Streets of Norwich – King Street (upper end between Rose Lane and Prince of Wales Road)

Part of my Streets of Norwich project….

King Street is one of the longer streets in the city centre, with this section running between Prince of Wales Road and Rose Lane.

This is how the street looked like in the 1880s.

The building on the left is, I think, the former Royal Oak public house, in operation between the 1850s and closed in 1921.

The building which has what looks like a black frontage (behind the blue sign) was the Cock pub which was a licensed premises between the mid-eighteenth century and 1975 when it finally closed. It’s located at 32 King Street and the frontage is an original pub frontage from the nineteenth century.

What is now the Last Pub Standing, which is a reference to it being the last public house on King Street, but was formerly known as Kings, Bar Rio, Tusk and the Nags Head. The building, which is at 27-29 King Street, was formerly two residential properties from the seventeenth century.

The building on the left is the side of Hardwick House, which was built as a bank, before becoming the city’s main Post Office.

The stretch of King Street was once the main road through, but this section has now been mostly pedestrianised.