The Building of England: How the History of England Has Shaped Our Buildings. Simon Thurley
Eve (fig. 46). The halos are painted in green paint made by coating copper plates in urine and sealing them in a container for two weeks.19
Although these small Norman churches are sometimes almost indistinguishable from their Saxon predecessors, the difference was the discipline that the Normans sought to bring to parish life. Lanfranc’s reforms subdivided dioceses into archdeaconries and deaneries to give greater supervision to individual parish priests. This was important, as most priests before 1000 were in minsters under close supervision; with the proliferation of local churches there were now hundreds of remote priests, poor, ill-educated (often illiterate), undisciplined and isolated. Some were drunkards, some said Mass armed, others had secular employment and many had wives. Almost all were English. Under the new regime more was demanded of them and greater discipline enforced. The life of the average clergyman was transformed in the century after 1066.20
The Towns
The impact of the Norman Conquest on English towns was enormous, physically, economically and socially. Saxon lords who had lost their country estates lost their urban lands (burgages) too. In the place of English burgesses Norman landlords settled, and in the place of English town houses new castles, cathedrals and priories rose. Many of these, such as those at York and Winchester, were instigated by royal command; others were the random and illegal acts of new landlords. Norwich was already one of the largest towns in England in 1066 and was to become even more important when the see was transferred there from Thetford. By the time of the Domesday Book in 1086 almost half of the Anglo-Saxon town had been cannibalised for the Norman castle, cathedral and new housing. One hundred and thirteen houses were demolished for the site of the castle alone, and 32 English burgesses – bankrupted by the seizure of property and royal tax – fled the town.21
As castles and cathedrals rose, existing towns were re-planned. At Richmond, Yorkshire, a vast castle covering 2 ½ acres was grafted on to a small, pre-existing settlement. Against the castle gate was laid out the market place, and on to this, in a D shape, the burgage plots of the townsmen (fig. 47). There is no doubt that Richmond was founded on the top of a cliff for military reasons, but the town was designed as an economic engine for Alan Rufus, who began the castle in 1070. Richmond was at the centre of a huge network of arable estates and soon became not only the principal market but also an industrial centre.22
Fig. 47 Richmond, Yorkshire: plan of the town based on a map of 1773. There are two centres to this town, the original village core round St Mary’s Church on the east side and the semicircular castle borough to its west. Though the castle is perched on a dramatic cliff falling to the river Swale, the reasons for its location were as much economic as military.
| New abbeys could have a similar impact. At Bury St Edmunds the colossal new abbey church (second only in size to Winchester) had a decisive influence on the town. The monumental abbey gatehouse provided the kingpin for the town grid (fig. 48).23 Many of these extensions and remodellings were to be economically successful. At Bury the Domesday Book entry tells us that in 20 years the town had grown by 342 houses. Much of this was as a result of the economic stimulation of the construction industry, the effects of which in a town such as Bury or Norwich must have dominated the local economy for decades. |
| The Death of the Conqueror |
| William the Conqueror died in 1087 and the succession was split between his three surviving sons: Robert, William Rufus and Henry. Robert inherited Normandy but pawned it to his brother William when he went on crusade in 1096. William Rufus thus became king of England and, for a few years, controlled Normandy. In 1100 Henry succeeded Rufus as king and in 1106 seized Normandy from Robert, throwing him in prison. Henry died in 1135, the year after his brother. William Rufus’s reign saw a reaction to the highly militarised nature of his father’s time. There was an explosion of decorative excess. Rufus’s court was known for its outlandish fashions: long hair, tight-fitting tunics, drooping cuffs, and shoes with long, pointed, curly toes. This sense of exuberance can still be felt in the fabric of his most important building, Westminster Great Hall. The ceremonial centrepiece of the Norman palace at Westminster, at 240ft long by 67.5ft wide it was the largest secular space in northern Europe. Outside, fearsomely tall stone walls were topped with a decorative band of chequered stone and crowned with a blind arcade. It was entered, not on one of its long sides as was normal for such halls, but at the north end, giving a much greater processional focus. Inside, at clerestory level, there were pairs of small arches set under larger ones as at Winchester Cathedral (fig. 44). The capitals of these were richly carved and brightly painted, and below, on the great blank wall, would have been paintings or hangings to give the hall a feeling of vitality and colour. The roof was probably carried by a series of vast timber trusses, themselves presumably painted and decorated, and the floor was probably of rammed earth, allowing for the entry of mounted knights. This was never a space for regular use. It was rather a ceremonial hall conceived as the setting for the great feasts that accompanied major religious festivals. In here William wore his crown in splendour and presided over his magnificent household as God’s elected ruler.24 |
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| Fig. 48 Bury St Edmunds in the 12th century. The Abbey church was built on axis with a gatehouse, St James’s Tower and Churchgate Street as the central street of a grid. This matrix was laid out by Abbot Baldwin. |
| The Church after William’s Death |
| Archbishop Lanfranc died two years after William I and was succeeded in 1093 by Anselm, a figure more tolerant of Anglo-Saxon Church customs. This second generation of Anglo-Norman churchmen, perhaps, also lacked the sense of urgency and single-mindedness of Lanfranc and his contemporaries. They adopted a more florid architecture, closer to the ornamental taste of the Saxons. In achieving this they built on a generation of improving craftsmanship, the construction standards in the first Anglo-Norman cathedrals having been somewhat variable (fig. 44). |
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| Fig. 49 Westminster Hall, the largest structure in the palace of Westminster built 1097. A mistake in setting-out meant that the east and west walls were misaligned. The plan shows the hall at window level with its wall passage and arcades. Above the arcades are shown in elevation. |
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These changes can be seen as they take place at Durham Cathedral. The historic core of Durham, sitting high on a U-shaped bend in the river Wear, has the most dramatic site of any town in England. The scarp on which the cathedral and castle now stand was from ancient times a fortress, and here the Normans built the supreme English monuments of the Norman age. The castle, in timber, came first, but in 1093 the foundation stone for a new cathedral was laid – it took 40 years to build. In that period the austerity of the first generation of post-Conquest buildings was swept aside in an encrustation of decoration, indeed a resurgence of Anglo-Saxon aesthetics. Whilst the bones of the cathedral’s design are familiar – the alternating compound and cylindrical piers are as in the Confessor’s abbey – the first-floor gallery, at Westminster almost of equal height to the main arcade, has been reduced. The arcades at Durham are huge, and squeeze the gallery and clerestory up to the roof (fig. 51). This is an aesthetic change, in that the piers dominate the nave; but it is also a liturgical one, as the gallery was no longer considered to be a major liturgical space. Equally important was the invention, at Durham, of the rib vault. The naves of early cathedrals had been roofed in timber, with |