Nested in a natural, bowl-shaped depression along the Roanoke River lies the Norwich neighborhood. Its name is derived from the Norwich Lock Manufacturing Company out of Norwich, Connecticut, which established a short-lived factory in the neighborhood in 1891. The Norwich neighborhood quickly became home to laborers and their families who worked in the twine mills that cycled through the old lock factory’s buildings. Workers lived within view of the factories in modest shotgun houses and workers’ cottages. The ridge of the depression around Norwich naturally demarcated it from the decidedly middle and upper-middle class neighborhood of Virginia Heights, where the streets are lined with trees and stately homes.