Boleyn Home in Norwich

Hever Castle

When you hear the words, ‘Boleyn family home’ it’s difficult not to immediately picture Hever Castle, a fairytale castle in the beautiful Kent countryside that has long been thought of as Anne Boleyn’s birthplace.

The home is, as Eric Ives puts it, ‘a romantic shrine to Anne and her love affair with Henry VIII. Unfortunately, for romance and tradition, Anne was in fact born in Norfolk, almost certainly at the Boleyn home at Blickling, fifteen miles north of Norwich.’ (pg. 3)

Blickling Hall, Norfolk (built on the site of the Boleyn home)

Ives’ source? Mathew Parker, Anne Boleyn’s private chaplain born in Norfolk, who later became archbishop of Canterbury and described himself as her ‘poor countryman’. Sir Henry Spelman, a Norfolk antiquarian writing during the reign of Elizabeth I, echoed this view:

‘To Blickling was decreed the honour of Anne Boleyn’s birth.’ (Weir, pg. 19)

The Boleyns were a Norfolk family long before they moved to Hever Castle in Kent and after the annihilation of the noble Boleyn family in 1536, the gentry family survived at Blickling until the 1560s and the death of Sir James Boleyn.

The focus of this post is not to debate Anne’s birthplace or whether the Boleyns abandoned Blickling for Hever. Instead, it is to bring to your attention another Boleyn property situated by the River Wensum on King Street, Norwich.

Elizabeth Griffiths describes the Boleyn house as lying adjacent to the building now known as Dragon Hall in an area where the Pastons and the Heydons once maintained homes alongside the Boleyns.

The staff at Dragon Hall very kindly informed me that Sir William Boleyn owned part or all of what is now 125-127 King Street. Records show that William paid ‘landgable’, a type of council tax for the property and Blomefield, the Norfolk historian, called it ‘the house of Sir William Boleyn’.

Although referred to as a ‘house’, there is some doubt as to whether the building was ever used as a home. Norfolk Archaeology Report, number 500 (2000), dates the building as ‘probably late 15^th century’ and ‘suggests that it was not a private dwelling house’ and instead may have been an ‘inn’ with a corridor running along the King Street side and rooms off it.

I was delighted to find some old photos of the building taken by George Plunkett who took photos of old Norwich between 1931-2006.  I have reproduced two photographs here with kind permission of his son, Jonathan Plunkett.

The first picture was taken in 1936 and Mr Plunkett provided the following information:

‘Adjacent, and to the south of the renowned Dragon Hall, is another building of note, that comprising Nos 125-129. When photographed in 1936 its half-timbered upper storey had for long been hidden under plaster, but some ten years later the plaster was removed to reveal its sturdy construction of timber and brick. After a few more years its owners chose to rip out the entire ground floor, replacing the modest 19c shop fronts with a continuous range of plate glass and leaving the medieval first floor suspended as it were mid-air.’

King Street, Norwich 125 to 129 © George Plunkett

The second photograph was taken in 1946 when the plaster had been removed.

King Street Norwich, 125 to 129 © George Plunkett

I am visiting Norfolk next month and hope to see the building for myself even though I have been told that it is in a sad state today, having been empty for many years.