More than a decade ago, when I was still a Trustee of Break charity, I was asked to visit another charity, Families House, to share some thoughts with them about fund-raising.
My visit was almost to sweep me away in a tidal wave of nostalgia – always a danger when one visits the haunts of one’s youth! The address of Families House was 125, Ber Street – which rang no bell until I arrived, when I realised that I was re-entering, for the first time since the early 1960s, what had been that most extraordinary and louche Norwich pub – the Jolly Butchers.
The Jolly Butchers dated back to the early 19th century, but its absolute heyday was from the mid 1930s until 1976. The reason for its huge popularity was its landlady, and her death was perhaps its death knell too, though it continued as a pub for more than a decade – it simply wasn’t the same without her.
Antoinette Hannent – universally known as ‘Black Anna’ on account of invariably being dressed in black was a quite remarkable woman in many senses of the word. Born Antoinette Cararra in 1905, in Ber Street where she lived until her death in 1976, she was the daughter of Italian immigrants. Her family had, it was claimed, walked all the way from Medina, a small village near Naples, in the 1880s selling all their worldly possessions to fund their passage across the channel – clearly a formidable and determined bunch. Her mother, Elisabetta, was musical – she used to play organs hired from an organ grinder in Ber Street’s Newman’s Yard, probably fellow immigrant Luigi Ventre. Anna must have been encouraged in her love of music and her original career choice was as a dancer, which came to an end when she married Kenneth Hannent, who was landlord of the Jolly Butchers from 1935 until his death in 1947, when Anna took on the licence.
She claimed that the nickname ‘Black Anna’ was the idea of the Red Arrows RAF team who at the time were habitues of the pub. Of Italian descent she was loud and formidable. In accommodation at the back of the pub she ran what can best be described as a doss-house – she never had any trouble with her tenants, many of whom had an alcohol problem – the sight of Anna wielding a pair of copper tongs was enough to frighten them into compliant silence. Not that she was unkind to them – when, after her death, the brewery decided to close down the accommodation and Social Services had to find alternative accommodation for her tenants, it was discovered that one of them had lived there for 30 years, and was really distressed at the prospect of leaving what had become his home. Her accommodation was appreciated by the police too – on occasions it was apparently a convenient dumping ground for minor offenders when the cells were full.
The pub itself had a history of violence – back in the 1850s it had been the scene of a prolonged fist fight and despite the efforts of the landlord and his wife to separate the parties one of them died as a result of the injuries he had sustained. The jury were a forgiving bunch, they accompanied their guilty verdict to the ensuing manslaughter charges with a recommendation for leniency. The judge obviously agreed – the sentence was imprisonment with hard labour…for a term of one week.
The area surrounding the pub was varied, it attracted different immigrant communities. Ber Street was a rather unusual area for Norwich, sandwiched between the undeniably fashionable Bracondale and the centre of the city. Its proximity to the latter, the various immigrant groups represented in its population and its slightly seedy air attracted both petty criminals and the ladies of the night. It wasn’t so much that the area was dangerous – it was just very different from most of the Norwich I knew as a teenager in the early 1960s – going there, and especially visiting the Jolly Butchers was mildly exciting, and a real eye-opener for a naïve boy brought up very conventionally in a small Norfolk town. Evenings spent there, usually in the company of girls one had met in jazz clubs rather than at the Tennis Club, were almost a rite of passage into the delights, if such they were, of young adulthood in the ‘swinging sixties’.
And what made the visits so special was the sheer exuberance – and the gravelly singing voice – of a very special landlady, and the very cosmopolitan audience she attracted. Anna lived for music, and had a cheerful disregard for the then conventional mores.
She was a jazz singer of immense talent – she sang, at times, with the bands of Chris Barber and Acker Bilk, though not, I suspect in the Jolly Butchers which was really very small. Perhaps it was during the Second World War that she first came to be more widely known. Norwich was a Mecca for the US airmen stationed around the county, and the Jolly Butchers was for some its epicentre. Jazz had huge appeal to them, and frankly it didn’t, locally at least, get much hotter than at Anna’s pub. One American officer in the other bar from that in which Anna was singing was so taken that he asked who the guy was that was singing. Told that it was a woman, he described her – in a phrase which stuck – as the English Sophie Tucker.
Perhaps the fact that she had never had any training or coaching or formal musical knowledge contributed to the free and easy style she adopted – she was a natural. Round about nine o’clock most evenings she would strike up and the pub would fill to the brim, often overflowing into the street outside. Within minutes the audience would be encouraged to join in and the atmosphere was simply electric. There were several good jazz clubs in Norwich at the time, and some good part-time bands; the Mustard City Stompers playing in the basement of the Bedford Arms was a favourite of mine, but these were only an amuse bouche before the treat to come up at the Jolly Butchers.
Apart from Anna’s singing the other thing which distinguished the Jolly Butchers from conventional pubs was her audience. The University of East Anglia opened in 1963, hugely increasing the student population in Norwich, but even before that it was a popular choice for the young and broke. An evening of great entertainment and interesting people for the price of the occasional pint was nirvana to many.
In our more woke world of today with its ready acceptance of Gay Pride and where all sorts of sexual orientation have become an accepted part of the social norm it is difficult to recall that right up until the passing of the Sexual Offences Act in 1967 homosexual activity was a criminal offence. Even then homosexual acts were only legal if consensual, in private and between those over the age of 21.
There was not just constitutional disapproval but such activities were widely condemned by many of the general public. Anna took no notice and one of the bars at the Jolly Butchers became perhaps the most popular unofficial headquarters of those disposed to same sex relationships. It was perhaps the only pub in Norwich where whether you entered the bar on the left or the bar on your right on arriving at the pub was decided by your sexual orientation! And Anna’s understanding was also extended to musicians trying to break into the business, some of whom she encouraged by having them accompany her, though woe betide any who tried to outshine their patron!
What I found remarkable about a pub largely patronised by the young, by foreign students and visitors and by those of a then still illegal disposition is that I cannot recall a single occasion on which there was any real trouble. Perhaps we were all just more peaceable in those days, but I like to think that the atmosphere created by Anna’s personality and the regard – almost awe – in which she was held by her customers had a lot to do with it. The Jolly Butchers was, truly, an institution!
There is a lovely irony in the choice of the name Black Anna by the Chalk Hill Brewery in Norwich for its 2019 CAMRA award winning beer. She would have been delighted with the accolade, but wouldn’t have even sipped the beer – she was a teetotaller.
When researching for this article I came across a gem which I highly recommend to all interested in this remarkable woman. In the UEA East Anglian Film Archive, and available free online, is part of a 1973 Anglia TV programme about her. It includes three clips of Anna in full voice. By this time, she was nearly 70, but she was still belting out the music, and getting full audience participation just as she had more than a decade earlier when as a callow youth I first came under her spell. Thank you, Anna, for some marvellous memories, and thank you East Anglian Film Archive for bringing them back to me.
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