NHER 33475 (Designed Landscape record) - Grammar School Grounds

THE FORMER ART COLLEGE PREVIOUSLY RECORDED UNDER THIS NUMBER IS NOW RECORDER UNDER NHER 51586.

Grammar School Grounds.
(S1) lists as grade two star (regional importance).
Important as preserving the line of a former ropewalk converted to park after 1855 when construction of Nelson Road made it unusable. Grammar School erected at east end 1872. Planted in 1886 to 1887 at same time as St Georges Park (NHER 33473). School of Art (NHER 51582) built in centre in 1912 despite protests at loss of trees. Many trees lost in 1987; Grammar School replaced by housing in late 20th century, Art School derelict. Now mostly grass with new tree planting and serpentine walks.
See (S1) for details.
E. Rose (NLA), 27 February 1998.

August 2005. Norfolk NMP.
The central grid reference of the site has been corrected from TG 5285 0738 to TG 5286 0737.

A World War Two air raid shelter is visible as an earthwork within the former rope walk, described above, on aerial photographs (S2), centred at TG 5290 0737. It seems to have lain within what had become a municipal park or garden by this date (S3). The size of the shelter and its location within a public open space suggest that it was a communal public shelter; its proximity to Great Yarmouth’s Civil Defence Report Centre, located at the Art School (S4), may be coincidence. The Grammar School itself was provided with its own shelters (NHER 27539).

The shelter is partially obscured by trees and shadow on the consulted aerial photographs but it appears to have consisted of a roughly rectilinear earthwork mound, which presumably covered a more solid, semi sunken substructure. Entrances are visible on its east and west sides. Three small structures visible on the roof of the shelter probably mark the location of ventilation shafts. More recent aerial photographs indicate that since the end of the war the shelter has been levelled.
S. Tremlett (NMP), 2 August 2005.