Norwich Heritage Open Days: 146 free events, 48 drop-in

Heritage Open Days runs from Friday 11 to Sunday 20 September, and the official festival listing for Norwich carries 154 free events. 146 of them have a Norwich NR1 to NR5 address.

Booking for the ones with limited places opened on Wednesday 26 August at 10am, five days ago. The organisers now say on their own front page that “many events are already fully booked, although there are still talks and guided walks with places available”.

That is worth knowing before you plan a day around a tour you cannot get into. It is also only half the picture, because a third of the Norwich programme never needed a ticket in the first place.

Counted from the national festival’s Norwich listing, the 146 city events split like this:

• 89 require pre-booking
• 48 require no booking at all, just turn up
• 8 say booking is preferred rather than required
• 1 books on the day

The box office you might miss

Most tickets go through one place. The Norfolk Heritage Open Days box office at norfolkhods.ticketsolve.com handles 72 of the 89 Norwich events that need booking. Tickets are free, and limited to two per booker per event. The organisers recommend checking out as a guest rather than creating an account, and you get ten minutes to complete an order.

The other 17 book somewhere else entirely, which is the trap. If you only ever look at Ticketsolve, you will miss:

• Norwich Castle, booked through the Norfolk Museums webshop
• Norwich Guildhall, booked through Norfolk and Norwich Festival
• The Halls heritage tours and the Dickens reading, both booked through norwich.gov.uk
• eight events on Eventbrite, including the Maids Head Hotel, the Boardman and Skipper walking tour and the Pastons walking tour
• the CWGC tour of Earlham Road cemetery, booked through the Commonwealth War Graves Commission
• “The History of Norwich in Just One Walk”, booked through the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society
• a Humanists UK heritage walk, and Norwich Theatre’s Backstage Past talks and tours

The Norfolk Club on Upper King Street lists no booking website at all. Its entry gives three tours on Wednesday 16 September and a cap of 20, so contact the venue direct.

Why the tickets go so fast

Because the rooms are small. Of the 89 Norwich events that need booking, 88 publish a maximum number of people, and the median is just 20. Eighteen of them cap at twelve or fewer.

Five cap at six people:

The Marble Hall at Aviva’s Surrey House takes twelve people per slot, across eight slots on 17 and 18 September. Earlham Hall, the Sainsbury Centre architecture tour, Curat House and the Hidden Street tour under Castle Meadow all cap at twelve too.

Two places that normally charge

Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery opens free on Saturday 19 September, 10am to 5pm. It needs booking, through the Norfolk Museums webshop rather than the HODs box office, and booking closes on 18 September. Adult admission normally costs £15.30 online or £17 on the door.

The Museum of Norwich at the Bridewell opens free on Friday 18 and Saturday 19 September, 10am to 4.30pm, and needs no booking whatsoever. Adult admission normally costs £7.74 online or £8.60 on the door.

The drop-ins to fall back on

These are 15 of the 48 that need no ticket at all. All are free, none needs booking, and the times come from each event’s own listing on the festival site.

More than a dozen city churches open with no booking, among them St Giles, St Augustine’s, St John Maddermarket, St Catherine’s on Aylsham Road, St Mark’s at Lakenham and St Andrew’s at Eaton. Golden Star Morris dance on Gentleman’s Walk on Saturday 19 September, and Fiddlesticks clog dancers perform outside John Lewis from 11am on Saturday 12 September.

Which day to go

Saturday 12 September is far and away the busiest, with 40 Norwich openings. Sunday 13 has 35 and Saturday 19 has 34. The quietest day is the opening Friday, with 18.

The midweek days are not the thin gruel you might expect. Wednesday 16 September has 32 openings and Thursday 17 has 31, because the talks at The Forum, the Norfolk Record Office sessions and the workplace tours at Aviva, Jarrolds and the Guildhall all sit on weekdays. If you can take a day off, midweek is where the behind-the-scenes access is.

Eight of the 154 are outside the city postcodes

The festival’s Norwich list is drawn wider than the city. Eight entries have an address outside the NR1 to NR5 postcodes, and most of them are in a different council’s area altogether. Distances are straight lines from the city centre:

The eighth, the East Anglian Air Ambulance base open day at Hellesdon, is an NR6 address but sits inside the Norwich City Council area, about three miles from the market. All eight are worth a look. Just do not set out for one expecting a short walk from the city centre.

What it means for you

If there is a specific tour you want, book it today rather than at the weekend. The median Norwich event has room for 20 people, the festival has been on sale for five days, and the organisers are already saying many have gone.

Check where each one books before you give up on it. A fifth of the bookable Norwich events are not on the HODs box office, so a “sold out” screen on Ticketsolve tells you nothing about the Castle, the Guildhall or the Maids Head.

If you would rather not deal with tickets, build the day around the 48 drop-ins. The Halls, Pull’s Ferry, Dragon Hall, the Plantation Garden and the Museum of Norwich all open with no booking, and between them they cover both weekends and the middle of the week.

The whole Norfolk programme runs to more than 350 events, coordinated by The Forum Trust, so it is worth checking the neighbouring district lists too if you are willing to travel.

Planning the trip in: our Norwich roadworks and travel page tracks what is closed, and the Norwich to London train times page covers the Greater Anglia main line. For the rest of the year, our guide to things to do in Norwich has current admission prices for the city’s attractions.