The Building of England: How the History of England Has Shaped Our Buildings. Simon Thurley

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СКАЧАТЬ and Spain, but fig and grape seeds, and the skeleton of a pet monkey. The picture painted above is of towns as engines of trade and prosperity, with robust, well-made houses, shops and churches. They were also chaotic. Everyone in a medieval town wanted to live in the centre, and rich and poor lived hugger-mugger in crowded, narrow streets, cohabiting with horses and scavenging pigs. Crafts and trades were practised in the centre of town, sometimes in the back of shops or in separate buildings in back yards. Many were noxious: tanning, brewing and smithing were all unpleasant to live close to. On the positive side, piped water supplies began to be developed, the removal of rubbish to out-of-town pits was encouraged, and early forms of building control enforced rules about the location and construction of privies. After 1200 towns started to acquire communal institutions such as hospitals, schools and colleges. Of all the institutions that were later to populate English towns, hospitals were, at first, most numerous. A single Latinised word ‘xenodochium’ embraced institutions that today we would separate out into hospital, almshouse and guest house, but in the early Middle Ages a single foundation was often a mixture of all three. Just as Norman kings and churchmen built castles and cathedrals, so they founded hospitals, most intensely between 1100 and 1220. Archbishop Lanfranc, for instance, founded three hospitals at Canterbury for ten paupers, 60 lepers and many elderly priests. St Mary’s Hospital, Chichester, Sussex, although built between 1290 and 1300, is typical of these early foundations (fig. 86). The essential principle was that every inmate should have a clear view of Mass being celebrated in the hospital chapel. So the whole building was like a church, with the nave being a ward containing low wooden beds with straw mattresses, and the chancel being a complete chapel, separated from the rest by a screen. In such a hospital the sick would be cared for but passing travellers, especially pilgrims, would also be given beds.³⁰ The Economics of Building The sheer volume of building described in this chapter perhaps exceeded even the achievements of the first generation after the Conquest. Much was bankrolled by good economic conditions: the economy was swollen with silver and agricultural profits rose rapidly as a result of entrepreneurialism. The most successful cathedrals, such as Salisbury, enjoyed an increase in income of 168 per cent in a century. Towns grew, markets prospered, communications improved, and education produced a class of able and ambitious clerks and administrators.

      But it was a different sort of building boom to the one stimulated by the Conquest. There were now proper quarries, better-skilled masons (and more of them), and few buildings were started anew. New monasteries were rare and, after the 1130s, no new dioceses were created until 1547 – only Salisbury Cathedral stands out as an entirely new structure. Most churches and castles were reconstructions, adaptations and extensions of existing buildings. Architectural leadership lay firmly with the cathedrals, whose golden age it was. These institutions were in cities, meaning that their influence in terms of architecture – as well as learning, ideas and education – was more profound than even the greatest of the rural monasteries. While most cathedrals were progressively rebuilt in new styles, many rural monastic churches remained Anglo-Norman.³¹

      England’s cathedrals are collectively one of the supreme architectural achievements of the whole Middle Ages. This is partly a result of the inventiveness of English masons and designers, but equally of the wealth of English sees. English dioceses were larger than those on the continent and correspondingly richer. The richest, such as Winchester (£3,000 a year), Durham (£2,700), Canterbury (£2,140) or Ely (£2,000), had incomes equivalent to the most prosperous earls. Indeed, by the end of the 13th century 12 out of Europe’s 40 richest dioceses were in England. It was this wealth, carefully exploited by bishops and deans, that funded the extraordinary sumptuousness of cathedrals such as Lincoln and Salisbury. Salisbury, without its spire, cost around £28,000 over 50 years. A single bay at Lincoln (p. 96), because of the profusion of carving, probably cost twice as much as its French equivalent.³²

      Yet financing the construction of a cathedral was hugely expensive and it was unlikely that the normal revenues of a diocese, however rich, would suffice. At Lincoln, for instance, a fabric fund was created in around 1200, endowed by dividing the cathedral’s income in two. This was supplemented by gifts from all over the diocese responding to the disastrous collapse of 1185. To encourage more giving, continual Masses were said for those who contributed to the work. Landowners might contribute half an acre of land and symbolically place a sod from it on the altar. A tax was also levied on every household in the diocese at the Whitsun procession.³³ While all these sources of income were important, financing the largest and most spectacular projects was substantially boosted by the financial muscle of a really famous saint. Although in many cathedrals Anglo-Saxon saints had been translated to Anglo-Norman buildings, their setting was now regarded as insufficiently magnificent. So through the 13th and 14th centuries the east ends of dozens of great churches were extended to provide suitably spectacular shrines for Anglo-Saxon and contemporary saints, as well as space for visiting pilgrims. This movement was given a huge boost by the new setting for the relics of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury. Thus between 1190 and 1220, for example, work started on building new eastern arms at Beverly, Ely, Hereford, Lichfield, Lincoln, Southwell, Winchester and Worcester.

      As the English economy and infrastructure strengthened and towns grew, secular and ecclesiastical lords rebuilt their castles and cathedrals in new styles. Churches developed in response to changing liturgy, while the great secular residences remained much as they had done for generations, reflecting a more stable way of life for royalty and nobility. For richer ordinary people life also improved, and their houses became more sturdy, commodious and permanent.

      As the second generation of Normans felt more English, so the great cathedrals, abbeys, castles and houses then under construction became increasingly distinct from their counterparts in France. Architecture had been through an intense period of experimentation from 1150 to 1170, but by about 1200 there was an increasingly uniform approach to large-scale building. Some of the excesses of late Anglo-Norman decoration were forgotten and the new Gothic style adopted simpler, but bold and deeply cut, pointed arches. Yet it was rooted in what had gone before: English cathedrals clung to the thick wall technique often with masonry 13ft thick. This not only characterised early English Gothic but influenced the proportions and scale of everything that came after. As cathedrals were rebuilt and extended they embodied the Anglo-Norman structural techniques. Thus from a European perspective early English Gothic was rich, insular and distinctive.

      English architecture in the period from 1220 to 1350 displays the confidence that comes with wealth and independence.

      Introduction

      The hundred years after 1250 are among the most energetic, inventive and extravagant periods of building in English history, a time in which English architecture became as distinctive as its national character. The building boom that started in the 1220s continued strongly up to about 1300 (fig. 87). This almost precisely mirrored an extraordinary period of economic growth and national prosperity that was underpinned by rapid population growth (fig. 88).

      Yet the period was not one of political stability. Politically it was characterised by a struggle between the Crown and the aristocracy. In 1215 King John had been forced to sign Magna Carta, a charter that protected barons, freemen and the Church against the arbitrary actions of the king, emphasising that royal power was held under the law. This, and the struggles to enforce it during subsequent reigns, are hugely important for England. Unlike France, where the king answered only to God, in England monarchs СКАЧАТЬ