The suburbanisation of Catton

Catton has long been described as a suburb. Indeed, as early as the twelfth century the Benedictine monks of Norwich Cathedral gave the parish a “link” with the nearby city. More recently, in 1829 the “Norfolk Tour” referred to it as “one of the many delightful suburban villages in this county…(it) is decorated with many picturesque mansions, ornamented with plantations and pleasure grounds, some of which are of no small extent” (1). Almost fifty years later similarly idyllic comments were still being written, as noted in the introduction. Such images fitted neatly into the Romantics view of the world in which “the life of rural labour (was) no doubt the happiest life…for the bulk of humanity,” as S. J. Low noted (2) and the middle classes lived in their “country residences” and “Gothic villas.” But such descriptions offer only an emotional and superficial impression of the parish. One can imagine the “great taste and…stately comfort” of the place as W.Rye termed it (3), but little more.

In examining the suburbanisation of nineteenth century Catton it is first necessary to define “suburbanisation” and decide how it is to be quantified. Great precision is difficult; perhaps the best short definition of a suburb is “a decentralised part of a city which is inseparably linked by certain economic and social ties” (4). Catton undoubtedly meets these requirements throughout the period in question. Its standard of living and range of services were influenced by Norwich and many of the wealthier members of the community had business interests and relatives in the city. The entry for Catton in Whites 1864 directory (see Appendix Eleven) makes the business links clear, marking as it does the names of local residents with places of business in Norwich. In all seven are named: two solicitors, a yarn spinner, a draper, a grocer, a wine merchant and a dyer. Catton then was a suburb, but more precision is needed if change over the third-quarter of the nineteenth century is to be measured.

As early as the 1840’s, Catton had the highest population density of any parish in the hundred of Taverham, so the slow rate of population growth later in the century is somewhat deceptive. That it rose at all is largely attributable to the nearness of Norwich and the locally high standard of living attracting migrants from declining rural areas. To expect a more rapid expansion of population would be unreasonable since Catton was somewhat disadvantaged in one of the crucial elements of all suburban development – transport. Although the local turnpikes were of good quality, Catton did not have a railway station in its vicinity and no frequent omnibus service in the nineteenth century. D.C.Thorns, in his book “Suburbia,” explains the importance of regular omnibus services thus: “ the important development in the transport system of cities outside London which seems to have stimulated suburban growth more than any other was the horse omnibus rather than the railways…The changes…in the transport system of the nineteenth century encouraged the working class to move out of the congested centre of the cities, and these changes also encouraged the middle class to move still further out from the existing suburbs into which the working class were moving” (5). Influenced greatly by transport, suburban development had, by the ‘seventies, reached New Catton. This area had been developing rapidly since the 1840’s, with middle class housing being built along the southern Catton border (see Map 6). Much of this construction was “ribbon development” along existing main roads out of the city.

New Catton was well served with omnibuses – several running each day. In Catton only middle- and upper class people with private carriages had easy access to Norwich. The village was still essentially what D.C.Thorns describes as “an exclusive residential area for the higher income groups of the population” (6) with an additional, traditional, village element. In New Catton easier transport was reducing the cost of travelling and allowing a new mass suburb to emerge north of the extremely poor “ward over the water.” This latter area was so poor that it was, in 1849, separated from the other three Norwich wards for poor relief purposes (7).

Suburbs have been divided by researchers such as Waugh (1968) and Carr (1970) into five groups or stages. These are: 1) pre-suburban, 2) incipient suburb, 3) developing suburb, 4) mature suburb and 5) redeveloping suburb. Throughout the period 1851-71 Catton was best placed in the first of these categories, the earliest identifiable form of suburbanisation. This level of development was not simply an agricultural and local craft-based society, but was influenced by its urban neighbour in two important ways. Firstly, the urban market demanded foodstuffs such as market gardening produce and milk and, secondly, there was “ a growth in the numbers of country houses and villas occupied, not by the old country gentry and aristocracy, but by the nouveaux-riches of merchants, lawyers, bankers and others whose wealth (was) essentially of an urban origin” (8). Catton measures up to this description perfectly. Several “nouveaux riches” with places of business in Norwich were living in the parish as we have seen and market gardening was taking place. The Lindsey family had been market gardening since the Napoleonic War and by the ‘eighties this was taking place partly under glass (see the greenhouses marked on Map 6). At the same time, New Catton was becoming an “incipient suburb.”

When did Catton cease to be a fundamentally eighteenth century pre-suburb and progress towards its modern state? A comparison between Maps 1 and Map 6 reveals the small amount of construction that took place between 1843 and 1887, giving an impression of the continuing spaciousness contemporaries so admired. However, in the early ‘eighties extreme some terraced houses were constructed in the extreme south-west of the parish which seem to have qualified Catton  as an incipient suburb. They marked “an increase in the numbers of dwellers of city origin and an associated lowering of their overall social status, as compared with the pre-suburban phase” (10) from which daily commuting was perfectly practical. It would of course be foolish to suggest that these few terraces of houses profoundly affected the lives of the majority of Catton’s residents, but they did mark the beginning of the end of traditional Catton.

The eighteen-fifties and ‘sixties were crucial decades in the development of Catton. The parish population began to increase rapidly (see Figure 4). Social change may have been gradual, but it was nevertheless very real. The socially paternalistic “closed” estate village of the early and mid-nineteenth century was being influenced by the “magnetic” effect of Norwich and by wider changes in English society. Norwich was both pushing outwards middle class people and attracting working people, some of whom passed through Catton on their journey into the city. The suburban spread had created New Catton in the early nineteenth century and was touching Catton by the ‘80’s.

By the beginning of the present century Catton’s population was more than double its 1851 level. Since the Second World War a densely populated residential suburb has grown up, but enough remains to allow one to appreciate what Victorians found so attractive about the parish. As the Catton Hall sale description put it in 1835, “Catton has long been admired as a village remarkable for its good order and sociability”(11).

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