On this day the Assembly House in Theatre Street was opened by the Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk, Sir Edmund Bacon. Just after the Second World War. Henry Jesse Sexton, OBE, a leading Norwich shoe manufacturer, bought both the Assembly House and the Noverre Rooms. He spent £70,000 on the restorations and furnishings of the beautiful Georgian building, which was described by the architect, Stephen Rowland Pierce, as being riddled with 'decay, dry rot, beetles, neglect and Blitz’. Henry Sexton formed the H.J. Sexton Norwich Arts Trust and after considerable restoration work was completed, presented the Assembly House to the city. Mr Sexton said this was his way of 'putting something back’ into the city in which he had prospered. ‘As originally built it was reserved for the pleasure and entertainment of the privileged few’, he said, 'but it is my wish that in its revival it should be dedicated to the use and enjoyment if the whole community’.
Next time you have tea and cake in the Assembly Rooms think of Henry Sexton who restored this lovely building to its former glory!
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