Some thoughts on Mediaeval and Renaissance churches and great houses

Sybil M. Jack <sybiljack@hotmail.com>

November 2000

We all have our own ideas about what mediaeval and early modern architecture was like, but are we kidding ourselves? Visits over this year to several churches and houses in different parts of Britain and France have left me convinced that the way buildings looked at various periods is quite unlike our mental image of the church and to a lesser extent, great private houses. The Victorian restorations were often indeed changes that reflected their own tastes. The installation of stained glass windows in the second half of the nineteenth century, where perhaps there never were mediaeval windows; modern pews where for much of the mediaeval period there would have been nothing and then the new fashionable box pews; modern pulpits rather than the Reformation three tiered pulpit; even the location of the font and the absence of wall paintings and now, in most churches, the disappearance of the ‘tables’ with the Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and the royal arms, introduced at the Reformation, give the Churches a spuriously familiar medieval resonance when they are in reality contemporary, encapsulating much loved relics of older times. Many restorations are extraordinarily attractive but are they authentic? What indeed do we mean by authentic? How have the descendants of mediaeval and early modern ‘folk’ altered the environment that their ancestors created for themselves and in which they practiced their religious beliefs. How far can we or should we recreate it? What of aspects of the original building that can never be recreated? If you climb to the top of Orford castle, one of the problems of envisaging the past is laid out before you — the changes in the land itself. From the roof one can see the church tower (recently rebuilt), which was the seamark, and the long and ever- growing spit that turns the Alde and Ore rivers to the south and separates the sea front from the sea. A magnificent exhibition of maps makes the geographical changes over the centuries very clear. The outworks of the castle are no longer visible except from the roof, so that it seems a more austere tower that it was, but it has a unique design (Henry II at his most inventive) a circle with three square projecting towers at 120 degree angles, and full of interesting detail like the surviving kitchen areas, and the bakery up on the roof, and a tiny little chapel.

Restoration is a difficult, perhaps an impossible, balancing act as different philosophies compete for what should be done. Lord Petre (John, the eighteenth of the Petre line) who very kindly conducted us round Ingatestone, in Essex, the Petre home since the sixteenth century made the point very well. He conducted us round, when it wasn’t open to visitors because we were Australian academics and told us how he is struggling to keep it going without getting grants from National Heritage, the National Trust or others. He said that the difficulties of getting involved in the opposing philosophies of the different groups (take it back to the ‘original’, versus ‘keep it as it has evolved’) caused too much stress. Because the Petres eventually stayed Catholic, they played little part in politics after the original William Petre who was secretary to Edward VI and Mary, and the house is modest (comparatively) apparently ‘pure’ but actually redone early in the twentieth century to match the then idea of Tudor architecture. They have also had to take down a cross wing which has opened the inner courtyard to the outside.

Today we envisage the standard church model of the period as a basic oblong, usually extended at the east end by a chancel, often narrower than the nave and somewhat raised. The nave was often extended at the sides by one or more aisles. The wealthier church would have a crossing (or transept) before the chancel and a tower or spire either at one end or over the crossing. This physical structure was originally built to facilitate the rituals and processions of the services in the local diocese, but had to be adapted to changes as time passed. The pulling down of the roods over the chancel arch is well known but only one example of the problems. Local communities, which already clearly had preferences in building types, designed to suit the practices they used, solved the problems in a variety of ways.

Not all churches, therefore, were built to this design, even those that now appear to conform to it. The abbey church at Hexham, for instance, started in 670, in part re-using stones prised from Hadrian’s Wall has parts that are fourteen hundred years old, but the nave was only built in 1908. Coxwold church, in Yorkshire, which was served by Newburgh priory until its Dissolution, is remarkable for its octagonal tower and also for the horseshoe communion rail in the chancel. This again raises issues of remodeling over the centuries. The reformation, which in its new liturgy required a central communion table around which the congregation gathered had little use for chancels and so the chancel often fell into decay. Although the horseshoe rail may have been introduced when the chancel was rebuilt by Thomas Atkinson in 1774, one wonders whether it may have replaced an earlier one designed to obey the letter but not the spirit of Laud’s seventeenth century orders for the restoration of altars and the destruction of the communion tables.

The adaptation of churches with radically different designs to the rituals of particular periods is worth considering. It was interesting to see the changing use of space in Holy Sepulchre church, in Northampton. This was built by Simon St Liz on the site of an earlier church in thanksgiving for his return from the crusades in 1099 and its design was modelled on the church in Jerusalem — one of only nine built in England in The Middle Ages. It is the largest and best preserved of the four of this type, which pre-date the Knights Templar and Hospitallers, left in the country. The circular structure has sixteen pillars (fewer than the model). Later, a straight chancel was built on the eastern side, which in turn was given aisles later in the Middle Ages. At the Reformation the round nave came into its own for the form of worship that required a communion table and no altar. The rest fell into disrepair, which was only reversed in the 19th century. Appropriately, perhaps, it became the home church of the Northamptonshire regiments and was attended by the troops. It housed their colours and their rolls of honour and provided the setting for the regimental rituals.

Another Northampton church, which shows even more clearly, the process of adaptation, is St Peter’s church. This started as a Norman construction on the site of the early church of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Hamtun some of whose stones were reused in the new building. Originally, probably a Minster church next door to the castle of Northampton, it was apparently also the work of Simon of St Liz. There is no distinction between chancel and nave except in the form of the pillars. There is a very splendid arch-head in the west wall, preserved when the tower was built. The carved capitals are probably the work of a ‘travelling lodge’ of seven men and they mingle various styles: scrolls, lions and sheep, and dragons, they were originally painted. The supports are all various carved heads. The church has evidently been restructured various time as there were until 1546 at least four or five side-chapels. In the 18th century this was the Whig church, as opposed to the Tory church of All Saints, with its peal of bells ringing in opposition to the All Saints bells. In 1850 it was semi-derelict, the congregation sheltering under umbrellas during the services and was only rescued by Scott in 1850 at the instigation of the Bakers who were, surprisingly, Unitarians, but also keen antiquarians. Scott swept away the perpendicular east window and remodeled it as a nineteenth century high church. Alas, it must now find a new use, as its congregation has moved away. Its old rival, All Saints, is now an eighteenth century church, built after the fire had destroyed the earlier church, and represents the preferred structure for worship of the Latitudinarian church of England of the period.

A typical instance of changing church appearance is Dedham church dedicated to St Mary the Virgin. It was a key church in the Puritan movement with such names as Matthew Newcomen and ‘Roaring John Rogers’ as preachers and ministers, delivering sermons both inside the church and outside from the turret. Edmund Chapman who, in 1582, organised the well-known Dedham ‘classis’ (a puritan form of study centre for the clergy) lies buried here as his monument says ‘pastor agnos inter obdormit suos’. It is hard to imagine it as it was then, however, since there have been so many alterations, the addition and removal of galleries and the addition in the late 19th century of stained glass windows —the product of great Victorian glass makers such as Kemp and Clayton and Bell, which the puritans would have intensely disliked — while angels, that long-running obsession of East Anglia, were added to the chancel as late as 1960. On the other hand, the tower porch has a ceiling which reminds us of the part politics played in local affairs for it has all the Tudor symbols — most obviously the portcullis and the rose, perhaps evidence that Margaret Beaufort did indeed pay for the tower, a much debated point. Pictures made in the eighteenth century show a church with a very different ambience to today when the vaulting is once more exposed and the pews are different. This remains an ongoing living building that is a present entity in the life of its parishioners.

The church at Orford, dedicated to St Bartholomew, is a modest introduction to the present glories of Suffolk churches. The guide invites us to imagine looking ‘down the full length of the church, past the present altar and through to the Norman chancel, with its pillars and carved stalls and the distant High altar . . . with its medieval colour and carving . . . all of which provided a kaleidoscope of visual aids . . .’ Like many East Anglia churches, the chancel was continuous with the nave and barely distinguished by a narrower architectural structure. Like all the churches, it was stripped in the 16th and 17th centuries, although in 1562-3 it did get a new roof. By the early 19th century, however, the tower had partially collapsed, and the nave was so ruinous that services were held in the south aisle beneath a roof propped up with scaffolding. Only twentieth century money has rebuilt the tower and restored the church to a viable state.

Visually, the churches, as they survive, make a stunning impact even when one takes the restorations into account. They were almost exclusively the work of one period only, the fifteenth century, when the wool and cloth merchants had the resources to build monuments to their own stature, which were consequently far bigger than the locality really needed. One is overwhelmed and stunned by stupendous churches, from Holy Trinity Blythburgh (well called the cathedral of the marshes) to St John the Baptist church in Needham market. We have the late Victorians to thank for their survival and perhaps William Morris and the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings for the taste with which it was achieved. When one thinks that in the 1880s the congregation at Blythburgh had to shelter under umbrellas to deflect the rain pouring through holes in the roof, we have been lucky that so much remains. The mostly fifteenth century builders were enthralled and obsessed with angels. The Blythburgh angels, back to back in pairs, each with its unique face, spread their painted wings against the roof (an arch-braced, tie beam roof made with few nails and no iron bolts, mortised and tenoned and fixed with wooden pins) and bear the arms of Swillington, Ufford and Hopton. At Southwold the angels support the hammer beams and each brightly painted figure holds a shield with either one of the instruments of the passion or a text from the Benedictus with the opening sentences from the Te Deum on either side. This is only the cream on the cake so far as Southwold is concerned, however. The church has a medieval pulpit and also a great medieval screen, erected in 1480 with representations of the angels, apostles and prophets along its base. It is hard to remember that this was hierarchically merely a chapel of ease, subservient to St Margaret’s Reydon, and the responsibility of the Cluniac priory of Thetford. Examination of two hundred testaments up to 1547 show that the parishioners here had contributed to the work of rebuilding, but careful examination of the carvings show the badges of Henry IV and his queen — the swan, the ermine and the crowned leopards. The rose-en-soleil badge of Edward IV is also there. These monarchs were lords of the manor of Southwold by inheritance and may have contributed to the rebuilding. It also has an Elizabethan communion table — a square table with flaps that convert it into a round one. We also visited Long Melford church, for which we have a sixteenth century guide in Roger Martyn’s Reminiscences, another ‘cloth’ merchants’ church, largely built by Sir John Clopton, (who had a text confirming this carved in the stone around the outside of the nave) but also other powerful local families like the Martyns. It is full of interesting details — the painting of the Jesus on the arch of John Cloptons tomb with the banner, ‘Who believes in me shall not die . . . ’ Then there are the windows with recovered medieval glass of friends and relatives of the Cloptons, including the Talbot duchesses (said to have inspired Tenniel in his drawing of the duchess in Alice in Wonderland) and also many other important figures. Then there is the tomb of Sir William Cordell, Solicitor General, Mary’s Speaker and Elizabeth’s Master of the Rolls who rebuilt Melford Place and entertained Elizabeth there in 1578. The Clopton chantry chapel also has a long poem, attributed to Lydgate ‘O Jesu mercy, with support of thy grace...remember our complaint. During our life with many great trespass, by many wrong path where we have miswent...’

The last of the Suffolk churches to consider here is St John the Baptist at Needham Market, more modest, a chapel of ease, interestingly set out on a southeast/northwest axis, which was probably dictated by the existing main street. It was rebuilt between 1458 and 1500 at the expense of the bishop of Ely, William Grey, although locals left money in their testaments towards the repair and rebuilding. It fell into disrepair in the 19th century because most locals had become non-conformists, but eventually money was raised to restore the church especially the single hammer beam roof, which had long been concealed under an arched plaster ceiling. Angels were added here at this time at the expense of one Dodds.

Romney Marsh churches represent a different tradition and one in which dual sacred and secular use can be clearly delineated. The church of St George at Ivychurch, which is possibly the largest village church in Kent, has a present structure which is mainly fourteenth century and has three parallel aisles of equal length from the west to the east without any structural division. This island church is one of those used for smuggling, the rector, allegedly being met at the door one Sunday by the sexton who said, ‘Bain’t be no service s’morning, parson, pulpit be full of baccy and the vestry be full o’ brandy’.

Secular use went on. In World War II it was an ARP and fire post and the Home Guard kept their nightly watch from its tower. It is still used for the harvest supper and sheep sometimes graze in the churchyard. Newchurch St Peter and St Paul, another large church, is very similar, with a big map of the parish with the field owners named and their boundaries marked. St Mary in the Marsh is mainly thirteenth century and of course once but no longer painted. St Nicholas, at New Romney, with its Norman pillars and cathedral like length and plastered roof served secular purposes as it was the venue in which the Cinque Ports held many of their meetings: the 19th century stained glass windows have maritime themes. St Clement, at Old Romney, is a small church isolated in the fields, with Norman pillars and box Pews, an 18th century minstrels’ gallery. It has an interesting arrangement of tie beams and kingposts holding up the roof. It still has its 17th century painted wooden boards with the Lords Prayer, the Creed and Commandments. The original stone altar with its five consecration crosses, removed at the Reformation when stone altars were taken down, was found in 1929 in use as a step to the north porch. It has been restored to its original use. The little church evidently had a rood screen, the entrance to which was uncovered in the 19th century and bits of it still remain; there are traces of wall paintings and squints.

In Beverley, the Minster — grander than some cathedrals — is not precisely its medieval self as it was restored by Nicholas Hawksmoor. Some of the details of the medieval church remain in the carvings, splendid ‘label stops’ each with its own small story — dentists at work on a tooth, musicians and so on — and fabulous Misericords and a splendid late 15th century tomb of Henry Percy, the fourth earl of Northumberland killed by rebels in 1489. The Victorian stained glass windows— mostly by Hardman and Co and Clayton and Bell — are fine examples of their time.

What happens when a building complex becomes no more than a site, destined for tourist education? The first problem is to decide what period is most significant. The royal abbey of Fontevraud where so many English royals, including Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine are buried is being extensively manicured — scaffolding all over the place. Now another World Heritage site, its eight-century long religious role is dominant, perhaps in this case not a difficult decision. It was a complicated establishment with many institutions under one overarching mantle — houses for lepers, for fallen women, an infirmary and so on, and all under the direction of an abbess (thirty six mostly royal ladies) to whom all the religious including the monks owed obedience. Some fourteen of the abbesses were princesses, five of royal blood including in the 15th century Mary of Brittany and Anne of Orleans sister of Louis XII and in the sixteenth century Louise de Bourbon great-aunt of Mary Stuart. Quite often they came to the post as widows. Some were born on the wrong side of the blanket, others were simply surplus to requirements. The buildings were used as a prison for more than a hundred years after the Revolution and the main church was divided off into floors of dormitories for the convicts, but all this has been stripped out and little but photographs remain. The medieval and early modern tiles and the wall paintings in the Chapter House, which show the various abbesses as prayerful onlookers at the great scenes of the Christian saga, are being lovingly restored. The effigies on the tombs of the royals are painted too, but the great nave is not. The parish church outside the walls, however, has extensive wall paintings and painted images of kings and queens on the bosses. The mortuary chapel is equally impressive.

The re-use of buildings raises other questions. At Honfleur, the Maritime museum is in the former church of St Stephen, once the sailors’ chapel with a simple single nave which has been awkwardly cut up to house the various relics, including some interesting naive battle scenes. Churches still in use like that of Saint-Catherine in Honfleur often have a splendid and confusing mixture of old and new —16th century carvings of 16thc musical instruments, somewhat impeded by the flags hung all over the balconies and elsewhere in honour of some gathering or other but very well illustrating the living institution rather than the Memorial.

The issue of re-use and remodeling of sites is nicely exemplified at Herstmonceux castle. Now seven kilometers from the sea it was once on the edge of the marshlands with an inlet that came almost as far as the castle This explains its site. The great storms of the thirteenth century, however, accelerated the silting up of the marshes. The present structure dates from the fifteenth century when building in brick was a novelty and Herstmonceux is said to be the oldest important brick building in Britain. But do not think that what you see is what was originally built. No. The internal arrangements of the present castle are neither medieval nor Tudor — when there were four small courtyards. After the failure of the main Dacre (Fiennes) of the south male line in the late seventeenth century the estate was sold off and after 1740 the castle was left uninhabited. It decayed into a picturesque ruin, popular for picnic parties in the nineteenth century and passed from hand to hand until, in 1911, it was sold to Claude Lowther who decided to restore the building as a home. He had his own ideas of the appropriate appearance of the inner courtyard and moved some of the ruins so that there was a single large inner courtyard. To redecorate in appropriate style, he bought woodwork and panelling from other historic houses, and the main staircase was acquired from Theobalds, reputedly originally constructed for a visit of Elizabeth by William Cecil. After a period when it was used as a key public Observatory, it is now largely decommissioned as an Observatory, has been sold to Queens University, Canada, as an international student study centre and open for guided tours. They show you the oubliette beneath the floor of one of the lecture rooms — below the level of the moat it is provided with a toilet. Was this consideration for prisoners or a preference to keep the smell level down in the room above?

Lowther’s obsessions were shared and shaped by the Imperial late Victorian and Edwardian age. Similar work was done to the castle on Lindisfarne in 1903 by the young Edwin Lutyens, who turned the castle into a home, which it had never been, with small intimate rooms. If necessary, and if you had the money, you could start from scratch. On the island of Rum we were fascinated by Kinloch Castle — entirely built in 1900-1 to Tudor specifications but with all the latest mod cons. Sir George Bulloch was a man whose money came from industry, who was buying his way into the top ten thousand (come and shoot on my Scottish Island and enjoy all the comforts of home). The local stone was rejected as unsuitable and a special quay was built to enable red sandstone to be imported from Arran. The use of the island had thus come full circle from its early lords, who kept it as a royal hunting reserve, through its complete depopulation in the 1820s to a community of small dependent peasantry who lived at the whim of the owner and worked as he directed. Bulloch imported soil from Ayrshire for a garden, which was full of exotic imports. Since 1957 when his heirs gifted it to Scottish Natural Heritage the island has been seen primarily as a wildlife sanctuary. The present role of the castle is therefore somewhat problematic. It is a splendid time capsule full of antiques and slightly dubious 16th and 17th century paintings as it appealed to the wealthy dilettante of 1900 but its use as a Heritage building is in conflict with the island’s roe as a sanctuary.

The purpose of preserving buildings is not solely to create an idea of the past and of an identity — although that must be a part of the whole. It should surely also impress visitors with the aims and aspirations of the social group that produced them. One house which seems to create this vision of the Restoration gentry, the oligarchy that ruled Britain as it rose to world dominance, is Wimpole Hall, in Cambridgeshire, a stunning mid to late 17th century house which is said to have introduced the new style of building into England. Thomas Chicheley, whose imposing tomb dominates the family chapel in the parish church, was responsible for what was the very latest plan. His successors were not so impressed as to refrain from tinkering with it, so it is now somewhat overlaid by the eighteenth century work. The Harleys, earl of Oxford, made it a vital centre of art and learning with a stunning library (alas, one can admire it only from afar). The description of it as a ‘Vatican’ is not far from the truth and the illusionist, tromp l’oeil, murals in many of the rooms are as good as any in the palaces of the Bourbons.

Burghley House, which must be one of the grandest houses in the country and now belongs to Trustees, impresses not by its representation of a particular period but by the durability of elite family fortunes over the centuries. The building was started by William Cecil, later Lord Burghley. He spent forty years as Elizabeth’s principal advisor and was able to amass enough to set up two dynasties. His elder and less able son inherited Burghley while his younger, Robert, became earl of Salisbury. The elder line, earls of Exeter as they became, never played as important a role in politics as the Salisburys but always had the money to keep up with the latest trends and were often careful managers of their estates. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century they were part of the households of Queen Victoria and George V and families from which honorary governors-general and the like were selected. The 6th marquis in fact won a gold medal at the Olympics for hurdling and was a great promoter of international sports. His younger brother ultimately the seventh marquis, however, settled on the ranch the family bought in Canada, and the present marquis still lives in the USA.

Some houses are more of a single period, of course. Ickworth, the Hervey house, built in 1794-5 by the 4th earl of Bristol and bishop of Derry (a unique combination!) with the central part as an oval with two curving wings, was not much changed. As a design it did not catch on but the interior is an interesting mirror of late Victorian taste.

Visiting all these country houses, in fact, gives you a different perspective on politics over the past few centuries. These were the places close to the hearts of the rulers; these were the memorials on which they lavished time and money; these were the fruits for which they schemed and swindled. Some had a passion for beautiful things, others a competitive urge to be at the top of the fashion ladder. William Cecil had intended Burghley to be a ‘prodigy’ house and it took most of his lifetime to complete (although of course he also had Wimbledon which was generally handier for the Court). It is possible that he was his own architect although even for a man of his prodigious capacity for work that may be an overstatement but he certainly supervised closely. Since then, of course, later earls of Exeter made alterations particularly the fifth earl (1648-1700) who made several grand tours and brought back many of the statues and tapestries, ending massively in debt. The gardens, laid out (inevitably) by Capability Brown, provide long vistas of the house while the deer herds remind one of that other aristocratic passion, the hunt.

Re-use and rebuilding is the rule, and decay and restoration the norm in most places, however, so that the old is overlaid and cut up so that it is hard to understand. Newburgh Priory originally a house of Augustinian canons, grand enough to entertain Margaret Tudor on her way north to marry James IV of Scotland has, since the dissolution, been a private home and the Church is a fragmentary ruin open to the sky. Henry VIII sold it to the Bellasis family, later Lords Faulconberg, who held it until the 19th century, when, extinct in the male line, the property passed to the Wombwells. One of the Faulconbergs took, as his second wife, Oliver Cromwell’s daughter Mary and extraordinarily there is a tomb up under the roof, which is held to contain Cromwell’s remains, rescued after they had been dug up. The family had become recusants and so the alterations to the property in the eighteenth century were not as dramatic as elsewhere. It is a strange irony to have on the walls of the Black gallery, portraits of daughters who became nuns, cheek by jowl with Oliver Cromwell. The room used for court sessions in the early modern period was remodeled and reused by later military owners.

These problems are not unique to the earlier period. The same type of difficulty occurs when one considers the reuse of more modern sites. At Bradford there is a new World Heritage site, the nineteenth century Saltaire mills and village. Titus Salt pioneered Alpaca yarn, and followed Owen in building a village/town for his workpeople which was a model industrial community intended to provide all they needed for social living, in a careful hierarchically graded way. He provided quality housing with sewage to reduce the dangers of cholera, baths and wash-house, shops, a Club and Institute offering many facilities, churches, chapels, schools, hospitals, almshouses and brass bands, works outings, cricket teams, libraries, horticultural societies and adult education — but no drink, no pigeon-raising and the like. A new moral order was to arise — Christian paternalism, inspired by new technology — and its relics are still to be seen today, although since its closure in 1985 the mill buildings have been converted into offices and galleries and shops. It is hard to imagine 4,000 people working here and producing 30,000 yards of cloth a day, now that the rows of machines have disappeared leaving only a vast covered space. What did the workers think of all this? The classical building Salt had built, which still houses the Congregational Church, sited opposite the main mill buildings, could hold 600 and had a regular congregation of 400 in the 19th century, so some, but not all, must have conformed. Why not? Subsidised meals in a pleasant dining hall must have been a bonus. In 1871 the village had 824 completed houses and 4,300 people so that some of the workforce must still have come in from Bradford on the railway. Certainly, the Victorians, including prime ministers and monarchs, visited it as an example of good industrial practice.

Tourism and recreation, however, do help to preserve some of the great works of the past. The canals, which helped make Bradford the centre it was, with the power from the water and the barges working their way up and down the engineering masterpiece of the five locks, are happily still in use although mostly for tourism.