Sights in Eastern England
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Forum
The all-glass Forum is the most impressive building to hit Norwich's skyline in decades, and is home to Norfolk's main library, the regional BBC and the tourist office.
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Steep Hill
The whole length of Steep Hill is a delight to explore (at least until the climb back up), crowded with black-and-white Tudor beauties and curious antiquarian bookshops.
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Strangers' Hall
A maze of atmospheric rooms furnished in different medieval styles is on view in this early-14th-century townhouse. You can see the Great Hall set for a banquet, examine historic toys or try your hand making a bed Tudor style. Outside is a pretty 17th-century knot garden. Last visitors admitted at 3.30pm.
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St Margaret's House
An important historical landmark to tick off is the 15th-century St Margaret's House, once the warehouse or 'steelyard' of the Hanseatic League (the Northern European merchants' group).
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Town House Museum
Petite museum dealing with the history of the town from the Middle Ages up to the 1950s. Next door is the magnificent flint-and-brick town hall, which dates from 1421.
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Museum of Lincolnshire Life
In an old Victorian barracks, displays at this charming community museum span everything from Victorian farm implements to the tin-can tank built in Lincoln for WWI. Around the corner from the museum is the cute little Ellis Mill, the windmill that ground the town's flour in the 18th century.
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Bishop's Palace
Historic sites cluster about the cathedral's toes. Within spitting distance of the tower are both the former Bishop's Palace, now used as a nursing home, and King's School, which keeps the cathedral supplied with fresh-faced choristers.
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King's School
Historic sites cluster about the cathedral's toes. Within spitting distance of the tower are both the former Bishop's Palace, now used as a nursing home, and King's School, which keeps the cathedral supplied with fresh-faced choristers.
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Royal Norfolk Regimental Museum
A claustrophobic tunnel from Norwich castle emerges into a reconstructed WWI trench at the Royal Norfolk Regimental Museum, which details the history of the local regiment since 1830. It has another less dramatic entrance from the road.
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The Stained Glass Museum
Near the entrance of Ely Cathedral there's a small but gleaming stained-glass museum that lets you get eye to eye with saints, up misshapen monsters and all manner of domestic barbarity through vivid glasswork from the 14th century onwards.
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abbey
Now a picturesque ruin residing in beautiful gardens behind the cathedral, the once all-powerful abbey still impresses despite the townspeople having made off with much of the stone and St Edmund's grave and bones having disappeared long ago.
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Greene King Brewery
Churning out some of England's favourite booze since Victorian times, this famous brewery runs popular daily tours, after which you can appreciate what all the fuss is about in its brewery bar. Even if you don’t make the tour, you can check out the scale model of the brewery at the on-site museum, and learn about the history of beer.
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St George's Guildhall
A short hop north from Purfleet Quay is the biggest 15th-century guildhall in England. St George's Guildhall has been variously incarnated as a warehouse, courthouse and armoury (during the Civil War), and now contains art galleries, a theatre and eateries.
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True's Yard Museum
North of the Tudor Rose Hotel, on the corner of St Ann's St, is True's Yard, where the two remaining cottages of the 19th-century fishing community that used to be here have been restored and now house a museum detailing the life of a shellfish fisherman around 1850.
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Old Gaol House
Explore the old cells and hear grisly tales of smugglers, witches and highwaymen in the town's old jail. Also here is the Regalia Room, which houses the town civic treasures, including the 650-year-old King John Cup, exquisitely decorated with scenes of hunting and hawking.
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St John's College
Alma mater of six prime ministers, three saints and Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), St John's is one of the city's most photogenic colleges, and is also the second-biggest after Trinity. Founded in 1511 by Henry VII’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, it sprawls along both banks of the river, joined by the Bridge of Sighs, a masterpiece of stone tracery and a focus for student pranks. Over the bridge is the 19th-century New Court, an extravagant neo-Gothic creation, and out to the left are stunning views of the Backs. Parts of the college are much older and the chapel, though smaller than King’s, is one of Cambridge’s hidden gems.
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Bridewell Museum
The 14th-century Bridewell, or 'prison for women, beggars and tramps', housed in a former merchant's house, has reopened after a grand facelift in July 2012. The museum focuses on key points in the city's history, such as its prominence as England's second city in the Middle Ages and its 19th-century industrial heritage. The displays include some wonderfully eccentric objects, such as the snake-proof boot, and the interactive displays in the Pharmacy are proving a hit with younger visitors.
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St Mary's
One of biggest parish churches in country, St Mary's contains the tomb of Mary Tudor (Henry VIII's sister and a one-time queen of France). Built around 1430, it also has a host of somewhat vampirish angels swooping from its roof, and a bell is still rung to mark curfew, as it was in the Middle Ages.
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Norwich Castle
Perched on a hilltop overlooking central Norwich, this massive Norman castle keep is a sturdy example of 12th-century aristocratic living. The castle is one of the best-preserved examples of Anglo-Norman military architecture in the country, despite a gigantic shopping centre grafted to one side.
A gaol for five centuries, it's now home to an art gallery and superb interactive museum, approached across a bridge on which hangings were staged throughout Norwich’s existence. The museum crams in a wealth of history, including lively exhibits on Boudicca and the Iceni, the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, natural history displays and even an Egyptian gallery. Every room is enlivened…
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Great White Horse Hotel
The Great White Horse Hotel first opened in 1518 as simply 'The Tavern'. It appears in Dickens' Pickwick Papers as the 'overgrown tavern'. Rumour has it that ghosts frequent the rooms. DJs spin their decks Friday and Saturday nights, and draught beer and real ale are readily downed; breakfast and lunch are also on offer.
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Dragon Hall
A remarkable medieval building, this magnificent trading hall dates from 1430 and is the only building of its kind to have belonged to one man – Robert Toppes – rather than a guild, suggesting that he was a successful 15th-century entrepreneur. The 1st-floor great hall has a stunning crown-post roof with a carved dragon figure which gave the building its name, and the displays in the cellars, together with the audioguide, introduce you to the building’s various incarnations. Guided tours are available on Tuesdays at 2pm.
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Fitzwilliam Museum
Fondly dubbed 'the Fitz' by locals, this colossal neoclassical pile was one of the first public art museums in Britain, built to house the fabulous treasures that the seventh Viscount Fitzwilliam had bequeathed to his old university. An unabashedly over-the-top building, it sets out to mirror its contents in an ostentatious jumble of styles that mixes mosaic with marble, Greek with Egyptian and more. It was begun by George Basevi in 1837, but he did not live to see its completion: while working on Ely Cathedral he stepped back to admire his handiwork, slipped and fell to his death.
The lower galleries are filled with priceless treasures spanning the ancient world; look out…
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Christchurch Mansion, Art Gallery and Park
Set in a lovely rolling park, this multigabled 16th-century Tudor mansion is filled with period furniture, a King Arthur tapestry and paintings by the likes of Constable and Gainsborough. Outside, look for the statue of a delightfully cantankerous granny - immediately recognisable to Britons as being the creation of local comic strip artist Carl Giles.
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Norfolk Broads
The county's most beautiful attraction, the peaceful Broads are a mesh of navigable slow-moving rivers, freshwater lakes, wild water meadows, fens, bogs and saltwater marshes, flourishing nature reserves and bird sanctuaries. Together they form 201km (125mi) of lock-free waterways. A boat is best to spy on its birds, butterflies and water-loving wildlife.
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Purfleet Quay
Near the market square is Purfleet Quay, in its heyday the principal harbour. The odd boxy building with the lantern tower is the 17th-century Custom House, which houses the tourist office. Outside is a statue of Captain George Vancouver (1757-98), a local boy who charted 5000 miles of the northwest coast of the Americas; his family worked in the Custom House.
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