As you walk eastwards towards the Lower Close Green, you will pass a range of houses on the left which stand on the former site of the monastic granary. Parts of that earlier building have been incorporated into the later houses. This is also true of the properties along the far eastern side of the green, which occupy the location of the monastic brewhouse and bakehouse.
From the northeast corner runs Hook’s Walk, containing a number of attractive houses and leading out to Bishopgate.
In the southeast corner we find Ferry Lane, formerly a canal, which leads down to the picturesque Pull’s Ferry – the former water gate to the Close. The Caen stone, from which most of the cathedral was constructed, was transported along this canal.
Heading back towards the east end of the Cathedral, we find the grave of Nurse Edith Cavell, in the space formed between St. Luke’s and St Saviour’s Chapels. Edith Cavell, the daughter of the Vicar of Swardeston, was born in 1865 and shot at Tir National near Brussels on 12 October 1915 for allegedly assisting escaped prisoners of war. Her courage has made her justly famous, yet she is equally to be remembered for her pioneering nursing reforms.
During this brief walk around the Close, the visitor will encounter the vibrant and dynamic community that lives and works within it.
With its gates flung wide open, Norwich Cathedral should no longer be seen, in the words of former Dean Alan Webster, to exist within a ‘Close’ but within an ‘Open’ – extending the warmest of welcomes and engaging with the thousands of pilgrims and visitors who venture to it.