Norwich's strangest pub.

Alright?

Today we’re pounding the pavements of Duke Street, hopefully before it starts raining.

This corner of Norwich was home to one of the strangest pubs the city ever produced. A pub with three dead bodies in the back, a Bengal tiger in the yard, and a backstory that begins with a sulking Duke.

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Now then, we’re about to step inside the Duke's Palace Inn. Please wait to be seated.

It started, as these things do, with Henry VIII.

The pub sat on a site that was originally part of the Duke of Norfolk's town palace, first built around 1540, during Henry VIII's reign.

In 1664, Sir Thomas Browne described Christmas at the palace as a non-stop rave (that’s my phrasing, not his), with dancing every night, banquets, and three coaches running back and forth to fetch the ladies of Norwich every afternoon (his phrasing, not mine, believe it or not). Charles II even popped in for a night out in 1671. Proper A-list stuff.

To put the size of this place in perspective, the 1671 hearth tax records (yes, taxation on hearths was a thing in the 17th Century) noted that Duke Street Palace had the most hearths of any building in the city, with 60. Sixty hearths.

Then, a year later (1672), it was rebuilt in the Italian style (whatever that means). Here’s a lithograph of what the North facade would’ve looked like, based on a sketch from 1710:

Everyone was having a great time at the palace, it appeared, until 1711, when the Duke of Norfolk at the time, a guy called Thomas Howard, threw what can only be described as the most aristocratic strop in Norwich history.

Angry enough to demolish your own house.

Here’s what happened. The Duke's company of comedians, who travelled around under his banner, had gotten into the habit of marching into Norwich with trumpets blasting and flags flying. The Mayor, one Thomas Havers, decided this was a bit much and stripped them of the privilege.

The Duke did not take this well.

Rather than write a stern letter or post a passive-aggressive sonnet on the seventeenth-century equivalent of LinkedIn, he pulled down part of his own palace and left Norwich entirely.

The remaining bit got turned into a workhouse, which is a glorious bit of social levelling, and from the wreckage, the Duke's Palace Inn opened its doors.

Please don’t pet the animals.

Skip forward to 1803, and the Duke’s Palace Inn is doing pretty well. One of the reasons for its popularity was that it played host to Mr Polito's Wild Beast Show, because of course it did.

Mr Polito’s Wild Beast Show was incredibly famous - remember, there was no Google Images back then. It gave Norwich locals what would probably be the only chance in their lives to see exotic animals. And boy did it deliver. The exhibition included a royal lion, a striped Bengal tiger, a leopard, a hyena and a wolf. All "commodiously and safely" housed in caravans in the yard.

Polito even came back the following January, with a young satyr in tow. (The Victorians used "satyr" loosely. It was probably a baboon, not a mythical half-human-half-goat. Probably.)

The apple merchant and the stableman.

And now we get to the bit you came for.

In 1815, the landlord rented out his spare stable and loft to an apple merchant, which sounds innocent enough, but Ben, the ostler (stableman/groom) who worked at the pub, didn’t love having to share his space.

Ben thought the apple merchant was up to something. Ben also, crucially, believed in ghosts.

One November night, Ben heard the rumble of cart wheels on the cobblestones outside in the small hours. He crossed the yard with his lantern, fully expecting to see a spirit, and was disappointed to find the very real apple merchant unloading his cart. They exchanged pleasantries, and Ben went back to bed.

But he couldn’t let it go. He went back out to have a poke around the sacks the merchant had been unloading.

They were not full of apples.

Instead, they contained three dead bodies.

Ah, those apples.

Mr Robert Paraman, the head constable and governor of Norwich gaol, was called to the pub. It didn’t take him long to solve the case.

Because the very next morning, the Rector of Hainford turned up at the gaol, somewhat agitated, reporting that his parishioners had witnessed extremely peculiar goings-on in the churchyard the night before. Paraman connected the dots and is said to have replied, with the kind of dry Norfolk delivery you cannot teach,

"Ah, those apples."

He then walked the bewildered Rector across to the inn and reintroduced him to three of his recently buried parishioners.

As it turns out, the “apple merchant” was in fact a resurrection man. He dug up the freshly dead and sold them to the medical profession for dissection. Norwich, it transpired, had been part of a body-snatching supply chain, and the Duke's Palace Inn was the depot.

Suddenly, the pork pies on the bar took on a different hue.

The end of an era.

One would think a triple-corpse incident might dent the trade. Not a bit of it. The pub stood for another 150-odd years.

Until, probably the saddest part of the story (sidestepping the dead bodies, of course): The pub was torn down. In its place? St Andrews car park.

The car park was demolished in 2002 to make way for a larger one.

The bigger car park needed structural repairs by 2014.

Five centuries of Dukes, dancing, dead bodies, Bengal tigers and travelling satyrs, replaced by something that needs a new render every twelve years and charges you £2.30 an hour.

If that doesn’t make you want to go and stand on Duke Street and have a quiet moment, nothing will.

These days, there’s little evidence of the palace’s or the pub’s existence. But I do want to leave you with this: If you go to Number 20 Colegate, you’ll find an impressive 18th-Century doorway made entirely of stone. It’s said that this doorway was recycled from Duke Street Palace.

A small remnant of a huge landmark.

See you next time,

Secret Norwich