Academic interest in the medieval and later urban environment is by no means a new phenomenon and is apparent, for example, in an historical account of Norwich written by the early eighteenth-century antiquary John Kirkpatrick. The final decades of the last century, however, witnessed a renewed interest in the subject in relation to both medieval and to more modern towns. Many of the resulting studies have concentrated on a specific aspect of the urban landscape and the responses this invoked, and/or on the relationship between the environment and health. This paper, however, aims to look more generally at the state of one particular city in the fifteenth century, and to attempt to assess how it might have felt to live in Norwich at that time, together with how far the civic authorities sought to ameliorate environmental problems. All towns, of course, have their individual characteristics, both physical and social, but Norwich is an interesting case study. In the sixteenth century it was promoted as an exceptionally clean and healthy city and the governing body undertook new initiatives to clear the river and the streets.