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

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      It was Henry III’s use of his own arms and those of his royal connections at Westminster Abbey that set the fashion for using heraldry in architectural display. Once used as a decorative element in the 1260s, heraldry remained a dominant part of English architectural decoration into the 19th century. Butley Priory, Suffolk, is not the first, but is perhaps the most spectacular use of heraldic decoration in the early 14th century. The gatehouse is the sole surviving part of a priory founded by Ranulph de Glanville, justiciar of Henry II, and was built between 1320 and 1325. On the north front is a panel with 35 shields in five rows, including the arms of the builders and a litany of arms of the great and the good, ending with a list of East Anglian gentry (fig. 89).⁵

      Landscapes of Power

      By 1220 a traveller moving across England would have seen the hand of man everywhere. The whole landscape was managed to a greater or lesser degree and few places remained untamed. The most apparent unit of economic and social management was the estate. Estates, whether owned by the monarch, the Church, the great barons or the monasteries, organised the countryside for economic advantage. But the medieval landscape was not merely a money-making machine; the buildings and structures within it had meaning to the people who owned and looked at them.

      Castles had a special meaning. In theory only the king could license the construction of a defendable fortress, as in the reign of King John a system had developed whereby magnates wishing to build a fortified residence applied for a royal licence to do so. The possession of a licence, whether it resulted in a building or not, was a sign of wealth and royal favour. It was also a sign of the times. All great houses in the 13th century were, to a greater or lesser extent, defendable. They had to be. It was not only residences on the south coast or the Welsh or Scottish borders that were vulnerable to raiders. Theft, vendetta and social unrest were all potential threats to the comfort and security of the well-off. High walls and towers were thus a sign of a man who could afford them, as well as an indication that he had something worth protecting.⁶

      For those who could not afford to build a castle or obtain a licence there was the option of digging a moat. Moats had been dug from at least the 1150s, but during the period covered by this chapter as many as 3,500 moats were dug. Some of these were dug around manor houses, some around the houses of richer peasants. Not all parts of England were suitable for moats; they tended to be concentrated in Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire and in the central midlands, where there was a clay subsoil. Some moated houses were in the centre of villages, others were more isolated farmsteads.

The now deserted medieval hamlet of Winteringham, Cambridgeshire, had three moated houses, one of which was excavated between 1971 and 1972. The site of the excavated house had been occupied by two earlier houses before the moat was dug in around 1250. The former houses were simpler and humbler, and the increasing wealth of the family who owned them is apparent by their desire to build a larger, more modern house and surround it with a moat. The house itself consisted of a hall and residential cross-wing, with a detached kitchen, a bower, a storeroom and a circular dovecot (fig. 90). The buildings were connected by cobbled paths. This was not the house of the lord of the manor, but of a substantial and prosperous farmer who wanted to protect his possessions from ill-doers and demonstrate his wealth by sporting a moat.7

There was, of course, a huge gap between the aspirations of the owners of Winteringham and those of the great magnates. The magnates saw themselves as soldiers and their interests were in the governance of state and Church. Culturally their priorities were, loosely speaking, chivalric, expressed in mighty residences set in extensive and beautiful hunting parks. Hunting was fundamental to the life of the aristocracy. It was the activity, above all others, that defined aristocratic rank. It took great skill, it was dangerous, and it was run through with chivalric, religious and sexual symbolism.

All medieval residences of any pretensions were surrounded by hunting parks, 1,900 of which were created between 1200 and 1350. Most parks were between 100 and 200 acres in extent, the size of the park reflecting the wealth of its owner.8 The largest park in 13th-century England was the royal park of Clarendon, Wiltshire, covering 4,292 acres. It was surrounded by an impressive earthwork 10 miles long and more than 10ft high, topped with oak paling. The park was divided into three areas: pasture to the north, woodland in a band across the middle and wood pasture to the south. In addition to the palace there were eight lodges – some guarded the gates, others provided special services, such as accommodating the royal kennels. Every part of the land was productive. The woods were bounded by banks, ditches and hedges to keep the deer out and allow coppicing. Slow-growing oaks were also cultivated as a crop, and oxen and cows would graze on the wooded pasture in the south. The northern pasture supported deer and included man-made ponds for drinking and wallowing, troughs for feeding and deer houses for winter shelter. Rabbits and hares were bred here on an industrial scale and provided continuous supplies of meat. Even the wild birds were hunted with hawks.

Fig. 90 Winteringham, Cambridgeshire, moated house at c.1250–1300, excavated in 1971–2. This is the house of a prosperous farmer and his family, comfortable, convenient but in the tradition of residences built for at least two centuries.

So the short periods during which kings hunted were interludes in a complex and lucrative agricultural industry. Henry I, Henry II, John, Edward I and Edward III all hunted at Clarendon in what was not only an economic and recreational landscape, but one designed and sculpted with aesthetics clearly in mind. The principal entrance to the park through Slaygate afforded a spectacular view of the whitewashed royal palace high up on the ridge, and views from the palace to the park were carefully contrived.9

Fig. 91 Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire, the precinct. A series of land deals enabled the monks of Rievaulx to acquire the land either side of the river Rye which allowed them to divert it for abbey use. The 92-acre precinct was exceptionally large; most Cistercian abbeys had precincts averaging 60 acres while Benedictines or Augustinian Canons tended to have much smaller precincts averaging around 30 acres.

It was not only kings who moulded and sculpted the landscape around their homes; almost every major residence had a wide-ranging impact on the landscape. The De Roos family owned Helmsley Castle, Yorkshire, and in the 1180s and 90s rebuilt and expanded the castle while purchasing more land for the creation of parks. There were three of these: the West and the East, each paled, and an inner park known as La Haye. The main residential parts of the castle looked out over La Haye and had a balcony from which the culling of deer could be watched.10

It was not only castles and great houses that remodelled their landscapes. Monasteries never stood alone but were linked to varying numbers of support buildings, normally in a walled precinct. At Rievaulx, for instance, within the precincts covering 92 acres there were 27 buildings (fig. 91). Some of these were for polite purposes, such as accommodating guests and abbey pensioners; others were for food preparation, such as baking and brewing. In the outer parts there were buildings that housed industrial processes including a fulling mill (for finishing woollen cloth), a corn mill, a water-powered forge and a tannery. Amidst these buildings were meadows, gardens and orchards.11

New Decorative Vocabulary

In the 1250s England’s distinctive brand of Gothic architecture reigned supreme, but in 1245 Henry СКАЧАТЬ В начало < 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 > В конец