (known as Holmstreet), running eastwards across the Wensum and the marshes

to the great Roman fortress of Burgh Castle and Caister by Yarmouth. There was no British settlement or Roman city on the site of Norwich; the Venta Icenorum of Antoninus was probably Caistor by Norwich.

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The Anglian "tun" was a small and unimportant one. The Danish chieftain raised his mound, as we have seen, right in the track of the old Roman highway, and round it gradually grew a Danish town, as is attested by the affix "gate" to the majority of the streets, such as Pottergate", "Hosyergate”, "Hosyergate", "Shereresgate", etc., "gate" being the Danish for "way", "road", or "street". But the curious thing is that the centre of this Anglo-Danish city remained in the district of Tombland. To it all the "gates" trended; there, later on, the palace of the earl was built; and there the market was held. It was not till after the Norman Conquest that a new Norman city grew up to the westward of the castle, when the old Danish fort was transformed into a grand Norman keep, and the market was transferred to the place it still occupies below the castle on the west. Then the earl's palace was destroyed; Tombland became a monastic precinct, and in 1096 A.D. Herbert de Losinga, the first Bishop of Norwich (the bishopric having formerly been at Dunham and then at Thetford), commenced to rear the Cathedral, which remains to this day as one of the finest monuments of pure Norman ecclesiastical architecture in our country. Up to a very recent date the four great wards of Norwich told the history of its "growth": "Conesford", the Anglian city by the Wensum, to the south of Tombland; Coselanye" and "Westwyk", the Danish settlement on either side of the Wensum to the north of the castle; and 'Newport", or Mancroft", the Norman burgh to the west of the castle.

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This is an age of specialism; as great attention now being paid to the histories of cities and parishes, as was, up to a few years ago, given to county and district and diocesan ones, and Mr. Hudson is to be congratulated on the very interesting results which have been attained. by his researches into the early history of Norwich. We should like to see the same care bestowed upon the history of all our ancient cities, and we feel sure that like interesting results would follow

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