Part 2

We must pass over the brief invasion of the Five Boroughs by Anlaf Guthfrithson, the quarrels of Eadgar with Eadwig, and Æthelred with Cnut, and pass to the period shortly before the Norman Conquest, when we find that England is divided into several great earldoms. Though Nottinghamshire was at first part of a small earldom with Leicester, yet soon it appears to have formed part of Siward’s vast Northumbrian territory.

The history of Nottinghamshire after the Norman Conquest has been told many times, and therefore may be treated in a more cursory manner. William the Conqueror was at Nottingham in 1068, and then passed on, leaving the castle to be rebuilt by his powerful dependent William Peverel. It is almost certain that the English were sufficiently strong in the county to merit consideration, and in the county town itself we find that two boroughs were definitely established, an English and a French, each constitutionally separate and each surviving in name, if not in fact, till comparatively modern times. The great feudal castle at Nottingham becomes the dominating factor in the history of the town for the next 150 years, but before the end of this we see the awakenings of commercial and corporate life. The great forest of Sherwood provided a playground for kings, and throughout the county religious houses were founded to give knowledge to the people, alms to the poor, and rest to the weary.

This county played a large part in the civil war of Stephen’s reign; both the castles of Nottingham and Newark were in the King’s hands, though the former changed sides several times, and in the process the town, whose prosperity and beauty Florence of Worcester belauds, was burnt.

Henry II. had no intention of having Nottingham Castle held against him should occasion arise, and in 1155 he took possession of it himself, and at the same time ordered all adulterine castles to be dismantled. Probably Cuckney Castle was one of these latter, and there were almost certainly others, but the matter is obscure.

Henry II. gave the castle of Nottingham to his favourite son John in 1174, and it remained this despicable prince’s chief and most frequented residence, and here he made his rebellious stand against his brother Richard, until he was ejected in 1194. It was in this year that Richard discovered the suitability of Sherwood Forest for a royal hunting-ground, and on April 17 he met the King of the Scots at Clipstone.

After the conference at Runnymede had driven John into a corner, that treacherous monarch determined to make a last stand at Nottingham Castle, which he ordered Philip Marc, the constable, to prepare for a siege. Newark, too, was faithful to John, though the surrounding country was suffering much at the hands of his enemies. It is fitting that, as John had loved this county and been loved by it, he should end his worthless life here, and perhaps here alone was he regretted when he passed away at Newark.

To all intents and purposes the history of Nottingham itself is the history of the whole county. The character of this history undergoes a change early in the thirteenth century. Henceforth Nottingham the town attracts our attention instead of Nottingham the castle as formerly. To quote Mrs. J. R. Green, “The interest of its history lies in the quiet picture that is given of a group of active and thriving traders at peace with their neighbours, and for the most part at peace with themselves.” Commercial Nottingham owes everything to its magnificent geographical position and fruitful geological formation. No marauders pillaged it, no warring barons held it to ransom and impoverished it. It dwelt in peace and grew in prosperity. Linen and woollen goods, ironwork, bells, brazen pots, goldsmiths’ work, images, and ale were all made in this wealthy town. During the fourteenth century the coal that lay all along the western border of the county began to be worked, and rich quarries of stone were cut to build the churches and houses that sprang up everywhere. Compared with other towns in the Middle Ages there seems to have been a noticeable absence of poverty in Nottingham.

We have seen how John used Nottingham as his headquarters in his insurrection, and 200 years afterwards Richard II. attempted his _coup d’êtat_ there--an attempt which was to have made the King absolute.

Nottinghamshire had been but little affected by the Hundred Years War. Except for an occasional demand for men or supplies--a demand frequently occurring in connection with the Scotch wars of the end of the thirteenth century--the records of the county are barren. The fifteenth century saw the suicide of feudalism in the Wars of the Roses, and here again Nottingham’s policy was a purely commercial one. It was quite immaterial to her which side gained the victory, so long as her trade was not interfered with, and so we find that whichever side was on the top, to that side did the powers that be in Nottingham send congratulations and men.

Edward IV. and Richard III. were much at Nottingham, and to both of them the castle owed much. It was from here that Richard set out to fight his last fight at Bosworth, and a few years later the river meadows beneath the rock were black with the troops of Henry VII., drawn together to meet the puppet of the Yorkists, Lambert Simnel. Henry passed from Nottingham to Newark and thence down the Fosse Way, while Simnel’s troops crossed from Mansfield to the Trent, which they forded, and met the King at East Stoke. This one important battle in the county’s history was a most bloody affair, and the pretender’s forces were completely routed.

The Tudors for the most part neglected this county, and though we meet with such men as Wolsey and Cranmer now and then, they are but lights that emphasise the darkness.

Nottinghamshire was shortly to awake from its lethargic commercialism to its great struggle during the seventeenth century between the King and the Parliament, between Newark and Nottingham, a struggle which harassed the trade of the towns and ruined the agriculture of the villages, which saw the standard of war raised at Nottingham, and the unhappy King surrender himself at Kelham. Newark gained eternal honour, and the county showed itself the birthplace of great men.

If we except the industrial riots of the early nineteenth century, Nottinghamshire was to feel but once more the stirrings of civil strife; the invasion of England by the Young Pretender progressed as far as Derby, but the reputation of the fierce Scots covered a much wider field, and the horrors of war were felt to be very close at hand.

But we must glance back for a moment and record the invention in 1589 of the stocking-frame by the Rev. William Lee, curate of Calverton. Like many great inventors Lee was unlucky and without profit in his own country, yet, if we may be permitted to quote Master Ridley’s famous dying words, Lee had lit “such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.” This stocking-frame was the small beginning whence came the great lace and hosiery trades which, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, may be said to have been the staple industries of the county. Almost every village round Nottingham earned its living by hosiery, and before the days of the big factories, in 1812, there were said to be 30,000 frames at work.

It is impossible here to do more than state the fact that every great invention in the cotton trade emanated from Nottinghamshire. We have mentioned the early beginnings of the coal trade, and since then this mighty industry has continued to spread, until now it occupies the attention of one-third of the county, and in the near future it will undoubtedly spread further.

Such is a brief history of Nottinghamshire, and though we realise that history is still being made, it behoves us to turn now and then, and by considering the past, try to wrest its secret from the Sphinx.

THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH ARCHITECTURE OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE

BY A. HAMILTON THOMPSON, M.A., F.S.A.

Nottinghamshire probably has received less than its due from students of English architecture in the past. Its more easily accessible churches, Newark or St. Mary’s at Nottingham, naturally have attracted some attention; and the noble collegiate church of Southwell has never been neglected by intelligent lovers of medieval art. Newstead, dear to the illustrators of anthologies, is usually remembered as the home of Byron and a subject of his verse. Blyth and Thurgarton, however, are little known to the majority of Englishmen. Few people know of the beautiful, if unpretentious, work of the thirteenth century which is to be found in the churches of the Trent valley between Newark and Gainsborough. While frequent allusion has been made to the Easter sepulchre, the chief glory of the chancel of Hawton, little attention has been given to the fact that this chancel is simply a member of a group of fourteenth-century chancels, which, though not confined to Nottinghamshire, possesses its most finished examples within or close to the borders of the county. It is true that, for the most part, Nottinghamshire parish churches are simple and unambitious in plan and elevation alike. Their plans present few variations from the normal type. Here, as elsewhere throughout the north and eastern midlands, the aisleless nave developed, in the ordinary course of things, into the nave with aisles, western tower, and south porch. The rectangular chancel was lengthened, and here and there, as occasion served, was provided with one or more chapels. But while, in adjacent counties, considerable architectural development followed this expansion of plan, Nottinghamshire builders were on the whole content to build churches which were adequate for the services of the parish, without attempting to give them any special magnificence of outward form and decoration. This simplicity of design, however, has an architectural interest of its own, as throwing considerable light on the methods of local masons, who remained unaffected by the ambition of neighbouring schools of art.

Geographically, Nottinghamshire presented no obstacle to a general architectural development on lines similar to those which were pursued in other midland counties. Only a small district of the county, on the north-west, reaches an elevation of from 400 to 600 feet above sea-level: a height of 600 feet is exceeded only here and there. The great stream of the Trent provided for building material a main artery of water-carriage from which no part of the county was altogether remote. The quarries of Ancaster, to which Lincolnshire architecture owes so much, were within easy reach of Newark and the vale of Belvoir. There was good building stone within the shire at Mansfield, Maplebeck, and Tuxford. Moreover, the general state of Nottinghamshire in the middle ages seems to have been highly prosperous: laymen were well-to-do, and few, if any, counties of the size can show such an array of well-endowed chantry foundations as that which it possessed at the close of the period. It possessed a centre of ecclesiastical influence at Southwell; and, although there was no religious house of the first class within its borders, there were several fairly important houses of canons regular, which might be expected to provide models for architectural work in their neighbourhood.

It is probable, however, that, at any rate in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, much of the skilled workmanship of the district was attracted eastwards by the splendid growth of architecture which took place within the sphere of the trade route to Boston and in the neighbourhood of the growing port of Hull. These provinces of art, again, must have drawn towards them, and away from Nottinghamshire, masons brought up within the architectural influence of Lincoln and York. As Nottinghamshire formed the southern archdeaconry of the diocese of York, we should naturally expect to find some Yorkshire influence upon its buildings. This, as we shall see, was undoubtedly the case. The influence of York upon Southwell is strong, and the churches of north Nottinghamshire have a strong family likeness to those of south Yorkshire. Again, the chapter of Lincoln possessed a large amount of property in the wapentake of Newark, and in this part of the county it is possible to trace at an early date an architectural spirit which had its origin at Lincoln. The fact, however, remains that, while Nottinghamshire possesses several individual churches which are fully equal in beauty to those of south Lincolnshire or south-east Yorkshire, it stood outside the main current of architectural progress which set in, as the middle ages advanced, towards the Humber and the Wash.

It may be said that the direct influence of ecclesiastical foundations upon churches connected with them was probably much less than is usually supposed. A large collegiate church, such as Southwell, which played its part as a central point in the ecclesiastical life of the county, and owned much local property, might have considerable effect upon the progress of local architecture. The chapter and its individual canons would be responsible for the repair of chancels in their impropriated churches. Where they were lords of the manor as well as impropriators, their care for the fabric might go still further. The same thing is true of monasteries. But it must be remembered that, as in our own day, so then, no corporation as lord of the manor, and still more as rector, would go out of its way to beautify its possessions at unnecessary expense. Its interest lay in the income to be derived from the churches, not in the money which it might be possible to expend upon them. The statement, so common in uncritical writers, that the religious houses throughout the land built churches broadcast, rests on no sound historical basis. It is far more accurate to say that they simply built where they were obliged to do so, and that then they did their utmost to avoid expense. The church west of the chancel lay outside their province. Its maintenance was the duty of the parishioners. In churches where they merely owned the advowson, the rector, their presentee, was responsible for the chancel. Where they were impropriators, they usually avoided part of their obligations by charging their vicar with a sensible part of the repairs of the chancel. Thus, Worksop priory undertook, in 1283–84, three-quarters of the repairs of the chancel at Walkeringham: the vicar was charged with the remaining quarter.[1] Many arrangements of this kind could be cited. At Newark, in 1428, St. Katherine’s priory at Lincoln undertook the whole upkeep of the chancel; but the vicar, on his part, was made wholly responsible for the vicarage house.[2] In any case, a monastery would save itself unnecessary expense, if possible. This is not to be wondered at, if the whole question of monastic finances in the middle ages, and the pressure of debt which constantly weighed upon even the larger houses, is considered. The constant excuse for appropriating an advowson was one of poverty, nor did bishops sanction appropriations without a conventional demur.

These circumstances taken into account, it will be seen that the religious houses cannot be credited with any great architectural influence upon the churches belonging to them. For necessary repairs in parish churches they would employ local masons, who would charge them little, and execute their work neatly and adequately. It is true that there are exceptions. The vast aisled chancel of Newark was planned on an unusually liberal scale; but it may fairly be assumed that the work was put in the hands of skilled local craftsmen who had no direct connection with St. Katherine’s priory. Nor can any special architectural relationship be discovered between the chancel of Newark and the vanished church of the impropriating house. It may also be noted that, until the fourteenth century, the number of churches appropriated to monasteries in Nottinghamshire was not large. By the time of the suppression of the monasteries, a third of the churches of the county were appropriated to religious houses, and of these about a third belonged to monasteries outside the county, Westminster abbey holding six.[3] This, however, does not represent the proportion of appropriated churches during the time of the greatest architectural activity. The number of churches, on the other hand, appropriated to prebendaries of Southwell and members of other collegiate bodies, such as the dean and chapter of Lincoln,[4] or the warden and canons of St. Mary and the Holy Angels at York,[5] was considerable from the twelfth century onwards. Yet it is impossible to trace any general attempt at architectural improvement on the part of ecclesiastical bodies or their individual members. Here and there we may suspect something; but the general rule is one of sound practical building on local lines, following the general current of architectural growth prevalent throughout the length and breadth of England, and touched now and then by the work of a neighbouring school of masons whose mastery of their craft was superior to the homely dialect of the Nottinghamshire craftsmen. In most parishes the lord of the manor may be regarded as the principal contributor, who may have helped with the chancel, if he occupied a seat there, and would have been the ruling spirit in the building of the nave. The rector, often a non-resident, would be the repairer and rebuilder of the chancel, and may often have been forced to do his duty unwillingly. The builders, save in exceptional instances, were, we may well believe, masons of the village or neighbourhood, who were also the builders and repairers of the manor-house and such stone dwellings as the village might possess. For the furniture of the church the local carpenter and painter would be called in. In our own day, when we are familiar with the professional architect who restores our village churches, and with improved means of communication between place and place, it is difficult to imagine that our villages possessed the necessary talent for all this work. Architecture, however, in the middle ages was a general, democratic art: building was a part of the practical life of the English village, and the stonework of the place was a topic of current interest and intelligence, not yet relegated to the province of archæology.

There are few buildings remaining in the county which can be said to contain traces of pre-Conquest work. Foundations of a church which is very probably of Saxon date have been uncovered at East Bridgford. The tower of the church of Carlton-in-Lindrick belongs to the type of late Saxon tower, of which there are many examples in north Lincolnshire. It was originally unbuttressed, and in, each face of its belfry stage was a double window opening, divided by a mid-wall shaft. In the fifteenth century an upper belfry stage and buttresses were added to the tower; the large dressed blocks of grey stone, of which these additions are composed, afford an interesting contrast to the rubble work of the older portion of the structure. In another volume of this series the present writer has attempted to show that a pre-Conquest date cannot with certainty be assigned to towers of this class, although there can be no doubt that the type originated during the Saxon period.[6] The presence of “herring-bone” masonry in the tower is a distinct indication of its post-Conquest date. “Herring-bone” coursing never occurs in portions of a fabric, of the Saxon origin of which there can be no doubt. At Brixworth, in Northamptonshire, it is found only in a portion of the tower, above the definitely Saxon work which remains: it occurs, again, in a part of the crypt at York, for the traditionally early date of which there is absolutely no evidence. On the other hand, by far the most extensive use of “herring-bone” masonry is in the walling of early castles, which were certainly not raised before the Conquest, but owed their origin to the conquerors. The curtains of Tamworth, Corfe, Lincoln, Richmond, and Hastings, the keep of Colchester, works of the later portion of the eleventh century, are imposing examples of the use of this method of masonry. It is not even a method which can be attributed to English workmen: it is found in Normandy, and is used on a grand scale in the interior of the donjon at Falaise. Where it is found in churches, therefore, it probably indicates Norman influence at a period soon after the Conquest; while it may be taken as a criterion for doubting seriously the pre-Conquest date of work that seems at first sight rude and primitive enough to be attributed to English masons before the coming of the Normans. Thus there is “herring-bone” coursing in the north wall of the nave at East Leake, found in company with small and narrow windows, the heads of which are not arched, but composed of flat lintels, with a segmental cut in their lower surface. At West Leake, where, as at East Leake, a south aisle was added to the fabric, but the north wall was left untouched, the window openings are similar, and the masonry is equally rude, but there is no “herring-bone” work. There are several examples in Nottinghamshire churches of walls, in which roughly tooled masonry, bedded in thick masses of mortar, and not infrequently arranged in “herring-bone” courses, occurs; and the pre-Conquest date of some of these--Oxton and Plumtree are cases in point--needs careful consideration. The most important cases of “herring-bone” work are found in the churches which fringe the left bank of the Trent below Newark--Averham, South Muskham, Cromwell, Laneham, and Littleborough. In the last two, which are the chief instances, the case for a pre-Conquest date is very poor. The proportions of the fabrics, both at Laneham and Littleborough, in which we find this masonry, have nothing about them which is peculiarly Saxon. On the contrary, while the earliest work at Laneham, the tower and tower-arch, is possibly earlier than the twelfth century, the whole fabric at Littleborough is an ordinary “Norman” aisleless church of twelfth-century character. It may be added that, on the opposite bank of the Trent, “herring-bone” masonry is hardly less common. At Marton, opposite Littleborough, it is used in the very uncommon method employed at Tamworth castle, with two horizontal layers of long, thin stones between the diagonal courses; while, at Upton in the same neighbourhood, the whole south wall of an originally aisleless church, somewhat larger than that of Littleborough, and as thoroughly of the twelfth century in its design and proportions, is composed of very regular “herring-bone” coursing.