200 Years Ago in Norwich : Theft from the Castle Inn

And (yet) another post in my series of things that I thought intriguing from the Norwich Mercury of 200 years ago this week. The article reads:

“On Thursday night, or early on Friday morning, some persons broke into the bar of Mr. Blackley, at the Castle Inn, by breaking the window over the porter-room door, and slipping the bar lock, and stole from thence a musical snuff-box, a silver snuff-box, four pictures, double-bitted bridle, pair of shoes, boots, silver wine strainer, and several other articles. The pictures are portraits of Mr. Blackley and some of his family. A person sleeping near the room imagined that he heard their attempt, but did not rise to ascertain the fact.”

It’s the last line that I thought of note and I can almost imagine the annoyance of William Henry Redhead Blackley, who was the landlord of the pub between 1823 and 1833, that the person mentioned didn’t attempt to stop what was going on. This was also a large venue (known over the time as the Castle Inn, the Castle Hotel, the Castle & Lion and just the Castle), it had been trading since the mid seventeenth century and it remained open until 1989, which seems like quite a decent run to me. Unfortunately, the building was lost in the 1990s as part of the Castle Mall development, but it had been a sizeable building.

As some other asides, it was quite a little haul that the thieves got away with, taking horse related kit, shoes and photos of the landlord. I had to look up what a porter room was and it’s apparently a Norfolk thing, it’s a reference to the posh bar or I suppose the lounge bar of its day.

As for the landlord, William died on 1 March 1833 and is buried at the Rosary Cemetery, although I’m not sure if his gravestone is still there.