Tobie Norris
Number 12 St Paul’s Street became the Tobie Norris Pub in December 2006 following a thorough and highly sensitive restoration of the property by its new owner, Michael Thurlby. It is named after Tobias Norris (1586-1626) who set up a bell foundry in the grounds in 1617. He, his son Thomas and his grandson, another Tobias, between them cast hundreds of bells on this site. Thomas was also an alderman of the town but resigned from the bench in 1678 as he objected to going out with the local guard to ensure that no one entered Stamford during the night while the plague was raging in Peterborough and the surrounding area. His son Tobias embarked on an extensive remodelling of the timber-framed property, both internally and externally, in the 1660’s including a new ashlar front with two gables .
The lozenge panel on the east gable is inscribed “TNS 1663”, referring to Tobie and his wife, Suzannah Norris. It is known that 106 bells were cast at the foundry during Tobie’s tenure but he ran into financial difficulties, had a series of mortgages against the property and was obliged to sell it in 1689 to Robert Smith, a master at the nearby boys’ school.
Owners of the property over the next two centuries included Michael Baguely, a surgeon, Edward Owen, a wealthy yeoman farmer, William Broughton, a “writing master”, Thomas Mills, a druggist, Henry Redmill, a “cow keeper” and, from 1952 to 2006, the Royal Air Forces Association.
The building is described in the Royal Commission Survey of Stamford as a “Main range and cross wing house, two storeys throughout” dating from the late fifteenth century. As you enter the pub through the front door the old medieval hall is on the left and the cross wing with its screens passage on the right. The hall, now lined with seventeenth century panelling, was most probably open originally but it was ceiled by 1626 as the probate inventory of the older Tobie Norris refers to “a chamber over the hall”. The rooms are listed thus: “Hall, parlour, kitchen, buttery with five chambers above.” The two storey wing behind the hall was added in around 1600 but there is also evidence of an earlier building on the site, the blind arch in the west wall being dated to the late thirteenth century.
The Tobie Norris is a fine example of a late medieval house in which all the essential features of a dwelling of that period can still be seen together with the seventeenth century alterations which are also to be found in several other houses in Stamford. The beer is pretty good too!
