THE NORMANS
- strie4
- Oct 6
- 6 min read
WHAT HAVE THE NORMANS EVER DONE FOR US?
Apart from an arrow, the castles, cathedrals, monasteries, abbeys, churches, the Domesday Book, language…and wine
Last week I attended a concert of mediaeval and Tudor church music, performed by The Sixteen, led by their founder, Harry Christophers, in Tewkesbury Abbey. Not for the first time, I raised my eyes upwards, awestruck at the soaring arches of this Norman abbey and was left in wonder at the perfect acoustics of the building. The Normans knew a thing or two about building. There is that famous aerial photo of the Abbey during the floods of 2007. The building stands alone in the middle of – and crucially above - a sea of water. Not only did the Normans know how to build but they also knew where to build.
This set me thinking about the great cathedrals and castles that the Normans left as their most visible legacy in this country. It is wrongly assumed that William the Conqueror and his army were the first Normans to land on English soil. Not so. The Normans were descendants of the Vikings who regularly invaded England’s North-East Coast in the 8th and 9th centuries. Towns ending in -by (Selby, Whitby, Grimsby, Ashby, Derby, Formby, Lockerbie in Scotland) derive their suffix from the Old Norse word for farmstead or village, common in the areas of England that were raided by the Vikings. Incidentally, a ‘by-law’, referring to a local law, derives from the same Old Norse word for town or village. Their descendants, the Normans, settled in Northern France in the 9th and 10th centuries, establishing the Duchy of Normandy, integrating into French culture and adopting the French language. Their rapaciousness did not stop there. Their territorial expansion extended as far as Italy, Sicily and other parts of Europe.
Whether Edward the Confessor on his deathbed whispered the name of Harold Godwinson or Duke William of Normandy as his successor as king of England is hotly disputed. What we do know is that both Harold and William considered themselves as the rightful heir. Harold promptly seized the crown and William promptly avowed to remove it from him. Fully prepared to put his sword where his mouth was, William invaded in 1066… and we all know what happened next.
The Battle of Hastings was undoubtedly one of the most significant events in the history of this country. Harold, his army and all the English ruling class were wiped out on the battlefield, and the world changed for ever. Overnight, the king, the court, the nobility, the army, the law, the church, the ruling class, the culture, the language and the politics became French, or more specifically, Norman French. The Anglo-Saxons were reduced to second-class citizens, that is if ever the Normans regarded them as citizens at all.
William was determined to assert his undisputed authority over his new kingdom. One of the ways he did this was to construct huge buildings, predominantly castles and cathedrals, that were intended to control, to dominate, to intimidate. Bigger, stronger, mightier, more imposing and most importantly of all, visible. Take Windsor Castle, built in the Conqueror’s reign. President Trump was not the first chieftain and certainly will not be the last whose breath was taken away by the castle’s dominating aspect. You can see it rising up in front of you as you travel into London on the M4. It was designed to project Norman dominance around the outskirts of London and to overlook a strategically important part of the River Thames. Almost 1,000 years later, it still commands all it surveys.
The M4 wasn’t built when this view of Windsor Castle was painted but its commanding situation on the River Thames is all too evident.
Norman castles were originally built as simple motte and bailey structures, with a mound (motte) and enclosed courtyard (bailey) thrown up quickly with earth and wood and then replaced with more permanent and intimidating keeps. They were designed in the Romanesque style, characterised by thick walls, round arches, sturdy pillars, barrel vaults and large towers, their massive size intended to impress as well as provide military protection. Most notable examples are Dover Castle, Hastings Castle, Pevensey Castle, Rochester Castle, Richmond Castle, Durham Castle, Leeds Castle, Ludlow Castle, Chepstow Castle and of course our very own Tower of London. By contrast, Anglo-Saxon strongholds were built predominantly of wood. You can imagine the despair of the local populace as they stared up at these huge, hulking buildings under construction that were making a clear and unambiguous statement where power in the kingdom now resided. In all, it is estimated that the Normans built around 1,000 castles in England and Wales.
William was a devout Catholic, who used religion as a tool for power and reform. Thus, he launched a vast building programme of churches, cathedrals and monasteries, fostering a new era of church architecture reinforcing the Norman influence. These buildings were heavily influenced too by the Romanesque style, built on a massive scale, with round arches prominent in doors, windows and arcades. Both the exteriors and the interiors of these large churches were richly carved in a zig-zag pattern, often highly and colourfully decorated. You have to imagine the riot of colour in these cathedrals because the interiors were later robbed of their hue and pigmentation by the strictures of the English Reformation – too Popish by half. They still remain glorious structures, even if in severe monochrome. They were another attempt to stamp their mark on the ecclesiastical landscape and impress on the Anglo-Saxon locals the superiority of Norman culture and sophistication. England’s Norman cathedrals number fifteen in total, of which thirteen still stand. They are Durham, York Minster, Lincoln, Norwich, Ely, Rochester, Canterbury, St Paul’s, Chichester, Winchester, Old Sarum, Gloucester, Hereford, Worcester, Chester. Old St Paul’s was burnt down in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and of course was replaced by Wren’s masterpiece and Old Sarum was demolished by Richard I and a new cathedral built in Salisbury.
The Normans greatly increased the number of abbeys and monasteries in England from around 60 to 250. Tewkesbury Abbey is one such example. A former Benedictine monastery, it is considered one of the finest of its kind, with the largest crossing tower in the land, situated above the space at the intersection of the nave, chancel and transept. For the uninitiated, including me, I offer these definitions: the nave is where the congregation sit, the chancel is near the altar, reserved for clergy and choir, and the transept is the area that that extends at right angles to the nave, the arms of the cross shape of the building.
Now, about those acoustics…. I am not a physicist, but my brother is, so I felt impelled to do some careful research here. These Norman cathedrals have a highly reverberant acoustic environment owing to the large, hard surfaces, such as the stone construction, high vaulted ceilings, large windows and geometric proportions of the building, which enhance the sound of musical instruments and choirs, giving music a deep, rich quality which we can all hear with our own ears. By contrast and surprisingly, though not perhaps to scientists among my readers, while the acoustics are excellent for music, the reverberations make the spoken word difficult to understand. At this point, the acoustic science leaves me for dead, but I can add my own empirical evidence to
support the theory that the words from the pulpit are much less clear than the sound of the choir. In Tewkesbury Abbey, the soaring notes of The Sixteen were clearly and gloriously audible, whereas the words of the dean, no doubt enjoining us to switch off our phones, were unintelligible, even though he was speaking with the aid of a microphone. Obviously, the Normans valued the music of God more than the word of God. As it happens, I do not have a problem with that.
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