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

would divide their land in two: the land worked by peasants, in exchange for cash rents and for labour, and the land farmed by the landlord himself – the demesne. At the centre of this stood the landlord’s manor, which originally meant simply a house but later came to mean all the rights and property owned by the lord. Agricultural production in central England was eventually regulated by rules that seem to have developed concurrently with villages. Every household had its own landholding equally dispersed across the village in one or other of the large ‘common’ fields made up of strips of land (furlongs). Each year one of the two or three common fields would be left fallow and on this would be grazed sheep. The following year the fallow field, enriched by manure from livestock, would be turned over for sowing and one of the others used for grazing the sheep. The principle behind this was twofold: first, when the land was being cropped, it was in sole ownership, but when it lay fallow it was in common use. Second, to achieve common grazing the sheep had to be held communally in a single flock, although they were individually owned. Thus the system relied on close communal cooperation and mutual trust in order to obtain maximum economic benefit. The trust extended to landlords, too, as the demesne lands also benefited from communal flocks.²⁵ This system was very successful and contributed to a doubling of England’s population to 2.3 million between the time of Alfred and the Domesday survey of 1086. Agriculture yielded a surplus to feed the 10 per cent who now lived in towns, and peasants could pay cash rents to their lords. But, crucially, from the 8th century the common fields system was based on the folding of sheep. The development of breeds with fleeces better than those of the French or the Flemish created England’s staple export – wool. Wool was to make England the richest country in Europe, with a strong and stable silver currency.²⁶ Much of this wealth flowed into the hands of the landlords, who invested it in building houses and churches for themselves. At Goltho, Lincolnshire, a Saxon lord’s residence has been excavated between the church and the village. Goltho was occupied from about 900 until the middle of the 12th century. The excavators found, beneath a Norman castle, a whole series of Saxon buildings belonging to the landlords of Goltho, who knew the place as ‘Bullington’. In the late Saxon period there was a great communal hall with a separate residential lodging house next door, a kitchen and several domestic buildings. The whole was surrounded by a deep ditch and a rampart topped with a timber palisade (fig. 27). The use of earthworks and timber palisading was increasingly adopted after 1000. The prehistoric mound at Silbury constructed in the third millennium BC was used in the 1010s and 20s as a fortified residence. Indeed it is possible that many so-called mottes, traditionally dated to the years following 1066, might in fact have been used as fortified residences by Saxon lords.²⁷

Fig. 28 Portchester, Hampshire. The Roman coastal fort here had probably never been completely abandoned and some parts within the Roman walls had been ploughed and used for crops. During the 10th century a substantial house was built, partly of stone, the residence of a thegn – a man of knightly rank.

A few residences were built of stone, as at Portchester Castle, Hampshire. Here, perhaps from the 980s, a lordly residence was constructed within the Roman walls, which stand to this day. A large timber-aisled hall and three smaller timber buildings, a well and a latrine building were arranged around a courtyard with a freestanding stone tower in the corner (fig. 28). Here, as at Goltho, the hall would have been for communal feasting and entertainment, and the smaller halls for the lord and his lady’s more intimate use. In the construction of their great halls these fortified residences both used the same structural techniques that had been common since Roman times.^28 But, looking forward, these residences were part of a very important shift from the Saxon concept of communally defended places, such as King Alfred’s burghs, to private fortified dwellings.

The great residences did not stand alone. They lay at the centre of agricultural estates and were accompanied by farm buildings, the most important of which was the watermill. This was a significant source of revenue, as tenants were obliged to use their lord’s mill and pay a charge for the privilege. By 1086 there were 6,082 mills in England, many of which dated back to the 7th century. The technology was Roman, and it is likely that after 410 watermilling did not die out. The principle was simple: fast-flowing water powered a waterwheel that turned a mill stone on top of another stone. Corn was poured into a hole in the top stone and came out at the sides as meal. The waterwheel could either lie horizontally in the stream or, much more efficiently, be sited vertically. A large and ambitious mill, probably connected to a late 7th-century royal manor house, was excavated at Old Windsor in the 1950s. It had three enormous waterwheels set in a ditch (or leet) 20ft wide and 12ft deep. The leet was cut from a bend in the Thames three-quarters of a mile away. Many much smaller places, such as Wharram Percy (fig. 26), would have had less ambitious mills erected by landlords and used by the whole community.^29

      The Rise of Local Churches

      For many Saxon landowners who were planning a village, building a manor house and founding a church would be inextricably entwined as these were all part of an economic, social and religious enterprise. Before the 10th century minsters had dominated the religious landscape, but by the 940s secular lords, with their coffers swelled by profits from their lands, increasingly began to commission their own churches. Many parish churches today have their origins as estate churches of an Anglo-Saxon landlord, which is why many parishes have boundaries that are the same as those of Saxon estates. The remarkably well-preserved church of St Peter, Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire, is one such building. Built originally as an estate church next to a lordly fortified enclosure, it comprised a central tower flanked by a chancel in the east and a baptistery to the west (fig. 31). The chancel and baptistery were two-storeyed, and the tower had three storeys. This was not just a place of worship; it was a symbol of the lord’s status, a place for his heir to be baptised.

Fig. 29 All Saints’, Earls Barton, Northamptonshire. Like St Peter’s, Barton-upon-Humber, the tower of All Saints’ is set with a pattern of long thin stones used by the masons both structurally and decoratively as if they were timber beams. As at St Peter’s, the rest of the church is of a later date.

      All Saints’, Earls Barton, Northamptonshire (fig. 29), is another example of a magnificent church conceived and built by a Saxon noble. What is now a parish church originally had its nave on the ground floor of the tower and a small chancel to its east. The floors above the nave are referred to as a belfry; the term today is solely associated with bells but in Middle English it meant something like ‘place of security’. This was perhaps where relics, vestments and plate presented to the church by its patron were stored.

      Late Saxon stone-built church towers were not only status symbols and strong rooms for their patrons but were also linked to the evolving church liturgy. In the development of parish funeral rites the use of bells became increasingly important. Bells were rung as the body left the church as well as when it reached the graveside, drawing God’s attention to the prayers of the faithful and sending the deceased’s soul forth to heaven.³⁰ Some belfries, such as the one at St Peter’s, Barton, were topped with timber spires. None of these survives today, but at St Mary’s, Sompting, Sussex, the late Saxon spire was rebuilt in the 14th century to the same pattern (fig. 30). Typically, such spires were supported by a central mast resting on a horizontal beam on the tower top; they were almost all shingled and had a characteristic shape known as a Rhenish helm. This type of pinnacle, and the central mast construction, link the design of these spires