The Bridewell Project curators have continued their research this week, discovering even more fantastic items.
Hannah Maddox, Project Curator, has spent time looking at our wealth of paper based collections and has discovered a booklet produced by Curls department store in 1956.
The booklet, designed to promote the opening of the shiny new store, explores the firm’s history and describes the store’s destruction by enemy bombing in 1942.
Amongst many wonderful period illustrations of the different departments, it explains the ethos behind the new store.
‘All goods are displayed on the principle that customers should be encouraged to see and handle them. All departments are easily accessible. Escalators – the first in East Anglia – are there to carry customers between the ground floor and the first and second floors. A capacious lift takes prams or invalid chairs to all floors.’
This got us thinking that this vision of a newly refurbished building and its new accessible services is very similar to our own!
It has also prompted further thought. For months now we have been trying to put our finger on what makes Norwich so unique. So I was thrilled to find an answer to this question hidden in the pages of this little book.
It reads, ‘Norwich is a city with personality, a personality created by a peculiar mix of ancient and modern.’
The answer, after all this pondering, was hiding in our filing cabinets….
thebridewell
jennynmas
hannahnmas
