Norwich is a city and county town in Norfolk, England, located 100 miles north-east of London in East Anglia. In 60 AD, the Romans established a settlement at Venta Icenorum (at Caistor St. Edmund, near Norwich), named for the Iceni, whose capital had located on the site before Boudicca's failed uprising. The Roman settlement fell into disuse in 450 AD, and the Anglo-Saxons settled in the area from the 5th to 7th centuries and founded the town of Northwic. It became a center of trade and commerce in East Anglia, and, in 1004, it was raided and burned by the Viking king Sweyn Forkbeard. During the Viking Age, it was home to a large Scandinavian community for 50 years starting in the late 9th century and ending with the West Saxon conquest of East Anglia during the 910s. The Normans went on to demolish 98 Saxon homes and found Norwich Castle following the Norman conquest of England, and the city received a royal charter from King Henry II of England in 1158 and another from Richard the Lionheart in 1194. Norwich was sacked by the Flemish in 1174, and, in 1190, the Jews of Norwich were massacred amid the Third Crusade. In 1274, the Pope excommunicated Norwich's population following a riot, but, in 1278, Norwich Cathedral was consecrated. From 1280 to 1340, the city walls were built, and Norwich became a major wool port of Medieval England. In 1549, Kett's Rebellion occurred in the city, linking Protestantism with the plight of the urban poor. Dutch and Flemish Calvinist refugees (especially from Ypres) came to form a third of the city's population, and they became weavers and reinforced the city's increasingly Protestant identity. Despite being a majority-Royalist city amid the English Civil War, Norwich was a recruitment center for the Parliamentarians, and, after The Restoration, Norwich experienced a golden age of its cloth industry. By the early 18th century, Norwich was the wealthiest city in England with a poor relief system and a large influx of foreign refugees, but the Whigs and Tories engaged in utmost violence following the Glorious Revolution, and the city was a hotbed for Jacobite support during the 1710s. By 1726, there were rival Whig and Tory presses. Norwich developed a bipartisan political culture, and it became a manufacturing center during the Industrial Revolution and became known for its chocolate making and brewing. Norwich suffered extensive German Luftwaffe bomb damage during The Blitz of World War II, but it was redeveloped following the war and grew in size and population. In 2019, Norwich had a population of 143,135 people (90.9% white, 3.3% South Asian, 1.6% black, 1.2% Chinese, and 2.3% mixed).
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