Mousehold Heath is a freely accessible area of heathland and woodland which lies to the north-east of the medieval city boundary of Norwich, in the English county of Norfolk.
The name also refers to the much larger area of open heath that once extended from Norwich almost to the Broads, and which was kept free of trees by both human activity and the action of animals grazing on saplings. This landscape was transformed by enclosure during the 19th century and has now largely disappeared, as almost all of it has since been converted into farmland or landscaped parks, reverted to woodland, or has been absorbed by the rapid expansion of Norwich and its surrounding villages, where new roads, shops, houses and industrial units have been built. The present Mousehold Heath consists of mostly broad-leaf woodland, with isolated areas of heath that are actively managed. It is home to a number of rare insects, birds and other vertebrates.
A chapel dedicated to William of Norwich (a local child who was murdered in 1144) existed on the heath during the medieval period. In 1549, Robert Kett and his followers camped on the edge of the heath close to Norwich, days before their uprising was suppressed by the authorities. The heath was in the past used by the local population to collect fuel, food and housing materials, as well as to extract sand, clay and gravel. Parts of it have previously been used as a cavalry training ground, a race course, a United States Army Air Forces base, an aerodrome and a prisoner-of-war camp. Nowadays the last remnant of the original Mousehold Heath, managed by Norwich City Council, is surrounded on all sides by housing and light industry.
Description
Mousehold Heath is a public area of heathland, woodland and recreational open space to be found to the north of Norwich city centre. It is the largest of the nature reserves managed by Norwich City Council. It was once an area of heathland that extended to the north and east of Norwich, which has since been largely converted to woods and farmland, or lost to housing development.
Geology The landscape of Mousehold Heath (as it was before enclosure occurred at the beginning of the 19th century) is part of an outwash plain created by fluvial processes. The geology of the area is complex, consisting of a set of vertical layers of glacial deposits from the Anglian Stage resting on a bedrock of Cretaceous chalk and the Norwich Crag Formation.
Chalk was deposited 75 million years ago, when the area was part of a warm, tropical sea. The chalk is now exposed near the southern tip of the heath at St James' Pit, which is an geological Site of Special Scientific Interest and Geological Conservation Review site. About two million years ago sands, gravels, quartz pebbles and clays were deposited across the area of Norfolk that now includes the heath. Similar materials were deposited during a glacial period that occurred more than 475,000 years ago. Clay, sand and gravel was laid over Mousehold Heath about 425,000 years ago, caused by the movement of melted ice. The heath's present landscape was more recently formed as a result of erosion, caused by streams cutting through the soft rocks. It later became altered when silts were blown over the topsoil, when the ground churned as a result of temperature variations and when sludge layers moved downhill during warmer seasons.
Detailed information about the geological history of the present Mousehold Heath, in the form of a 'Heritage Trail' leaflet and accompanying notes for points around the trail, has been produced by Norwich City Council.
Etymology Various ideas have been proposed for the origin of the heath's name. The old name Mushold is nowadays interpreted as meaning 'mouse wood': it was in the past thought the heath took its name from the Anglo-Saxon moch-holt ('thick wood'). John Stacy, writing in 1819, quoted earlier sources that derived the name from Moss-wold ('mossy hill') or – in his opinion, more probably – Monks-hold ('possessed by the monks').
History
Medieval times Extensive areas of heathland developed across Norfolk towards the end of the prehistoric period. It largely reverted to woodland again after the end of the Roman occupation, reappearing as heath as the population increased. According to the Domesday Book, the original area of Mousehold Heath was still substantially wooded, but the landscape changed as more trees were felled for fuel, and it eventually became largely treeless. This landscape was maintained by animal grazing and human activity, with parts of it being ploughed into fields, known as 'brecks'. The name Mousehold originally referred to the 'holt' or wood that existed before it became an area of heathland.
St Leonard's Priory was founded on the heath close to the city boundary in around 1094, as a temporary home for the monks of the unfinished Norwich Cathedral, and as a way of establishing Norman control over a nearby chapel. The priory was demolished in 1538 and nothing of it now survives above ground.
In 1144 the body of a young apprentice boy called William was found outside Norwich, on a part of the heath known as Thorpe Wood. A false story was circulated that his death was the result of a 'ritual murder' carried out by local Jews. This was the first example in Europe of what became known as blood libel. The sheriff of Norwich succeeded in protecting the innocent Jewish population from persecution in the wake of an angry reaction from the local people. The boy later attained the status of saint and martyr, and a chapel, originally dedicated to St Catherine, was built where William's body was supposed to have been found. In 1168 it was rededicated as the chapel of St William in the Wood, and offerings continued to be made there until 1506. The overgrown remains of the site can be found on the northern edge of the present heath.
In 1381 the final battle of the Peasants' Revolt took place a few days after a huge meeting on the heath occurred on 17 June. There Geoffrey Litster, later to be defeated at the Battle of North Walsham, was proclaimed "King of the Commons".Walsingham, Thomas, (Editors Taylor, J., Childs, W. R., Watkiss, L.), The St Albans Chronicle: The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham Volume I 1376–1394
1500–1810
From the 16th to the 18th century, Mousehold Heath was Norwich's largest tract of open land outside its city walls. In the Tudor period the heath, then almost treeless, was continuously open countryside that extended from Norwich to the edge of the Broads. The local population was free to collect wood from the heath, and to allow their stock to graze there. Small villages bordered the heath: the parish of Salhouse, which was agrarian in nature, was typical of them. It consisted of a small settlement situated within a landscape of well-drained heath on slightly higher land, a mixture of woodland, marsh, arable land, and meadows on lower ground. Nearby ancient placenames such as Mouseholdheath Farm, Mousehold Cottage and Mousehold Farm, are an indicator of the proximity of the heath to Salhouse at that time.
Kett's Rebellion began on 12 July 1549, during a period that became known as the 'commotion time'.Rawcliffe and Wilson (eds.), Medieval Norwich, p. 285. Led by Robert Kett (a local landowner and tanner) and his brother, it grew from a protest about enclosures into a full-scale insurgency. It culminated in the capture of the city of Norwich (then the largest English city outside London) and the surrounding countryside, with the rebels holding control of the city for over a month, basing themselves at a camp on Mousehold Heath and establishing other camps around Norfolk. After unsuccessfully petitioning the authorities for fairer treatment, they were able to defeat an attempt to oust them by the Marquis of Northampton, but a much larger government army, led by John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, succeeded in regaining control of Norwich and forcing them to abandon their camp. Six weeks after the start of the uprising, the rebellion was crushed by Warwick's forces in a decisive engagement, with perhaps three thousand insurgents being killed. There is some uncertainty about the exact site of the battle, said to have occurred at 'Dussindale'.
On a Holy Monday in October 1767, around 10,000 people reportedly attended a boxing contest on Mousehold Heath between waterman Robert George and worsted weaver and "noted bruiser" John Todd.
Enclosure
Until the start of the 19th century, Mousehold Heath still stretched to Woodbastwick, as can be seen on Faden's 1797 map of Norfolk. A wide-open space crossed over with numerous paths and lanes, the heath dominated the countryside east of Norwich, and was entirely accessible to the local population. Self-interested landowners and city officials considered such an extensive area of uncultivated land as a prime target for development. As early as 1783 it was suggested that part of the heath near the city be made into a burial ground (an idea that was abandoned) and in 1792 there was a proposal to transform a large part of the heath into "pleasurable grounds". Those landowners whose large country houses were located around the borders of the heath pressed for the area to become enclosed. Rackheath's common land was the first to be lost to enclosure in 1799, when Rackheath Park was enlarged.
The entire heath was turned over to arable land and pasture by Parliamentary Enclosure Acts between 1799 and 1810, a process that produced long straight roads and new farms. By 1800, Mousehold Heath had been reduced to some , a piece of land situated immediately above the hamlet of Pockthorpe. There was little sympathy shown for the practical needs of the local population, many of whom became impoverished as they were increasingly denied access to the land. Parks surrounding large houses, such as at Sprowston, Rackheath, Thorpe St Andrew and Little Plumstead, became enlarged by the acquisition of land, and new views were created for their owners by the removal of existing woodland and the planting of new belts of trees.
1810–1914
Mousehold Heath was painted by a number of artists from the Norwich School of painters, including John Crome and John Sell Cotman,Paintings and etchings of the heath produced by members of the Norwich School are held by many different museums, including the British Museum. as well as other painters such as John Constable. They found heathland landscapes intriguing and depicted them on a regular basis, despite the views of agriculturalists, who considered such landscapes to be valueless wasteland. The Norwich School's depictions of Mousehold Heath lack human activity, animals or growing crops. The remoteness of Norfolk meant that few artists from outside the county could attempt to represent the heath. Many artists at the time preferred to depict what was considered to be the ideal form of landscape: lush, harmonious farming countryside containing pictorial devices such as woodland, which contrasted directly with the remote, barren environment of a heath such as Mousehold. The Norwich School witnessed the destruction of the heath following its enclosure, and their paintings of the heath would have brought back memories of a lost landscape.
In his autobiographical work Lavengro, George Borrow recorded his meetings with gypsies on the heath. The Norwich-born novelist and one-time Lord Mayor R. H. Mottram also valued the open space of Mousehold Heath. He once described it as "the property of those who have the privilege of Norwich birth".
Public horse racing near Norwich first took place in 1838 and within a few years meetings were being held on a racecourse on Mousehold Heath.Rawcliffe, Carole, Norwich Since 1550, p. 442. In July 1845, a boxing prize fight was held between one Jim Woods and Ben "Norfolk Slasher" Clarke on the Heath, for £5 a side.