COCK PUBLIC HOUSE, THE

Riverside Jazz Club ??-Jan67

Folk Studio 03/09/67-?? (first Tagalong folk night on new premises - Alex Atterson- previously at Black Horse)

Finding the fun formula EENH&N16/01/67 (Riverside Jazz Club Stops)

Jazz Again at Studio Four EENH&N04/09/67 (Sessions resume at Studio 4)

The Cock Public House had two entrances hence the double address. The building had been a city centre watering hole since the mid 1700s. In 1957 the old agricultural Hall next to the public house was taken over by Anglia Television and the venue soon became known in jest as Studio Four referring to the fact that ITV had no main studio number four; it was instead code for going to the pub.

Many TV celebrities frequented the bar which at first hosted the Riverside Jazz Club which had moved from Thorpe Gardens and was run by Tony Cooper, Billy White and Derek Doubleday. The venue came into its own during the mid sixties through the efforts of promoter and folk singer the late Alex Atterson, who formed and ran the Norwich Folk Club from pub and later went on to inaugurate the Norwich Folk Festival at the UEA while doing so. Local poet and author Colin Cross also recalls the venue. ”The bar was run by a more than capable lady called Nellie Willis. We held our weekly Arts Lab mixed media nights there during ‘68/69. Our resident band was a local outfit called Earthworks.”

Although the venue closed to the public in 1983 it was taken on as a social club by Anglia Television and used right up to early noughties. Today both sides of the venue are offices but on the Crown Road side you can still see the cockerel carved into the stone above the door.

SCENES: ‘60s Jazz, Folk

Picture courtesy of Jonathan Plunkett by George Plunkett