Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire

by W. F. Rawnsley

CHAPTER XXII

Anglo-Saxon, Norman and Mediæval Art—Fonts.

When we talk of Anglo-Saxon art it is not to be implied that no artistic work was done before Saxon time in Britain. But if we speak of churches, though doubtless British churches were once to be found here, there are certainly none now existing, and we cannot get back beyond Saxon times. The British churches were built probably of wattle, or at the best of stones without mortar, and so were not likely to be long-lived. Still, Stonehenge is British work, and domed huts, like beehives, similar to but smaller and ruder than those to be still seen in Greece, were made by the ancient Britons. It was the Romans who first introduced architecture to our land. They had learnt it from those wonderful people, the pioneers of so much that we all value, the Greeks, who in turn had got their lessons from Egypt and Assyria. That takes us back eight thousand years, and we still profit by the art thus handed down through the centuries. When the Romans left us, all the arts at once declined in our islands, and notably the art of building.

In speaking of the churches in the south of the county, I drew attention to the number in which traces of Saxon work were still visible and spoke of the two remarkable specimens only three miles over the border at Wittering and Barnack. It is pleasant to hear so good an authority as Mr. Hamilton Thompson say that Lincolnshire is more rich than any other county in churches which, though only in few instances of a date indisputably earlier than the Conquest, yet retain traces of an architecture of a distinctly pre-Norman character. We do not vie with Kent and Northumbria, for we cannot show anything which can be referred to the first century of Anglo-Saxon Christianity associated with the name of Augustine, nor had St. Ninian, St. Kentigern, St. Oswald, St. Cuthbert, or St. Wilfrid any work to do in Lincolnshire. St. Paulinus alone, by his visit to Lincoln, connected the province of Lindsey, which was part of his diocese of York, with the religious life of Northumbria. But the only existing trace of this is the dedication of the church in Lincoln to St. Paul, i.e., St. Paulinus.

SAXON TOWERS

Still, Saxon architecture was a real thing in the two centuries preceding the Norman invasion, and we have in Lincolnshire an unusually large number of churches (I can mention no less than thirty-eight at once), which represent a late state of Saxon architecture carried out probably by Saxon workmen for Norman employers and bearing traces of Norman influence. At Stow, near Lincoln, is some very fine Saxon work, but there the Norman overlies the Saxon more decidedly than it does in the notable church of Barton-on-Humber; both of these have been discussed in previous chapters. But we may here draw attention to the less magnificent Saxon remains in the county, and notice how often the churches with Saxon work still visible, lie in groups. Thus, quite in the north we have Barton, Winterton, and Alkborough, with Worlaby not far off. Then in the course of ten miles along the road from Caistor to Grimsby we have Caistor, Cabourn, Nettleton, Rothwell, Cuxwold, Swallow, Laceby, Scartho, and Clee; with Holton-le-Clay and Waith just to the south on the road to Louth. On the west, near Gainsborough, we have a group of five close together at Corringham, Springthorpe, Harpswell, Heapham, and Glentworth; and Marton and Stow are not far away, one by the Trent and the other on the central road between the Trent and the ‘Cliff.’

“LONG-AND-SHORT” WORK

Lincoln has its two famous church towers of St. Mary-le-Wigfords and St. Peters-at-Gowts. Near it, to the south, are Bracebridge, Bramston, Harmston and Coleby, the two latter close together, and all with traces of “Long-and-Short” work; and if we continue our way southwards, we shall pass Hough-on-the-Hill between Grantham and Newark, with its interesting pre-Conquest stair turret, and so finish our Saxon tour by visiting three churches on or near the river Glen, at Boothby-Pagnell, Little Bytham and Thurlby. This is not an exhaustive list, for Great Hale near Heckington must be included, and Cranwell near Sleaford and Ropsley near Grantham, both show “Long-and-Short” work. But the more closely the churches mentioned are examined, the more clear it becomes that, though the dates of the building, when we can get at them, mostly point us to the eleventh century, the art is of a pre-Conquest type, and could only have been executed before the general spread of Norman influence which that century witnessed. We are therefore quite justified in speaking of this work as Saxon.

Here, perhaps, the term “Long-and-Short” work should be explained.

It is often said that the Saxon architecture was the development in stone of the building which had previously been done in timber and wattle, and thus in Barnack, and Barton, and at Stow, but nowhere else in Lincolnshire, parallel strips of stone run up the tower at intervals of a couple of feet, as if representing the upright timbers. This theory, perhaps, will not bear pressing; still, though the arch over a window is often triangular, made by leaning two slabs one against another, not unfrequently a square-ended stone projects from the top of a rounded arch, which seems to be a reminiscence in stone of the end of a wooden beam. This may be seen at Barnack on the south side of the tower. The towers have no buttresses, and though the stones between the upright strips are small and rubbley, the stones at the angles of the tower are fairly large and squared. When these are long-shaped, but set alternately perpendicular and horizontal, this is called “Long-and-Short” work, and is definitely “Saxon,” even though built by Norman hands. The herring-bone work, as seen at Marton, is Romanesque and a sign of Norman builders. They also copied the Romans in facing a rubble core with dressed stone, whereas the Saxons only used dressed stones at the angles.

Ancient Saxon Ornament found in 1826 in cleaning out the Witham, near the village of Fiskerton, four miles east of Lincoln.

SAXON ORNAMENTS

The enormous activity of the Norman builders in every part of the kingdom has thrown previous architectural efforts into the shade; but the Normans found in England a by no means barbarous people. Anglo-Saxon or Anglian art had exhibited developments in many directions, in metal work and jewellery, in illumination of MSS., in needlework, in stone-carving, as well as in architecture; and when Augustine landed in 597 it was not to a nation of barbarous savages, but to people quite equal in many ways to those he had lived among in Italy or conversed with in Gaul, that he had to preach the tenets of Christianity. As proof of this we can point to the beautiful carved stonework of the Anglians of Northumbria on the great crosses of Bewcastle and Ruthwell, and the cross of Bishop Acca of Hexham, now in the Durham library, all of the seventh century; and to the Lindisfarne Gospels of St. Wilfred’s time which was only some fifty years later; whilst to show the continuity of Anglo-Saxon art we have the St. Cuthbert stole in the Durham Cathedral library, a triumph of needlework by the nuns of Winchester in the days of Athelstan; and, besides the celebrated Alfred Jewel, a silver trefoil brooch[12] found at Kirkoswald in Cumberland, which, for purity of design, richness of ornamentation and beauty of execution, it would be difficult to match in any age or country, and the cloak chain, found at Fiskerton, described in Chapter [XIV.]; all these are quite first-rate in their different lines, and should make us speak with respect of our Saxon ancestors.

Having already noted the Gainsborough group (Chap. [XVII.]) and the Caistor group (Chap. [XX.]), we will now make our way towards a third group of pre-Norman towers to be seen on the Louth and Grimsby road.

NORMAN DWELLINGS

In Norman times strongholds and churches were built all over the country, and doubtless many domestic houses which did not aspire to be more than ordinary dwelling-places. It is curious how almost entirely these have vanished; one at Boothby Pagnell and three in Lincoln are among the very few left. In Lincoln ‘The Jews’ House,’ ‘Aaron’s House,’ and ‘John of Gaunt’s Stables’ or ‘St. Mary’s Guild’ go back to the beginning of the twelfth century. They none of them would satisfy our modern notions of comfort, but neither do the much later houses, such as the mediæval merchant’s house called “Strangers’ Hall,” in Norwich, which is so interesting and so obviously uncomfortable. When King John of France was confined at Somerby Castle in the fourteenth century he had to import furniture from France to take the place of the benches and trestles which was all that the castle boasted, and to hang draperies and tapestries on the bare walls; and though some of these were supplied him by his captor, comfortable furniture seems to have been not even dreamt of at that time in England.

ROOD-SCREENS

For the churches the Normans did surprisingly well, as far as the building and stonework went, but the beautiful woodwork, which is the glory of our Lincolnshire marsh churches, is mostly the work of the men of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century. We see this mediæval workmanship sometimes in the bench ends and stalls and miserere seats, but most notably in such of the rood screens as have escaped the successive onslaughts made on them in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whilst the shameful neglect of the eighteenth and the shocking ignorance of both clergy and laity in that and the first part of the nineteenth century, have swept away much that was historically of the utmost interest, and which the better informed and more responsible guardians of the churches to-day would have preserved and treasured. This mediæval woodwork is found most frequently in the more remote parts of the country. The best rood loft I have ever seen is in a little church in Wales, near Towyn, and some of the finest rood screens with canopies are in the churches of Devon; of these, Mr. Hubert Congreve, in his paper contributed to the Worcester Archæological Society, notes that at Stoke-in-Teignhead there is one of the fourteenth century, carved in the reign of Richard II. From this the loft has been removed, and it was generally the case that when this was taken away as idolatrous, the screen itself was not objected to.

Many of these screens in the Devon churches have an extremely rich and deep cornice, and they often extend right across the nave and both the aisles. Perhaps the finest of these is in the famous parson Jack Russell’s church at Swymbridge. This is of the fifteenth century. From the same source we learn that Bovey Tracey has a similar screen, but it has had to be greatly restored since the Commonwealth destruction, and that Atherington has a lovely screen in the north aisle, with fan-shaped coving springing from figures of angels holding shields. The cornice is delicately carved, and there is some fine canopy work over the parapet, with niches which once held figures of the saints. This screen was originally in the chapel at Umberleigh Manor, and is perhaps the only screen in the county which has never been painted. When I visited lately the quaint little town of Totnes I saw what is most uncommon—a stone screen. This dates from 1479, and richly and beautifully carved, much after the pattern of the screen in the Lady Chapel at Exeter Cathedral.

All this fine mediæval work suffered terribly from the ultra-Protestant mania for iconoclasm which exhibited itself in the reign of Edward VI., in 1547, and again under Elizabeth in 1561. Finally, under the Parliament both in 1643 and 1644, was issued “An ordinance of the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament for the utter demolishing, removing and taking away of all Monuments of superstition and idolatry.”

This Act provided specifically for the taking away of all altar rails and the levelling of the “Chancel-ground” and the removal of the Communion table from the east end, and the destruction of all stone altars, so that it is always noticeable when we find one such, either in a side chapel or in the pavement, with its five and occasionally six dedication crosses cut on the stone. Norwich has one in which a small black slab bearing the crosses is let into the large altar slab.

ICONOCLASM

All images, “representative of the persons of the Trinity or of any Angell or Saint” were to be “utterly demolished,” and all vestments “defaced”; with the quaint proviso that the order should “not extend to any image, picture or coat-of-arms set up or graven onely for a Monument of any King, Prince or Nobleman, or other dead person which hath not been commonly reputed or taken for a saint.”