Mettingham Castle: An Interpretation of a Survey of 1562 (original) (raw)
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The English Great House and its Setting, c. 1100-c. 1800. 'A necessary and a pleasant thing'
Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2018
Andrew Boorde, writing in the 1540s, advised the builder of a new house to choose a site which was close to supplies of water and wood but also had a good view. He further recommended having a garden and orchard, while a park full of deer and rabbits was ‘a necessary and a pleasant thing to be annexed to a mansion’. Boorde was emphasising the importance of both practical and aesthetic factors in the siting of a great house, and the interplay between these factors also influenced the evolution of houses, their gardens and parks over time. This developmental journey - from medieval manor house in a village to Georgian country house in a landscaped park - forms the subject matter of this important new book. Drawing on a wide range of source materials - architectural and topographical, written and pictorial - historian Jane Croom explains how new houses were built, existing houses were remodelled and their immediate surroundings were redesigned between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries. The book starts with a thematic overview of great houses and their settings and then examines their development chronologically. Consideration is given to the: layout and appearance of new houses, gardens and parks at different periods; development of houses to become more outward-looking, symmetrical and compact; updating of older houses to be, or appear to be, more modern; changing arrangements and uses of rooms, and the transformation of gardens and parks into appropriate backdrops to houses. Changes to the wider landscape of fields and settlements are also explored, including the consolidation of estates, enclosure of open fields, and creation of parks. Reference is made to some 100 different case studies and the book is extensively illustrated with over 300 photographs of extant houses and reproductions of paintings, engravings, maps and plans depicting earlier or lost buildings and landscapes. There are also informative appendices, a glossary of terms and a comprehensive bibliography. This work will appeal to anyone with an interest in historic houses or designed landscapes, whether as a scholar, heritage professional, member of the National Trust or English Heritage, or general reader.
Conceptions of domestic space in the long term – the example of the English medieval hall
The plan of the late medieval hall in England is well known from the evidence of buildings of the thirteenth century and later. However, examination of excavated timber buildings suggests that the main elements of the hall plan can be identified from at least the late tenth century. The persistence of the plan over a period of at least 600 years may obscure the fact that the conception of the hall and details of its form were in a state of continuous change. Instead of beginning with an examination of the form of the hall, the study starts by considering what the room represented in social terms. An appreciation of the changing conceptions of lordship, community and honour allows a more subtle analysis of the development of the hall in the period before 1200. A combination of written sources with excavated remains to elucidate complex problems is one of the distinguishing features of medieval archaeology.
Little Wenham Hall, A Reinterpretation
Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History vol. XXXIX pt. 2, 1998
Little Wenham Hall is regarded as one of the most important medieval domestic buildings in England on three counts. Firstly, it is probably the earliest English building constructed largely of brick; secondly, it has been regarded as one of the classic examples of a 'first-floor hall'; and thirdly, it has been seen as an important instance of the progression of a lordly residence from a castle keep to a fortified manor house, representing an important step in the evolution of the English manor house. This paper re-examined the nature of the building and the identity of the original builder.
The Courtyard and The Tower: Contexts and Symbols in the Development of Late Medieval Great Houses
Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 1993
The final two centuries of the Middle Ages are conventionally considered a period in which castles and castle-building were in decline. 'The Decline of the Castle'and 'Decline 3 are the titles of chapters dealing with this period in books written by Allen Brown. 1 In each case the contrast with what went before is strongly emphasised: the previous chapters are named 'The Perfected Castle 3 and 'Apogee 3. 2 In the same vein, these final centuries after c. 1300 have been described as 'the period of decline in use but survival in fantasy 3 in a recent authoritative account, significantly entitled The Decline of the Castle. 3 Our view of this period is different. We consider that the castles of the later Middle Ages show a steady development, not a decline, and the main elements of that development can already be traced in buildings of the'Golden Age 3. 4 OUR THEMES, the symbols of the courtyard and the tower, are visible in the arrangements of 1283 at Caernarvon. 5 The King's Gate of this castle was a novel and complex affair placed to divide the interior of the castle into two halves. The entrance passageway beyond the central polygonal chamber directed traffic at right angles westwards into a lower courtyard. 6 This contained the principal hall and its services, and a series of accommodation lodges in mural towers. All this is a conventional arrangement: what is much odder is that this lower courtyard contained also the visual focus of the castle, the Eagle Tower, emphasised particularly from the outside by its greater size and by its termination in a triple crown of turrets, originally given additional importance by the placing of sculptures of eagles on its battlements. The purpose of this striking design is a strong statement of the fulfilment of the Dream of Macsen Wledig in the person of Edward I and his son, a statement whose propaganda must have been obvious to the defeated Welsh aristocrats. The symbolism of all this has been examined by Dr Arnold Taylor, 7 who further identified the Eagle Tower as the intended residence of the king's Justiciar of Wales and first constable of the castle, Edward's loyal supporter Otto de Grandson, and his conclusions seem now to be accepted. However, what has not been explained is why this significant element of the symbolism of the castle was placed in the lower ward, and not (where one might expect) in the inner bailey. While the Justiciar was provided for in the Eagle Tower, accommodation for the constable or his military deputy was arranged around the hall on the top floor of the King's Gate. 8 The two royal officials-keeper of Caernarvon and viceroy of the principality-were thus catered for at the main entrance and in the lower courtyard. The third household, to be accommodated in the unfinished ranges in the upper ward, must thus be that of the king himself. The arrangement closely resembles the bipartite design of Conway. 9 Here the hall and lodgings occupy the lower courtyard entered from the town, while the more remote eastern bailey formed a tiny courtyard house for the king and queen, with an external gate to the waterside similar to the placing of the Queen's Gate at Caernarvon. The additional element in this comparison is the placing of the Eagle Tower in the lower bailey at Caernarvon.
Dwellings, identities & homes: European housing culture from the Viking Age to the Renaissance, 2014
In late medieval England the houses of the wealthier peasantry & those of the aristocracy were built to a standard plan, with a central open hall, residential accommodation at the 'upper' end & service rooms at the 'lower' end. Archaeologists have typically interpreted the spatial hierarchies displayed in these houses as a reflection of the social hierarchies that operated within them. This chapter argues that whilst this was undoubtedly the case in aristocratic households, peasant households were less hierarchically ordered. An alternative interpretation of the domestic plan is offered here, based on a division of the house into perceived 'clean' & 'dirty' ends
Archaeological Journal, 2017
The concept of the first-floor hall was introduced in 1935, but Blair’s paper of 1993 cast doubt on many of those buildings which had been identified as such. Following the recognition of Scolland’s Hall, Richmond Castle as an example of a hall at first-floor level, the evidence for buildings of this type is reviewed (excluding town houses and halls in the great towers of castles, where other issues apply). While undoubtedly a number of buildings have been mistakenly identified as halls, there is a significant group of structures for which there are very strong grounds to classify as first-floor halls. The growth of masonry architecture in elite secular buildings, particularly after the Norman Conquest, allowed halls to be constructed on the first floor. The key features of these are identified and the reasons for constructing the hall at this level – prestige and security – are recognized. The study of these buildings allows two further modifications to the Blair thesis: in some houses, halls and chambers were integrated in a single block at an early date, and the basic idea of the medieval domestic plan was already present by the late eleventh century.