Wooler, Northumberland

 

In(n) admiration

At first glance the main Wooler seemed, how shall I put it, a somewhat plain vanilla place, but refreshment drew us here and as we made our way across the street towards a coffee shop I was brought up sharp by the Black Bull Inn. There was nothing ordinary about that enormous double-height bow window nor, now I came to think about it, was the whole facade at all bad – those many-paned upper sashes seemed redolent of Arts and Crafts and the careful contrast between the ashlar stonework around the windows and the rougher masonry surrounding it was also quietly impressive. I began to revise my opinion.

Other details confirm that something creative was going on here in c. 1900. The very good downpipe – fancy brackets, elaborate hopper head with relief decoration – is notable. As are the details in the metalwork on the bow window – the gilded nailheads, Tudor rose and fleur de lys, the ornate but not to showy lettering and mongram, and (yes) the date, 1910.* Pevsner confirms that the inn was remodelled in 1910 by George Reavell, a local architect (he went to school in Alnwick and opened his first office there), who was clearly in touch with current fashions. I don’t know much about him but I see from the Northumberland Archives website that his daughter, Mary Proctor Cahill, trained as an architect and joined him in his practice. So as well as a competent designer he was also one of those who opened up a male-dominated profession to women.

I sipped my coffee reflectively, thinking that I should know better than to underestimate a small English town. I recalled the wise words embossed on the cover of Jonathan Meades’s book Museum Without Walls: ‘There is no such thing as a boring place”.† I will return to Wooler and the work of George Reavell in my next post.

- - - - -

* Click on the image to seew the details more clearly. 

†  Jonathan Meades, Museum Without Walls (Unbound, 2012), first hardback edition.

Etal, Northumberland

Makers and their marks

As a pendant to my two recent posts about different kinds of fortified dwellings in Northumberland (the pele tower and the bastle), here’s a third, a small castle that saw action during the medieval and Tudor border raids, as well as in the border wars between England and Scotland in the 16th century. It’s Etal Castle and my top photograph shows its residential tower. This was built in about 1341 and is probably the oldest part of the castle. In later decades, a roughly rectangular curtain wall was built with this tower at one corner and a gatehouse, which also survives, at the opposite corner. There was one other corner tower and perhaps a further tower, although excavations and surveys have not yet found its remains. Going by the extant remains, the residential tower and gatehouse were substantially built, although the curtain wall was not very thick by castle standards – about 4 feet 6 inches (1.37 m). The building remained in use as a residence until the 18th century.

One of the things that struck me was the abundance of masons’ marks in the residential tower. My lower picture shows two different marks – an equal-armed cross like an addition sign and a pair of triangles joined at one point. Medieval masons often marked the stones they were working on, presumably either to ensure that each worker was paid for the stones they’d cut, or to help with quality control. Many buildings have no such marks; perhaps only a single mason was employed, or the organisation of the job made it obvious who was working where. But on a large project, with several masons working and a senior or master mason supervising them, marks must have been invaluable.

Masons’ marks like the ones at Etal, were designed to be easy to make by cutting straight lines. As there is a limit to the number of marks one can make with a few short, straight lines, there are examples of similar makes appearing in different places and times. This does not necessarily mean that masons travelled hundreds of miles from one job to another (although we know from documentary records that some medieval master masons did travel long distances). It’s more probable that workers in different places devised similar marks independently. It’s difficult to draw clear conclusions about the careers and lives of specific masons from their marks, but, as Matthew Champion points out, such marks are ‘signposts to a better understanding’.*

- - - - -

* Matthew Champion, Medieval Graffiti (Ebury Press, 2015)

Hepple, Northumberland

Poor man’s tower

The pele tower of the kind featured in my previous post was not the only kind of fortified dwelling typical of the border country. There was also the bastle, or bastle house, a type of fortified farmhouse. Bastles (the name derives from the French bastille) usually had two (or sometimes three) storeys. The farmer’s livestock (or at least, the most valuable animals) occupied the ground floor. Above this were the owner’s living quarters, separated from the room below by either a wooden or stone-vaulted ceiling. The walls were usually thick (about a metre) and there were only a few small windows. This simple arrangement has led to some dubbing the bastle the ‘poor man’s tower’, though it is not strictly a tower at all. More than one thousand bastles were built in the border region between 1500 and 1700.

Many bastles fell into disuse after life got easier with the reduction in border raids during the 17th century. Some fell into ruin, some were adapted to make more comfortable dwellings; their solid construction has ensured that they survive well. Woodhouses Bastle, near the village of Hepple, has been preserved in something close to its original form. It’s a simple stone building that would be easy for the casual passer-by to mistake for a barn. The lower room is stone-vaulted, reducing the risk of the bastle being successfully attacked using fire. It sits on a hillside, commanding a broad view from three sides through tiny windows. The largest window on the side in my photograph is protected by bars

The building bears a date stone, carved with some initials and the date 1602. The initials include W.P., probably for the landowner, William Potte. The date may well be the year modifications were made or fortifications completed, since the building itself was probably put up in the 16th century. Soon after 1602, the Stuart king James VI and I set measures in progress to reduce the danger of border raiding. While a secure home remained a valuable asset in remote areas, the heyday of the fortified farmhouse would soon be coming to an end.

Elsdon, Northumberland

Refuge

During the centuries up to c. 1600, the borders of England and Scotland were subject to regular bouts of raiding. Gangs from either side would cross the border and launch plundering attacks on locals, stealing valuables (and especially livestock) or extorting money. This activity was known as reiving, and the border reivers were much feared. They were ruthless and violent, and potential victims did their best to protect their families, their belongings, and their animals. So life in this region was tough, especially in the 16th century when the attacks were at their height. After 1603, when James VI of Scotland also became ruler of England as James I, concerted efforts were made to reduce reiving and punish the gang leaders.

Meanwhile, one common defensive strategy among local landlords, lairds or clergy was to build a tower-house, known in this area as a pele tower. Pele towers had thick walls and few, small windows; access to the towers was difficult because their whole point was to keep people out. The ground floor chamber was often barrel vaulted in stone, to make the upper chamber more secure and to reduce the risk of fire. Another feature was an iron fire basket high up on the exterior, so that the residents could signal that they were being attacked.

Many pele towers survive on either side of the border. Most have been adapted, with the addition of larger windows and better access. Many are now part of another building, such as a larger house built by a later owner. This is the case with the pele tower at Elsdon, with its added big ground-floor window and large adjoining house. It was built as a vicar’s pele in the early-15th century and has walls that are 2.6 m thick and a vaulted ceiling to the ground floor.* Originally it had four storeys, although today there are just three. In the 1820s the current two-storey house was built beside the tower and the enlarged building remained as the local rectory until 1960. The extended building stands as a marker of how the homes of the clergy (and indeed many other members of the middle and upper classes) changed over the centuries between the 15th and the 19th century, from a few small, dark rooms to a comfortable house with plenty of light and many fireplaces. Today the building is in private ownership and is not open to the public, although a notice on the garden wall invites visitors to step a couple of paces inside the gate to see the exterior of the tower.

- - - - -

* Much of the surviving stonework, however, may come from a 16th-century rebuilding.

Lindisfarne, Northumberland

 

Relics and patterns

Lindisfarne Priory is in many ways the archetypal medieval monastery. Its links to the relics of the revered Saint Cuthbert (and therefore with the early history of Christianity in Britain), its isolated position on a near-island that’s cut off from the mainland at high tide, its ruinous state today – all these are the kind of things we think about when we think about early monasticism in England. The original monastery was founded in 635, when Northumbrian king Oswald granted Lindisfarne to Aidan, who made it the centre for converting Northumbrians to Christianity. In the 670s, Cuthbert, then prior of Melrose Abbey, was invited to Lindisfarne and became famous for his saintly way of life, his wisdom and as a healer. When he was canonised, his tomb in the church at Lindisfarne became the centre of a cult. The influence of the Lindisfarne monastery grew, but after a Viking raid in 793, the monks removed his body and other relics to a safer place and the monastery was abandoned – at first Cuthbert’s shrine was at Chester le Street, later at Durham. Here, it’s said, the wheeled cart carrying his body could not be moved any further and those accompanying the coffin interpreted this as the will of the saint expressing itself.* At Durham his relics remain. As a result, Durham prospered, the present cathedral church was begun in 1093, and Cuthbert’s shrine was enhanced by a large collection of other holy relics, including a rib of Edward the Confessor and a tooth of St Cecilia.†

However, eventually monks returned to Lindisfarne and built a new church. When they did so, they designed its architecture to reflect that of Durham. Durham cathedral’s magnificent Norman nave has tall columns with bold geometric designs cut into them – amongst these are chevron patterns and flutes; there are also piers with multiple vertical shafts around them. Although the piers at Lindisfarne are much smaller than those at Durham and are now greatly eroded, you can still see similar designs on them – a pier with chevrons is clearly visible in my photograph, alongside another with multiple shafts. The stump of a further pier with a fluted design exists to the west of these. These architectural flourishes were a way of paying homage to the cathedral at Durham, by then in effect the senior or mother church of Lindisfarne, and of acknowledging the importance of the place that housed the remains of Cuthbert, so deeply revered by the monks of Lindisfarne.

- - - - -

* Apparently, when anyone tried to move the body beyond Northumberland, similar things happed – at one point it was put on a boat bound for Ireland, only for a storm to blow the vessel back.

† There is a good account of the story of St Cuthbert’s remains and of the relics at the shrine at Durham in Charles Freeman, Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics Shaped the History of Modern Europe (Yale University Press, 2011).

Lindisfarne, Northumberland

Reuse, recycle, repurpose

I’ve thought since my schooldays (learning about the history of the Anglo-Saxon period and the beginnings of Christianity in England) of the monastery of Lindisfarne and its wonderfully isolated position off the Northumberland coast. At long last, two weeks ago, the Resident Wise Woman and I finally made it there. We were, of course, delighted with the place – and glad we arrived early in the morning* a couple of hours before the hordes of other tourists turned up. Regular readers of this blog who know Lindisfarne will guess that as well as the obvious sites I wanted to look at the sheds near the harbour and near the castle that are ingeniously made of upturned boats.

I think it was probably a production of Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes that introduced me to the idea of upturned boat sheds. The opera’s eponymous hero has such a shed – Grimes lives in Suffolk (the country both of Britten and of George Crabbe, author of the poem on which the composer based his opera), but the practice of reusing old and leaky boats as fishermen’s storage sheds was once common on many parts of the east coast. At Lindisfarne, there have been such sheds at least since the 19th century and a dozen remain at the harbour and there are a further three at the castle.

Of course many decommissioned fishing boats were broken up for scrap – a lot of the wood became firewood.† But upturning a boat and preserving its timbers with pitch or roofing felt or some sort of waterproof cloth produced a cheap shed for storing a fishermen’s gear. You could put nets in there, a dinghy, and whatever else you needed to store. And the result, provided the shed is well looked after, is an aesthetically pleasing combination of lines and curves – basic model: an upturned boat alone; taller version: an upturned boat propped on top of a wooden substructure. We are used to recycling – breaking up everything from cardboard boxes to old motor cars so that they can be turned into something else. We’re familiar with reuse – especially, if we’re interested in building conservation, in finding new uses for old buildings. Repurposing, turning one (redundant) thing into a different (useful) item, is equally important and transformative. These little sheds, modest buildings indeed, shine an old light on an ever-present problem.§

- - - - -

*Two important rules when visiting Lindisfarne: check the tide tables so you don’t get cut off and if possible arrive before the crowds.

† Storing firewood was one of the uses of the sheds near the castle.

§ For another take on what to do with old boats, see this blog post from long ago.

Wichenford, Worcestershire

 

Local colour

Monuments like this – a large 17th-century altar tomb commemorating four members of the same family – make me smile. I find them delightful because they’re colourful (and parish churches often lack colour, aside from the stained glass which not all churches have anyway) and because of the way that they connect us with the people of the past. The people in this case are John Washbourne, whose effigy is placed above that of his father, Anthony, and beneath those of his two wives, Mary (née Savage) and Eleanor (née Lygon). I do not pretend that these rather stylised portraits by a presumably local artist capture the subjects’ features with great precision – only those rich enough to hire a top-rank London sculptor could expect that, the rest had to make do with something more approximate or stylised. But the monument does tell us something about how they wished to be remembered, or more exactly how John Washbourne, who commissioned the monument when he was 84 years old, wanted them to be remembered. The delineation of the armour and the women’s clothes, as well as of their faces, has been done with care and the formality or stiffness of the figures is very much of its time.

So is the decoration – the array of foliate motifs, scrollwork, and strapwork. The bright colour is restored but must come near to the original. Very much of its time too is the heraldry. The arms of at the upper centre of the monument are of the Washbourne family. Lower down and also in the centre are the same arms quartered with those of two other related families, Poer and Dabitot. To the left these arms are combined with (or impale, to use the heraldic term) those of Savage on the left and Lygon on the right. Portraits and visual identifications and ornamentation combine to make an effect I find both impressive and charming. True, you had to be rich and powerful to have a monument like this and to be allowed to occupy quite a large part of a small church with it. But personally I don’t grudge them the space.