Welcome to The Icenian A Norwich memoir and more
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The Purpose of This Site
After having run The Movie Shop in Norwich since 1985, I finally called it a day in 2020, and have decided it is time to concentrate on what most interests me, rather than spend six days a week dealing with customers in what is an increasingly unproductive enterprise. I will devote my time to writing about the history of Norwich over the last century, especially those aspects that most appeal to me such as the cinemas, and the old collectors shops and their often eccentric owners and customers. I have been immersed in this world since the end of the last war, and feel it is time to concentrate on sharing my memories, and the historical knowledge I have acquired, during these seventy years.
I will use my blog, and other pages, to tell the stories.
Some of these topics will be shared on Facebook on the sites 'Peter Cossey' 'The Icenian'
The Blog section will develop over time into a full personal memoir from the end of the war to the present, but along the way it will go back over my family history to the late Victorian era. I am only writing about personal memories, and I remember three of my Victorian grandparents well - the fourth is the subject of a little tragedy of the kind experienced by many families, and will be revealed in the course of the memoir.
The first part of the blog re-visits my book on Norwich Cinemas, and I have reprinted the main text, with a lot more photos that I have acquired since the first publication.
Please use the menus link in the top banner to access the other pages.
You can also use the link below to visit my other site, which I am now working on. It's a collectors site, and will also be a history of my favourite magazine:
I can be contacted at: peter.cossey@ntlworld.com
Tel:
(If viewing this on a phone, please remember to click on the 3 bars beside the title at the top of the page to access the other pages)
Fort Sumner, New Mexico
About me
Additional Information
I'm Peter Cossey. I've lived in Norwich all my life, and my branch of the Cossey family has lived in the Heigham area of Norwich for many generations. I can trace my ancestry back in a direct line to the rebel with a just cause, Robert Kett, and we've probably been part of Norwich history back to the conquest. The Cossey surname is unique to this area, and derives from the village of the same name that is mentioned in the Domesday Book.
The blog will initially be reprising my book on Norwich Cinemas, called 'Continuous Performances'. If anybody wishes to get the whole thing in one go, the book is available from ebay, or at the email link below
The button on the right will take you to my ebay site.
Available for sale
For Sale
This 240 page paperback covers the history of Norwich cinemas from the early years through to the 1960's, when the cinema going habit, along with the cinemas, was dying out. I was a part of the Golden Age from the end of the war until the last of the independent and local cinemas finally closed. I visited every one of the thirteen cinemas that Norwich had between 1945 and 1961, and this books details my memories of each one. It covers the early history of the cinemas, but concentrates on the boom years just after the war, and the extraordinarily rapid decline and virtual death of the cinema going experience over 16 short years.
I witnessed it all, and try to give an impression of what it was like to be a teenage cinema goer in those febrile years, and something of the wider social and cultural forces at work as well.
Available from the ebay link above, or from me personally via the email link below
£12.00 including postage.
My next volume "Collecting Memories", a story of the collectors shops in Norwich from 1945 until 1990, including the full story of my own shop, should be available for sale in a few weeks - Jan 2022.
Now available on Amazon
The book is ready for sale, but is being held up by a dispute with Archant which I'm attempting to resolve. I am selling the first 100 already printed copies on Amazon, or through this site, to recover the initial costs, after which a new edition will be published with the offending photograph(s) removed.
Please get in touch if you are interested through the email below. peter.cossey@ntlworld.com
The book is a memoir of my years running a collectors shop, and the many years prior to that exploring the collector's shops in Norwich.
I dicuss the obsessive nature of collector's and collecting with stories of some of the eccentric characters I have met in this weird world, and also detail the birth of the many shops that flourished from the late 60s onwards as the post war generation turned their teenage obsession with music into a collectors market.