🏠 Norwich - My Home from Home!

In September 2016 I started my first year of University in Norwich, studying at the University of East Anglia. Having been born in Salisbury, living there for my whole life, I was very used to the daily life of a small city so Norwich quickly grew on me and now I love the place!

As such, I thought I'd do a little feature on the City of Norwich!

I hope you enjoy the read...

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Norwich is a city made up of 141,800 people (an estimated figure in mid-2016) - ranking as the 144th largest settlement by population in the UK - and it lies on the picturesque River Wensum (as can be seen in the picture above!).

Historically, Norwich has always been associated with Art, Literature & Publishing and that continues to the present day; back in 2012, Norwich was designated England's first UNESCO City of Literature (a major award in the Literature world). Norwich is believed to have housed the very first library in England and published the first newspaper outside of London in 1701.

In 1963, on a quarry just west of the city (still in Norwich's 'Urban Area'), the University of East Anglia (UEA) was established - originally being compiled of four faculties and 26 schools of study, UEA has gone through a monumental rise in the UK's University rankings in the recent decade, now being ranked 12th by the Complete University Guide and 13th by the Times. For a University that's barely even 60 years old, that is remarkable!

UEA is renowned for its modern 'Brutalistic' architecture, very much being a concrete jungle sitting amongst a sea of greenery, as can be seen below...

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The Ziggurats;

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A flyby of campus;

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There's much more to Norwich than just having a world-class University though...

Norwich consistently is featured as the Most Desirable Place to Live in England in various awards, and has been voted as the 'Best Place to Grow Up' and the 'Best Place to Live & Work' in 2017 - and having lived here for a year and a half, I can see why!

I was scrolling through Norwich's Wikipedia page, and I saw a quotation from Thomas Fuller that I thought portrayed the city perfectly;

"Either a city in an orchard or an orchard in a city, so equally are houses and trees blended in it, so that the pleasure of the country and the populousness of the city meet here together. Yet in this mixture, the inhabitants participate nothing of the rusticalness of the one, but altogether the urbanity and civility of the other."

If you live in the UK, I thoroughly recommend visiting. It's situated somewhat 'out-of-the-way' and that's part of the reason I don't think it gets the recognition that it deserves. Norwich is a very popular destination for City Breaks, with a variety of different attractions.

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If you liked this article, I'll be doing another on my hometown of Salisbury very soon!

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