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| The Maid's Head Hotel Located close to the
cathedral, The Maid's Head Hotel has been a popular
watering-hole for centuries and
has a number
of important literary connections. In 1472 Sir John Paston advised
a visitor that: 'if he tery at norwyche ther whyls, it
were best to sette hys horse at the Maydes Hedde.'
Maid's Head Hotel in
Tombland Norwich
In 1790 the actor/manager Tate Wilkinson stayed at the hotel and described how he almost fell off the top
of the coach - as it left in the morning |
| 'I was relieved by
the help of the hostler and servants of the inn who were
there and full ready to assist. I was received into
their arms from the coach-box and chucked into the
(luggage) basket.' |
Rev Woodforde was a frequent visitor to the Maid's Head
when he journeyed into the city from
Weston Longville. On
June 15th, 1791 he records in his diary visiting Norwich
Cathedral to attend a service and then attending the
Bishop's Court - followed by a visit to the Maids Head:
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| 'After the Court
was adjourned we walked to the Maid's-Head Inn, where
most of the Clergy of the Chancellor dined and spent the
afternoon, about 34 Clergy dined together. For our
dinner we each paid 0.3.0. The Bishop gave the Wine at
and after Dinner one Bottle between two Clergymen. |
In October 1933, J.B. Priestley stayed at the hotel
while on the last leg of his 'English Journey' and
described the place as a 'fantastically rambling but
comfortable old place'. While there he also had dinner
with his friend the writer
R.H.Mottram.
Priestley also liked the Dickensian atmosphere of the
city and remarked: 'What a grand,
higgledy-piggledy, sensible old place Norwich is!'
The hotel also features in The Norwich Victims
- a detective story by Francis Beeding (aka John Leslie
Palmer) and in P.D. James' Devices and Desires
where one of the suspects attends a stag party at the
hotel.
However, the hotel is probably best known for its
links with L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between (1953).
In the novel Marian Maudsley takes Leo into Norwich
to buy him some clothes and, after exploring the City on
his own, Leo meets up with Marian again and has lunch at
the Maid's Head. In the film, Joseph Losey actually
used the hotel as the location for the lunch scene making
it
doubly significant. Leo and Marian sit in this part of
the hotel - looking out onto Wensum Street:
Go-Between film
location
Lastly the hotel was also visited by the the poet
Philip Larkin in 1969 who, rather predictably, took a
dim view of both the hotel and Norwich. He records in a
letter to Maeve Brennan that:
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'Norwich is
ghastly and this hotel isn't all that grand. It's better
today than yesterday but really it's quite unsuitable
for this particular type of holiday being a one-night
expense-account place with nowhere quiet to sit.'
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In 2018 C. J. Sansom
published Tombland - the seventh in his Matthew
Shardlake series. Shardlake, a London-based Tudor lawyer
comes up to Norfolk to investigate the murder of Edith
Boleyn. While in Norwich he stays at the Maid's Head.
The book is set in 1549 - which is the same year as
Robert Kett's rebellion - and Shardlake becomes
embroiled in the uprising.
There is now a plaque
on the wall of the hotel commemorating the link with the
book. |
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Supported
by Norfolk Tourism