The Jew’s House, Lincoln.
Remains of the Whitefriars’ Priory, Lincoln.
THE JEW’S HOUSE
THE FRIARS
ST. MARY’S GUILD
Getting back to the ‘Bail,’ or open space between the castle gate and the Exchequer Gate, we can go down that bit of the old Ermine Street called “Steep Street” (and I don’t think any street can better deserve its name) and come into the High Street of Lincoln. If we go right down this, we shall see all that is of most interest in the town below the hill. First is the “Jew’s House” where the murderer of Little St. Hugh is said to have lived, a most interesting specimen of Norman domestic architecture, and more ornate than that at Boothby-Pagnell of a similar date. The house has a round-headed doorway, with a chimney-breast starting from above the doorway arch, and showing that the upper floor had a fireplace. On either side the door now are modern shop windows. Between the stringcourses are two double light windows, with a plain tympanum under a round arch. Belaset of Wallingford, a Jewess, lived here in the reign of Edward I. She was hanged for clipping coin in 1290, the year of the Jews’ Expulsion. At the bottom of the street, No. 333, is another charming old structure called “White Friars’ House” with a projecting timbered front, and a passage round one end like that at the old “God begot” house at Winchester. All Friars, whether White (Carmelite), Black (Dominican), Grey (Franciscan), or Black and White (Augustinian), were to be found in Lincoln as well as at Stamford, and, with the exception of the Dominicans, at Boston too. One more bit of old domestic building is the hall of St. Mary’s Guild, commonly called John o’ Gaunt’s Stables. Here you may see a combination of the round and the pointed arch, which dates it as late Norman. The house is longer than the other two, and the upper story mostly gone, but in Parker’s “Domestic Architecture” it is spoken of as “probably the most valuable and extensive range of buildings of the twelfth century that we have remaining in England.” The house within has round-headed windows with a mid-wall shaft, and a fireplace. The house just opposite was the palace built by John of Gaunt for Katharine Swynford; from which the oriel window inside the castle gateway was taken. These old Norman houses are all small. The really magnificent building which was once the boast of Lincoln was a thousand years earlier than these; this was the Roman Basilica, or Hall of Judgment, near Bailgate, perhaps, the baths at the town of Bath alone excepted, the finest Roman building in England. Figure to yourself a building 250 feet long by seventy feet wide, with a triangular pediment rising from a row of pillars thirty feet high, something like what we still see at Milan. Alas! that only the pillar bases of this fine hall have been found. The pillars ran along the west side of Bailgate facing east.
St. Mary’s Guild and St. Peter’s at Gowts, Lincoln.
SAXON TOWERS