Skip to content

Norwich celebrates 70 years of broadcasting

Paul HayesBBC Radio Norfolk
News imageBBC A black-and-white photo of a large, high-ceilinged room. At the back is a bay window with flower-pattered curtains closed across it. There are several chairs and a sofa around the edges of the room decorated with a similar floral pattern. In the centre of the room is a small table at which is sitting a young dark-haired woman in a long, sleeveless dress. There is a microphone mounted on the table in front of her, and she is holding and looking down at some papers, presumably a radio script.BBC
The BBC's original radio studio at St Catherine's Close - an unidentified woman pictured in the autumn of 1956

As the BBC spread across the UK in the 1920s and 30s, one part of the country remained conspicuously absent from its map – East Anglia.

Although the BBC transmitted national services to the region, they had no studio there until September 1956. That month, they opened a radio operation in a Georgian mansion in Norwich.

St Catherine's Close was the main base of BBC East until 2003, when services moved to Norwich's new Forum development.

On a Secret Norfolk episode, current BBC Look East presenter Susie Fowler-Watt said the old building had been a "beautiful place" that had "felt special" to work in.

News imageA black-and-white image of a large Georgian manor house, built in brick, viewed from the right of the building as seen from the front, from slightly down the road so the front-left of the building is angled away. 1950s cars are visible passing or parked on the road outside. In the centre of the ground floor is white columned portico over the front entrance, with two large windows on either side, and an annex further along on the left-hand side of the building. There is a row of five windows along the first floor, and the tiled roof has a long row of chimneys at the right-hand end, with the top of a similar row visible at the left-hand side of the building.
The 18th Century mansion at St Catherine's Close in Norwich city centre, seen here in 1959, was the BBC's East of England headquarters from 1956 until 2003

TV and radio historian Paul Kerensa runs the British Broadcasting Century podcast, telling the story of the BBC's early years.

He says one of the reasons the BBC overlooked the East of England for so long is because they initially concentrated on opening studios in major population centres.

"If you didn't have a big city near you, you'd need a more powerful radio set to pick up many of the programmes – and a lot of patience till your area was covered."

The announcement in 1954 that the BBC was coming to Norwich made front page news in the local papers, with the studios eventually opening on 10 September 1956.

News imageA section from an architectural floor plan showing proposals for the conversion of a floor of a large Georgian house for broadcasting purposes. It is printed in black against faded white paper, now off-white, with some pencil-marked amendments. Marked-up on the plan are various adjustments to be made, such as doorways and windows to be either added or bricked-up, for rooms marked as ‘Studio’, ‘Control Room’, ‘Narrators Studio & Waiting Room’ and ‘General Office’.
A detail from one of the BBC's plans for the conversion of St Catherine's Close showing the ground floor

St Catherine's Close was reported at the time to have been one of the oldest buildings ever converted for broadcasting.

The BBC fitted many of the rooms with reproduction 18th Century furniture, and even some with genuine antiques.

There was a garden, a greenhouse, and a groundskeeper's cottage. Most of these gradually disappeared through the building's time as a BBC office, but the entrance hall's curved staircase and chandelier remained throughout.

News imageA black-and-white image of an elegant entrance hallway with a curved staircase going up to the right, and a chandelier hanging down into the stairwell. At the far end, a set of French windows open on to a garden. To the left is a cubicle window with "RECEPTION" written on a sign on the counter. A woman in a calf-length chequered skirt and dark top is halfway up the staircase, with her back to the camera.
The entrance hall and reception area of the BBC studios, pictured in 1959

Initially, staff produced radio programmes and news bulletins for the local frequency of the BBC Home Service – what is now BBC Radio 4.

The editorial area covered was roughly Norfolk, Suffolk, most of Cambridgeshire, and northern Essex.

BBC Local Radio did not launch until 1967, in Leicester, and there were no stations in the East of England until BBC Radio Norfolk opened in 1980.

Paul Kerensa says the threat of new commercial regional television services is likely to have been one of the reasons why the BBC finally decided to open a regional HQ.

"Technical advancements helped regional growth, and the threat of ITV accelerated the BBC's plans," he said.

News imageA black-and-white photo of a radio studio control room from the 1960s, with three people visible from behind sitting at the control desk, which has various dials, buttons and switches. On the left-hand-side is a dark-haired woman in her 20s or 30s looking down at a stopwatch, wearing a dark sleeveless top and a white skirt. In the middle is a balding man with dark hair, perhaps in his thirties, wearing a dark shirt with a large chequered pattern. He is reaching forward to press a button on the control panel with the forefinger of his right hand. To the right is a slightly younger-looking dark-haired man in a grey suit, sitting slightly back from the desk holding a piece of paper. Through the window to the studio is visible a dark-haired man in his thirties, sitting at a desk, wearing headphones with a microphone in front of him, facing towards the production area. On the right of frame a large analogue clockface with a row of three lights with bulbs of differing tints above it reads a quarter past eight. Daylight is visible through a window in the studio, so it is clearly 8.15am.
Presenter Ralph Tuck, seen through the glass, and his production team during an episode of his radio programme Wednesday Morning, broadcast in June 1963

In 1959, a small television studio was hurriedly added to St Catherine's Close so the BBC could beat the new ITV company Anglia Television to air with a regional TV news service.

At first, this was a 10-minute bulletin. The very first one on 5 October 1959 was given a special introduction live in the studio by Hugh Carleton Greene, who was due to become the next director-general of the BBC.

Read by local teacher and part-time broadcaster Geoffrey Harvey, that first bulletin included:

  • film of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan campaigning in Norfolk and Suffolk ahead of the impending general election
  • a report on Norwich shoe manufacturers exhibiting at London Shoe Week
  • footage of a new trawler at Lowestoft and a motorcycle event attended by 25,000 people at Shrubland Park near Ipswich
  • brief stories on fires in Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, a road accident in Ipswich, and a planning dispute in Norwich
  • football updates with team news on Norwich City and Ipswich Town

In 1962, the TV news from St Catherine's Close became a longer news magazine programme.

In 1964, this programme was renamed Look East. It is still broadcast from Norwich, now from a studio at The Forum.

News imageA black-and-white image of a small 1950s television studio. At the rear is a backdrop with a woodgrain-style pattern. In the centre of the image the presenter, a man in his 30s with dark hair and wearing a suit and tie with a white shirt, sits at an office-type desk and consults with two members of the production team. One is standing to the right of the presenter; this is a man in his 30s with fair hair, in a light top and dark trousers, holding up his right hand to make some point. To the left of the presenter as seen from the camera is another man who also seems to be in his thirties, with dark curly hair, wearing a white shirt, dark trousers and a dark tie, leaning on the desk looking at the presenter. To the right of frame a cameraman with short dark hair wearing a headset looks through the viewfinder of a television camera pointing at the presenter.
Newsreader Geoffrey Harvey (seated) and members of the production team during a practice run ahead of the first ever East Anglian TV news bulletin in October 1959

Fowler-Watt joined the staff at St Catherine's Close in the late 1990s. She said it "felt almost like we were working in [someone's] home".

She said the BBC had "outgrown" it by the time they left in 2003, but it was emotional when she and co-presenter Stewart White closed the doors on the building at the end of the final Look East to be transmitted from there.

"There was a real sense of loss in the same way of moving from a beloved family house. There's a history and so many memories tied up in that building."

Do you have a story suggestion for Norfolk? Contact us below.

Follow Norfolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.

More on this story