BBC East celebrates 70 years of broadcasting from Norwich

As the BBC spread across the UK in the 1920s and 30s, one part of the country remained conspicuously absent from its map – East Anglia.

Although the BBC transmitted national services to the region, they had no studio there until September 1956. That month, they opened a radio operation in a Georgian mansion in Norwich.

St Catherine's Close was the main base of BBC East until 2003, when services moved to Norwich's new Forum development.

On a Secret Norfolk episode , current BBC Look East presenter Susie Fowler-Watt said the old building had been a "beautiful place" that had "felt special" to work in.

TV and radio historian Paul Kerensa runs the British Broadcasting Century podcast , telling the story of the BBC's early years.

He says one of the reasons the BBC overlooked the East of England for so long is because they initially concentrated on opening studios in major population centres.

"If you didn't have a big city near you, you'd need a more powerful radio set to pick up many of the programmes – and a lot of patience till your area was covered."

The announcement in 1954 that the BBC was coming to Norwich made front page news in the local papers, with the studios eventually opening on 10 September 1956.

St Catherine's Close was reported at the time to have been one of the oldest buildings ever converted for broadcasting.

The BBC fitted many of the rooms with reproduction 18th Century furniture, and even some with genuine antiques.

There was a garden, a greenhouse, and a groundskeeper's cottage. Most of these gradually disappeared through the building's time as a BBC office, but the entrance hall's curved staircase and chandelier remained throughout.

Initially, staff produced radio programmes and news bulletins for the local frequency of the BBC Home Service – what is now BBC Radio 4.

The editorial area covered was roughly Norfolk, Suffolk, most of Cambridgeshire, and northern Essex.

BBC Local Radio did not launch until 1967, in Leicester, and there were no stations in the East of England until BBC Radio Norfolk opened in 1980.

Paul Kerensa says the threat of new commercial regional television services is likely to have been one of the reasons why the BBC finally decided to open a regional HQ.

"Technical advancements helped regional growth, and the threat of ITV accelerated the BBC's plans," he said.

In 1959, a small television studio was hurriedly added to St Catherine's Close so the BBC could beat the new ITV company Anglia Television to air with a regional TV news service.

At first, this was a 10-minute bulletin. The very first one on 5 October 1959 was given a special introduction live in the studio by Hugh Carleton Greene, who was due to become the next director-general of the BBC.

Read by local teacher and part-time broadcaster Geoffrey Harvey, that first bulletin included:

film of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan campaigning in Norfolk and Suffolk ahead of the impending general election

a report on Norwich shoe manufacturers exhibiting at London Shoe Week

footage of a new trawler at Lowestoft and a motorcycle event attended by 25,000 people at Shrubland Park near Ipswich

brief stories on fires in Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, a road accident in Ipswich, and a planning dispute in Norwich

football updates with team news on Norwich City and Ipswich Town

In 1962, the TV news from St Catherine's Close became a longer news magazine programme.

In 1964, this programme was renamed Look East . It is still broadcast from Norwich, now from a studio at The Forum.

Fowler-Watt joined the staff at St Catherine's Close in the late 1990s. She said it "felt almost like we were working in [someone's] home".

She said the BBC had "outgrown" it by the time they left in 2003 , but it was emotional when she and co-presenter Stewart White closed the doors on the building at the end of the final Look East to be transmitted from there.

"There was a real sense of loss in the same way of moving from a beloved family house. There's a history and so many memories tied up in that building."

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