20 - The Medieval Period

None of this was disturbed by either of the conquests of the eleventh century - the Danish and the Norman. But the Norman Conquest of 1066 did usher in a new era of conspicuous construction in the way of castles, great monasteries, palaces, both ecclesiastical and lay, and stone halls for residences.

The ancient earth and timber fortifications of European tradition survived in the shape of the motte (mound)-and-bailey (farmyard) castles built by the new Norman landlords on their estates. They were cheap and quick to build but were not necessary since the English peasantry did not rise up against their foreign masters.

But the other structures, being built of stone, have survived in the landscape and today remains as the most common and potent symbols of our past. One type of castle was re-introduced by the Normans and this was the enclosure castle last used in Britain by the Romans in their Saxon Shore forts. Like the Roman type, the Norman castle had mural (wall) towers but the use of the major wall tower to house the gateway was a new departure.

The major innovation, however, was the introduction by the Normans of the great tower which contained all the elements of a noble household piled one on top of another. The White Tower in the Tower of London is the best-known example and contains the Great Hall, the chapel, the storeroom, the lord's chamber and accommodation for the bodyguard all on different floors.

Later castles were variations, modifications or rebuildings of these three original types with the exception of the concentric castle, one castle placed within the fortifications of another, used, in a variety of forms, by Edward I in his conquest of Wales. This type of castle was developed by French castellans in the Holy Land during the Crusades.

The great monasteries were constructed by the Benedictine, Cluniac and Cistercian orders of monks as well as by less well-known communities. The Benedictine plan with the claustral buildings and church set around a garth or courtyard was the usual arrangement adopted by the other major orders. Monastic orders became great landowners as donations from royal and aristocratic benefactors multiplied and the monks took advantage of their economic power to pioneer agricultural and industrial initiatives on their estates.

Some monasteries became centres of learning. Abbots and priors were classed as tenants-in-chief and were employed by the king in negotiations and in council. Their churches were innovative, built in the latest architectural fashions, while the luxurious claustral buildings were usually of stone and provided with modern facilities. A good many of these buildings survive in part to us today and allow us to glimpse something of the life of a large and wealthy community of the time.

Both the kings and the bishops built palaces but little of the royal ones remain apart from Hampton Court which belongs to the very end of the Middle Ages. Bishops' palaces are better represented in our countryside with perhaps the palace of St Davids in Pembrokeshire the one that best rewards study. These palaces demonstrate very clearly the amount of wealth that was available to such people at the time and points up the very great inequalities that were characteristic of the time.

We also have buildings that represent the prosperity of the middling classes, the merchant class, the landowners who had houses both in towns and the country. These take the form of residences, sometimes built with secure chambers. Those that survive from the earlier part of the Middle Ages are in stone, but from the second half of the period some timber houses remain.

Two types of house are common: the first-floor hall entered at first-floor level with a secure ground-floor or undercroft that could only be accessed from inside the house; and the ground floor hall, the traditional form that had a long and ancient ancestry. The first-floor hall appears in towns, in manor-houses, in monasteries and in castles and was equipped with wall fireplaces, vices (spiral staircases) and loos. Where security was not an issue, the undercrofts had exterior entrances and were used for a variety of purposes as in the buildings around a monastic cloister. Ground-floor halls had the traditional central floor fireplaces and were sometimes equipped with (minstrel) galleries placed over the twin entrances at one end of the hall that led to the exterior door and the kitchens and other domestic offices.

Other buildings used stone, buildings that might have been thought to have had fairly humble functions but were erected by institutions like monasteries or by wealthy magnates and included inns, bridges, lock-ups, colleges, hospitals, almshouses, warehouses and gamekeeper's and bailiff's houses. And of course there were the churches, again constructed by monasteries/bishops and by landowners on their estates.

Church architecture displays a succession of styles but the main distinction is between the Romanesque style, fashionable until round about AD1200 and the Gothic. The Romanesque is distinguished in the main by round-headed doors and windows and a variety of carved decoration that can include grotesque animals and human figures that are expressive rather than realistic.

The Gothic employs the pointed opening and arch, uses more plant motifs in its carving and figures that are realistic. Early English Gothic was succeeded by Decorated Gothic and Perpendicular Gothic and Tudor Gothic. Very roughly, each style occupied about a century.

In the countryside, almost all of the prairie-like character of early medieval agriculture with its enormous fields has been swept away by the change to the enclosed fields that we are familar with today. These changes took place at different times in different parts of the country, some areas being enclosed during or after the fourteenth century but in others the 'open-field' system survived until the close of the Middle Ages.

The same goes for the villages. Their buildings, with the exception of manor houses, do not survive from the early part of the period, but some timber ones do from the later part. These are generally in the larger villages that grew to some importance and where some villagers could prosper by participation in the wool, meat, leather or some similar burgeoning trade of the late Middle Ages.

Medieval pottery is a common fieldwalking find. It is domestic or industrial ware in the broadest sense. The domestic ware was used in kitchens and consists of bowls, cooking-pots and similar vessels with some tableware like jugs which were usually decorated and used in peasant households. In superior households tableware was normally of metal. Industrial pottery includes dairy crocks, distilling vessels and building materials like roof and floor tiles, ridge-tiles and chimney pots.

 

19 - A Search for Identity
Contents
21 - Suggestions for further reading