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

being built, under instruction, by Saxon slaves. Soon these mottes had a lower outer enclosure known as the bailey, which was used for stabling and accommodating any garrison.⁹ The most important of this first generation of castles were royal, a product of the systematic imposition of Norman sovereignty on England. They were erected in strategic locations to support field tactics and, crucially, in county towns (fig. 38). Many were built on the sites of former Saxon royal or aristocratic residences, most usually in a corner of the town walls (fig. 39). The novelty of these buildings was that they were not merely defensive residences; they were centres of administration, a symbol of new overlordship and a warning to the native inhabitants to submit. As the Conqueror criss-crossed England he granted out land to his followers. The first grants were military commands intended to consolidate Norman power. A quarter of England was granted to the king’s tenants-in-chief, some 170 or so of William’s companions. Most of these men built castles, first as safe and secure places to live, but in due course as places from which to administer their lands and to enforce peace. While the tenants-in-chief kept about half of the land themselves, the rest they granted to some 6,200 vassals, knights and men-at-arms. Of these, the majority held lands valued at less than £1 a year, but a large elite, some 940, owned lands worth between £5 and £45 a year. A good number of these built small castles, too. Ultimately, this meant that in the period to 1130 there might have been as many as 500 castles in use, half of which were in private hands. This was a big change from the situation before the Conquest either in England or Normandy, where very few had had a fortified house.¹⁰ Every one of this first generation of timber castles has been rebuilt, but there is no doubt that they were functional structures, primarily military buildings – a necessary and mechanistic part of the conquest and colonisation of England. In the autumn of 1066 just such a castle was built at Canterbury. A tower was raised up on a motte surrounded by a ditch, beyond which was a palisaded outer bailey, covering in all perhaps 5 per cent of the city. It overwhelmed the town and must have accommodated mounted knights as well as foot soldiers (fig. 39). At Abinger, Surrey, there was a castle belonging to an under-tenant at the other end of the social scale. The 35ft-diameter top of its motte has been excavated, revealing the plan of the original timber stockade and small tower. It is possible to visualise what these towers looked like by visiting the freestanding bell tower at St Mary’s, Pembridge, Herefordshire, built between 1115 and 1150. Here, in the middle of this sleepy village, is a massive timber-built pylon with a weighty scissor-braced internal structure – about as close as we can come to envisaging the Conqueror’s timber towers (fig. 40). They cannot have been comfortable or elegant places to live.¹¹

Fig. 38 Cathedrals and castles built 1050–1100. It is very noticeable that at this date there were few churches and abbeys in the west or north, and that the number of castles north of York is markedly less dense.

Fig. 39 Canterbury, Kent, in the early Middle Ages. The cathedral lay in the north-eastern corner of the city – English cathedrals and abbeys are rarely placed in the middle. In the south, in its own enclosure, was the castle.

      Fig. 40 Freestanding bell tower at St Mary’s, Pembridge, Herefordshire. This late 14th-century tower is supported internally by eight mighty oak posts forming a square. They are braced diagonally and horizontally up to the pyramidal roof. Though this is a much later example, the footprints of such massive timber constructions have been excavated and dated to the 11th and 12th centuries.

      Two buildings started by William, however, were – the White Tower, London, and its sister in Colchester. These colossal structures were palaces for the duke-made-king. They contained a suite of reception rooms and a large chapel in an overwhelming stone-built tower. Such towers had been built for rulers before in the Loire valley and, indeed, in Normandy itself, but not quite on this scale or to this level of sophistication. In fact, scale was integral to their purpose; the parapets of the White Tower were raised far above its roof line to create a more domineering silhouette (fig. 37). The population of London, as the largest and most important city, and that of Colchester, guarding the east flank of England from troublesome Scandinavia, would be in no doubt that their new king was a mighty and determined master. Yet these were sophisticated residences, too. They had fireplaces with chimneys, garderobes (latrines) and simple, bold architectural settings for thrones, tables and chairs. Furnished with rich textiles, brightly painted wooden furniture and sparkling with candlelit gold plate, these palatial towers were intended to be a pleasure to live in as well as a mighty image of royal power. The White Tower ranks as one of the most important buildings in English architectural history. Its direct influence was to be felt in the design of castles for more than a century and its effects on London continued for more than half a millennium.¹²

      Great Churches: The First Phase

      In England and Normandy of the 11th century there was no hard distinction between Church and state. While the pope kept an eye on doctrine, lay rulers effectively governed their national Churches. Both William and Edward the Confessor were interested in Church welfare and reform, and welcomed a series of reforming decrees starting in 1049 that slowly transformed canon law and liturgy in Western Europe. William had promoted reform in Normandy from about 1050 through his chief religious advisor, the Italian abbot Lanfranc, one of the greatest intellectuals of his day, and when William sailed from Normandy in 1066 he did so under the banner of the pope. Once in England, William used his power of appointment and patronage ruthlessly. He appointed Lanfranc as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1070 and, in a series of councils between 1072 and 1076, the structure, governance and morals of the English Church were reformed.¹³ This was as much a political as a moral crusade; with William’s support Lanfranc reorganised the boundaries of Saxon dioceses, moving cathedrals from the countryside to towns and ensuring that the diocese became, like the county, a unit of government control. So the Saxon cathedral at Dorchester-on-Thames moved to Lincoln, Selsey to Chichester and Elmham to Norwich, via Thetford. By the reign of Henry I there were 17 dioceses, with boundaries that remained nearly unchanged until the Reformation (fig. 41).

      Fig. 41 English dioceses in 1100; several, such as Lincoln and York, were huge compared to their modern size.

      Within a period of less than 50 years each of these dioceses was to have an entirely new cathedral, perhaps the largest and most ambitious programme in English architectural history. It is easy to imagine that this meant the invention of a new type and shape of church, but there was no simple change from ‘Saxon’ cathedrals to ‘Norman’ ones. The sixteen cathedrals built between around 1070 and 1130 were not identikit structures; each mixed stylistic and liturgical influences in its own way according to the preferences of its bishop, the resources available and local traditions. This had probably not been Lanfranc’s intention. He had hoped to abolish Anglo-Saxon forms and traditions, and bring the liturgical and architectural life of English cathedrals into line with the most advanced thinking on the continent. In this, Canterbury was to be the model. Lanfranc’s Canterbury Cathedral was the most derivative of all the great churches built after the Conquest. Lanfranc had been the abbot of St Etienne at Caen and had overseen the reconstruction of the abbey church there; his cathedral at Canterbury was closely modelled on his old church, right