Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich

Norwich was then an important town; in the Middle Ages it ranked as the second city in the kingdom. Its prosperity was chiefly due to its large trade in wool. It is a moot point whether the town was ever a settlement of the Romans, no traces of such occupation having ever been discovered. The castle mound, no doubt, formed some part of the earthworks of an earlier stronghold. The word Norwich is probably of Norse origin, meaning the north village or the village on the North Creek ("wic"--i.e. a creek). The city stood on a tidal bay in 1004, in which year the Danes under Sweyn completely devastated and ruined the town in revenge for the massacre of their countrymen by Aethelred the Unready two years before.