Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Third - Life in the Mediæval Castle Fee - Chapter III

Curious to find out more about flirting (see previous post: incorrectly fletched arrows not flying true) I consulted the oracle of the interweb and, after numerous pages of inappropriate content, discovered the Worshipful Company of Fletchers and was amazed at the sheer amount of work that goes into making a mediæval longbow arrow (if you're really unlucky I might go into detail at the end of this talk so that those of you who may be inclined to do so can make their own arrows).

With regards the feathers used for fletching, Veronica-Mae Soar, Clerk to the Craft Guild of Traditional Bowyers and Fletchers tells us - among a great many other strange and wondrous things in A Brief History of Arrowmaking:

"Contrary to some belief it is not necessary to set fletchings on the slant in order to make the arrow spin. Provided that each feather is from the same wing, right or left, the arrow will spin because the feather has a rough side which produces lift and a smooth side over which air flows freely."

Now we know that, let us take a look at mediæval life along the Great Cockey, the stream running along the western boundary of the Castle Fee and home as well as bowmaking and fletching to some of the most truly gross and stinky goings on.

The "Lost" Rivers of Norwich, showing the route of the Great Cockey.

Gotta love that Norman Knight north point.

Courtesy EAA 132

The Great Cockey rose at a place called Jack's Pit, shown on the map above, about at the top of the current All Saints' Green, just inside the line of the later city wall. Jack's Pit was a deep, muddy pool "caused by the conflux of the water of several kennels" (Kirkpatrick: 1889). A "kennel" being a channel or canal, so several dtches or small streams came together at Jack's Pit and out flowed the Great Cockey.

This flowed down All Saints' Green and Westlegate, where it formed Needham Slough, a large marshy pool between what is now M&S and Debenhams. Here it was joined by a tributary stream coming down St. Stephen's Street.

Above this point, along Surrey Street and Queen's Road, there were tenter fields, where washing was hung out to dry, the archæological evidence suggests tha the water above Needham Slough was clean enough for washing and brewing.

The Great Cockey, running north between Norwich Castle and the Norman Market on the left.

You can see Needham Slough on the lower left of the map. The grey lines are the current street plan.

Courtesy EAA 132

From Needham Slough, the Great Cockey became a strong watercourse, cutting a channel up to thirteen feet deep in places (this was excavated under a shop in the middle of the Royal Arcade).

Its course followed the line on the above map, passing Debenhams, dipping down through Primark and Game, across the centre of Royal Arcade and along the line of Little London Street to the side of Jarrold's continuing in a roughly straight line to its outfall into the Wensum, which you can see today as an iron-grated culvert in the river wall opposite Norwich Playhouse.

By 1285, parts of the Great Cockey had already been built over and the stream culverted. Due to the steep slope down from the castle toward the market the western bank of the Cockey was lower than the eastern and so regularly flooded the area between Pret upstream and Jarrold's downstream [I'll mark these on the map of the Norman Market that comes toward the end of the talk, so anyone who doesn't know the area can at least make sense of it].

The flooding was not an issue while it was open land with sheds and pits, used by skinners and tanners (see below), but once it became more built up by around 1420 the whole length of the Great Cockey was buried in a large brick culvert, which was diverted eastward from the centre of the Royal Arcade to what is now Castle Street in front of Waterstone's to allow the old course to be built on.

Recent archæological papers suggest it then kinked across at right angles, left and right, to run down Little London Street on its old course.

But Old Dive knows better … During rebuilding works to the complex of mediæval houses that used to be Hovell's basket shop (thirteen mediæval buildings all on different levels on a steep slope), after a terrible fire in the 1980s, I got the job of architecturally reconstructing what was left.

Hovell's in happier days … it stretched up the hill to the right for another two buildings and down the hill to the left for four more, plus several more stacked in behind. Photo EDP24

 Lo and behold, there, running through the basement, beneath a later timber floor that had burned away, we found the Great Cockey still flowing in a massive brick culvert, suggesting that the archæologists' guess was wrong and that the diverted stream continued in a straight line from the bottom of London Street, down through Hovell's basement, under the Georgian house at the west end of the Bridewell, then on down the hill past St. Andrew's churchyard, under the Festival House and then joined the Wensum at its original outflow.

Analysis of the enrolled deeds from Norman and early mediæval records tells us that the most commonly occurring trade along the banks of the Great Cockey was that of leather-workers, of which more in the next post.

Towering above the Cockey stream were the castle motte and keep and the moats, ditches, mounds and baileys of the Castle Fee; the great earthworks that protected Norwich Castle.

These were not used merely for defence. The vast swathes of grassland were used for the fattening of pigs and cattle for the people of the castle and the Fee.

A Fat Pig … courtesy of the interweb.

People outside the fee were not permitted to graze their animals there, though I learned from the Pipe Rolls that in 1137,  a certain David Monney of Norwich [NB: David Monney was a workmate of Old Dive and present at the lecture, much to the amusement of the other attendees] was fined for fattening his pigs on the castle bailey.

But to return to the early Norman Castle Fee and our stroll along the Great Cockey, it's time to get gross … really gross. You know you want this bit, it's what you came here for … If you've not finished your sandwiches it's too late now …

… and that'll start in the next post. I know, I'm a spoilsport.

Sources:

East Anglian Archæology Vol. 132: Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey: 1978-1988: Part 1: Anglo-Saxon to c.1345: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2009

The Norman Connections - Castle: Part 1: Norwich Castle: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2010

Mediæval Norwich: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004

Eastern Daily Press website: "13th century cat and goat hide shop excavated."

A Brief History of Arrowmaking: Veronica-Mae Soar; Clerk to the Craft Guild of Traditional Bowyers and Fletchers: The Worshipful Company of Fletchers: online resource

East Anglian Archæology Vol. 112: Dragon Hall, King Street, Norwich: Excavation and Survey of a Late Mediæval Merchant's Trading Complex: Norfolk and Norwich Heritage Trust

East Anglian Archæology Vol 28: Excavations Within the North-East Bailey of Norwich Castle: 1979

Francis Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: 1753 to 1775 

The Oxford History of England: 1087-1216: From Domesday to Magna Carta: Austin L. Poole (ed): 1951

The Pipe Roll Society: Archive Editions (various): online resource

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Third - Life in the Mediæval Castle Fee - Chapter II

Contrary to popular belief, late Saxon Norwich was a large, thriving town with its own mint and forty-six churches (Domesday Book).

Pre-Conquest Norwich, showing the Fee area and the

Great Cockey stream in the foreground.

Courtesy Norfolk Museums Service.

This number would rise by the fourteenth century to fifty-six or so, hence the local legend "a church for every week of the year and a pub for every day of the year."

Once the Normans moved in, they sited their new marketplace where the current Marketplace and Haymarket still stand and lived in the area leading uphill west from this, between Chapelfield and the Roman Road at Pottergate, known as the French Quarter.

The Jews of Jewry, being under the king's protection and funding his armies, clustered around the southern end of the marketplace, eventually extending from where the Bell Hotel now stands, across the Great Cockey, through the middle of Debenhams and across to the Chapelfield Mall.

The Music House on King Street,

formerly Jurnet's House.

Photo: Old Dive.

'Jurnet the Jew' was the most prominent citizen among them, having his own extremely high status stone-built house on the new waterfront extending along Conesford; what is now King Street. The house substantially survives today as the Music House.

The original Jewish Synagogue was on the site on Haymarket now occupied by cheesy gift shop 'The Card Factory', between Pret a Manger and Primark.

Norwich's Jewish community was one of the largest and most important in England and a great number of their records, writings and poetry fortunately survives today.

Norwich Castle Fee.

Courtesy EAA 132.

The population of the Norwich Castle Fee surrounded the castle mound and a record of their houses is indicated on this map. In East Anglian Archæology no.132, Elizabeth Shepherd Popescu provides a list of the freeholders of each Fee property from Norman times through to the fifteenth century.

There was a well in the Barbican, in the position shown on the above map; originally sited about ten paces south of the western gatehouse at the foot of the Norman bridge (just about where the Tea Junction tea shop now sits in the Castle Mall), and this was used as a water source during the building of the stone keep, bridge and gatehouses, but then fell out of use, much to our own gain through archæological evidence found during the construction of Castle Mall.

White Watch of Norwich Fire Brigade spraying the loose earth around the newly-discovered well prior to stabilisation and excavation (during Castle Mall construction).

Photo courtesy EAA 132.

Elizabeth Shepherd Popescu gives us an account of the feofees, based on what they threw down the disused well:

"A wide range of artisans worked around the fringes of the castle and waste from virtually all of these trades found its way into the Norman well at the foot of the castle bridge, perhaps suggesting that the disposal was licensed.

Numerous trades and professions were active within the Fee, including silkmen, armourers, blacksmiths and swordsmiths, bow makers, fletchers, leather-colourers, spur makers and saddlers.

Section through the well, from EAA 132.

The prolific dumping of waste from these trades into the well (around 181 tonnes) may be a reflection of the city authority's attempts to keep the barbican and motte ditches clear: archæological evidence indicates that - despite the documentary references to its continued occurence - very little waste of that period was present in the barbican ditch which remained substantially open at this time. By the sixteenth century the sheriff was still spying on those dumping muck into the motte and barbican ditches.

Highlighting just one aspect of the massive assemblage from the well, the most conclusive evidence from the animal bone refuse of a particular craft is provided by the remarkable group of goose wing bones. Goose wing tips were valued for their primary feathers and a minimum of 270 left and 122 right wing tips were recovered from the well, along with many other wing bones and matted lumps of feathers.

The bias toward the left wing may indicate that these are the residue from a quill-dresser workshop, these being the preferred wing for right-handed quill users (as the feather curves away from the eye).

An alternative is that the bias may link to the fletching of arrows, during which feathers from a single wing would have been used. The behaviour of incorrectly fletched arrows, which do not fly true, is known among archers as 'flirting'.

Evidence for arrow manufacture in the locality comes both from documentary evidence for the presence of fletchers and bowyers and from the discovery of part-made armour-piercing arrows within the well fills.

This was the period of the longbow, when arrows were in high demand and when arms and raw materials had to be supplied to the crown for its military campaigns. In 1417, six feathers from every goose within twenty southern English counties were to be supplied to the Tower, while the following year, sheriffs were commanded to supply 1,190,000 goose feathers by Michaelmas (Ca; Pat. Rills, 1416 - 22, 178: cited in Hardy, 1994, p.168)."

In the next post, discover more about 'flirting' and the lost rivers of Norwich and things will start to get gross.

Sources:

East Anglian Archæology Vol. 132: Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey: 1978-1988: Part 1: Anglo-Saxon to c.1345: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2009

The Norman Connections - Castle: Part 1: Norwich Castle: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2010

Mediæval Norwich: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004

Eastern Daily Press website: "13th century cat and goat hide shop excavated."

A Brief History of Arrowmaking: Veronica-Mae Soar; Clerk to the Craft Guild of Traditional Bowyers and Fletchers: The Worshipful Company of Fletchers: online resource

East Anglian Archæology Vol. 112: Dragon Hall, King Street, Norwich: Excavation and Survey of a Late Mediæval Merchant's Trading Complex: Norfolk and Norwich Heritage Trust

East Anglian Archæology Vol 28: Excavations Within the North-East Bailey of Norwich Castle: 1979

Francis Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: 1753 to 1775 

The Oxford History of England: 1087-1216: From Domesday to Magna Carta: Austin L. Poole (ed): 1951

The Pipe Roll Society: Archive Editions (various): online resource

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Third - Life in the Mediæval Castle Fee - Chapter I

 Wherein a bit of historic scene-setting before we get silly …

Norwich Castle Fee.

Courtesy EAA 132 (see Sources)

During the reign of Henry the First (d. 1135 of a surfeit of lampreys as you'll recall), the twenty-three acre castle precinct, including the mound, two large baileys, barbican ditch and moats, was enfeoffed as a feodum castelli, the Castle Fee.

The Fee boundaries can be seen on the above map.

The Fee gave the feofees (the population of the castle precinct) the right to freehold property in exchange for their pledged service. In this talk we're going to take a look at what they got up to.

In times of rebellion - which was just about all the time in mediæval Norwich - the people of the fee were drawn up on the castle mound to defend the walls.

At other times, their trades were used for the benefit of the castle and of the Earl of Norfolk, good old Hugh Bigod.

The mediæval social strata in Norwich from top to bottom, consisted:

The Earl of Norfolk together with his household and the castle garrison; then the rich priors and monks of the large monastic institutions; then the population of the Castle Fee; followed by the general Norman population in the French Quarter; who relied on the Jews in Jewry, the financial quarter; and at the bottom of the heap was the Anglo-Scandinavian population of pre-Conquest Norwich.

Early occupation zones … the grey roads are the modern street plan.

Courtesy EAA 132

The Anglo-Scandinavian folk of Norwich, a mixture of North German Saxons and Vikings who moved here in successive waves after the Romans left, lived in two burhs, north and south of the river, as can be seen above.

The Scandinavians tended to cluster north of the river, in a ramparted village called Norvic (from the North Vicus or place) roughly centred on present day Magdalen Street; this was later known as Norvic Ultra Aquam, or Norwich Across the Water.

The main Viking and Saxon settlement areas, pre-Conquest.

Courtesy EAA 132 with overlays by Old Dive.

[NB: these talks were given to the Norwich Castle project team and assume an intimate knowledge of Norwich's streets and quarters … sorry about that].

Back then, the only bridge across the Wensum was where Fye Bridge now stands, but was then a timber structure built as a long causeway across the marshes from Tombland to Colegate, the river being much wider at that time.

From the north end of the bridge the major churches and high-status buildings were strung westward along Colegate, while the wharves and trades yards extended eastward along Fishergate to what would soon become Whitefriars. Whitefirars Bridge and Bishopgate Bridge would follow in later Plantagenet times along with the building of the first City Wall.

The Saxon community lived south of the river as far as where John Lewis now stands, bounded on the east by the marshes along Mountergate and on the west by the Great Cockey stream, which we shall explore a little later. This area was centred around Ber Street and known as Needham (poor town or poor grazing land).

Next time: some more scene-setting; this time for post-Conquest Norwich. Then we can have some fun.

Sources:

East Anglian Archæology Vol. 132: Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey: 1978-1988: Part 1: Anglo-Saxon to c.1345: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2009

The Norman Connections - Castle: Part 1: Norwich Castle: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2010

Mediæval Norwich: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004

Eastern Daily Press website: "13th century cat and goat hide shop excavated."

A Brief History of Arrowmaking: Veronica-Mae Soar; Clerk to the Craft Guild of Traditional Bowyers and Fletchers: The Worshipful Company of Fletchers: online resource

East Anglian Archæology Vol. 112: Dragon Hall, King Street, Norwich: Excavation and Survey of a Late Mediæval Merchant's Trading Complex: Norfolk and Norwich Heritage Trust

East Anglian Archæology Vol 28: Excavations Within the North-East Bailey of Norwich Castle: 1979

Francis Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: 1753 to 1775 

The Oxford History of England: 1087-1216: From Domesday to Magna Carta: Austin L. Poole (ed): 1951

The Pipe Roll Society: Archive Editions (various): online resource

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Second - Anarchy in the UK - Appendix: Let's Invade England

So … just how many times has England been invaded since 1066?

Rather a lot, it turns out. Here's my best guestimate … and at least five of these were successful invasions resulting in a change of monarch:

1066: Sweyn and his Viking army - defeated by King Harold Godwinson at Stamford Bridge.

1066: William the Bastard and his Norman army. Defeated and killed Harold. William becomes King William the First of England.

1067: Edgar the Atheling invades the west country - twice.

1070s: Sweyn Estridsson invades the north of England, then invades and plunders East Anglia, the git.

1100: Robert Short-Arse invades. Failed due to lack of interest.

1135: Stephen of Blois invades and is crowned King Stephen the First of England. This was just as successful an invasion as 1066, but it - in common with several others - gets fat all press in comparison … weird.

1136: David the First of Scotland invades in support of Empress Matilda. Repulsed by Stephen.

1138: David the First of Scotland has another go. This time he's successful and holds the north of England for Empress Matilda until 1157.

1139: Empress Matilda and Geoffrey Plantagenet invade, kicking off the Anarchy.

1149: Henry FitzEmpress (yes, really) invades. Son of Empress Matilda and future King Henry the Second of England.

1208: Eustace the Monk seizes the Channel Islands.

1216: Louis the Eighth of France (AKA Louis the Lion) invades in cahoots with Alexander the Second of Scotland during the First Barons' War, which saw Louis crowned by the barons and the London Mob as King Louis. It was rumoured he was also King of the Swingers and the Jungle VIP.

King Louis storms and takes Norwich Castle and sacks and burns Norwich. What an arsehole … Little wonder we hate the French.

Anyhoo, when King John died (for a while we'd had two kings at the same time), the barons switched their allegiance to nine-year-old Henry the Third, thinking they could control him. Louis got his arse kicked at the Second Battle of Lincoln and his navy sunk of Sandwich. He was bribed to bugger off back to France and stay there.

1217: Eustace the Monk again; this time invading via Sandwich in Kent.

1314 - 1513: Countless Scottish invasions during the Wars of Scottish Independence, the Hundred Years War and the Anglo-Scottish Wars. Way too many to mention.

1338 / 9: French attacks on Harwich, Southampton, Plymouth, Jersey (twice), Alderney and Sark.

1340: More French raids along the south coast; at least six landings.

1360: French attacks on Sandwich, Rye, Hastings and Winchelsea.

1373: The French invade Jersey (again).

1376: French attack at Rye.

1377: The French attempt invasion at Rye (twice), Rottingdean, Portsmouth, Dartmouth, Plymouth, Isle of Wight, Winchelsea (again). Folkstone, Southampton and Poole. You can't fault the buggers for lack of trying.

1380: Winchelsea invaded again.

1386: The French invade Winchelsea yet again (they must really like it there) and also landings in Kent.

1408 - 1415: French privateers attack the Isle of Wight and Dartmouth (twice).

1415: French invade the Isle of Wight.

1418: They're back in Winchelsea again.

1461: The French invade Jersey.

1470: French invasion in support of the restoration of Henry the Sixth.

1471: Invasion of Edward the Fourth and defeat of Henry the Sixth.

1485: The Welsh invade England under Harri Tudur, leading to the Battle of Bosworth Field and the death of Richard the Third (AKA Richard Crookback, recently dug up from under a pub car park in Leicester). Harri Tudur anglicises his name and becomes Henry Tudor, King Henry the Seventh of England.

1487: Lambert Simnel invades from Ireland, claiming to be Edward Plantagenet, one of the dead princes in the Tower (he wasn't).

1495: Perkin Warbeck lands at Deal, claiming to be the rightful king (he wasn't either).

1497: Perkin Warbeck's back, this time invading via Cornwall.

1513: The Scots again, under James the Fourth, leading to the Battle of Flodden.

1545: The French invade the Isle of Wight during the Italian Wars. The Mary Rose was sunk in this battle, not by the French, but by stupidity. Overload a top-heavy ship, open the gun ports close to the waterline, turn really sharply and sink.

1588: The Spanish Armada … didn't go so well.

1595: The Spanish invade Cornwall and actually get on shore.

1596: The Second Spanish Armada did even worse than the first.

1597: The Third Spanish Armada got dispersed by storms off The Lizard, but a few Spanish troops managed to land in Cornwall and Wales … to no effect.

1601: The Spanish land at Cork.

1627: Barbary pirates invade and occupy Lundy. Make attacks around Conwy.

1631: Barbary pirates invade and sack Baltimore in Ireland.

1636: Barbary pirates attack and raid Cornwall.

1640: They then do the same to Penzance … Pirates of Penzance, anyone?

1648: Those pesky Scots again, this time in support of Charles the First against Cromwell's Parliamentary Army, and we all know how that went. Defeated at Preston, leading later to Charles the First's beheading (yay).

1667: Dutch landings at Sheerness and Felixstowe.

1685: Invasion by Monmouth during the Monmouth Rebellion.

1688: The Glorious Revolution: William of Orange and Mary Stuart defeat James the Second and take the throne of England. Huzzah!

1690: The French try to invade via Teignmouth in Devon.

1708: James the Second tries to get his throne back with French help … Nope.

1715: The Jacobite Rising: The Scots invade in support of James the Second and are again defeated at Preston. You'd think they'd have learned the first time.

1719: The Spanish land at Loch Alsh.

1744: The French try invading again but call it off.

1745: The Jacobite invasion by Bonnie Prince Charlie and a French army.

1759: Yet another French invasion attempt is sunk by the Royal Navy.

1778 John Paul Jones (NOT the Led Zeppelin bassist) invades Whitehaven and raids the Solway Firth during the American Revolutionary War.

1779: Planned Franco-Spanish invasion in support of America called off. The French raid the Channel Islands instead.

1803 - 1809: Napoleon's planned invasions keep getting sunk by Nelson.

1940: Hitler's Nazis land at Graveney Marsh in Kent. Skirmish ensues.

1940: Operation Sea Lion, Hitler's planned invasion of England, called off when the RAF gained air supremacy in the Battle of Britain.

1940 - 1945: Hitler's Nazis invade and occupy the Channel Islands.

1944: America successfully invades England armed with silk stockings and cigarettes, leading to an epidemic of unwanted pregnancies and G. I. Brides. Then we all get together and invade Normandy, though not in revenge for 1066.

If you're aware of any more, do let me know.

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Second - Anarchy in the UK - Chapter V

Wherein the Anarchy finally burns out, we bid a fond farewell to the battling Matildas and usher in the Plantagenets.

The Triumph of Death by Pieter Breugel the Elder.

Pretty much sums up England during the Anarchy.

 

Ah, the Anarchy … nineteen years of shitty death. 

Here's the Anglo Saxon Chronicle for the year 1137: "Every man built himself a castle and held it against the king; and they filled the whole land with these castles.

They sorely burdened the unhappy people of the country with forced labour on the castles; and when the castles were built they filled them with devils and wicked men.

I do not know how to, nor am I able to tell of all the atrocities nor all the cruelties they wrought upon the unhappy people of this country. It lasted throughout the nineteen years that Stephen was king and always grew worse and worse."

So much for the aristocracy. Was the king any better behaved? Was he buggery.

The Gesta Stephani relates that King Stephen with his mercenary army "… set himself to lay waste to that fair and delightful district, so full of good things; they took and plundered everything they came upon, set fire to houses and churches and, what was a more cruel and brutal sight, fired the crops that had been reaped and stacked all over the fields, consumed and brought to nothing everything edible that they found. They ravaged with bestial cruelty."

Happy days …

King Stephen's glorious reign. Courtesy the interweb.

 

In the midst of all this, in 1147, Robert of Gloucester did something unheard of in these chronicles; he died of natural causes … not a lamprey nor a dribble of arse-gravy in sight.

Still the slaughter continued for another seven long years before Empress Matilda's son, Henry Plantagenet - who had been laying waste to Normandy - was persuaded by Matilda to bring his army over to England and pile into the fray.

Queen Matilda having died two years previously, Empress Matilda and Henry now sought battle with Stephen and William of Ypres. But, having nothing much left to loot or burn, all sides called it a day.

Nobody won …

Two-thirds of the country lay empty and devastated; crops, homes and churches burned, peasants and townsfolk slaughtered.

Empress Matilda and King Stephen made a deal …

Stephen was permitted to stay on as king of England but his sons were disinherited. Empress Matilda was to rule Normandy while her son Henry was declared heir to the English throne. In 1154, Stephen died of apoplexy and King Henry the Second settled his bottom onto the throne of England.

Once his dad had kicked the bucket, William of Blois was booted out of Norwich Castle and Hugh Bigod once more moved in as Earl of Norfolk.

In my next talk we shall discover the fragrant delights of Norman and early mediæval Norwich and learn more about the fate of Norwich Castle.

My next post shall be an Appendix to Part the Second, listing my guess of the post-1066 invasions of England. There are lots.

Sources:

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (various): C. Clark (ed): 1970

Historia Novella: William of Malmesbury. In translation as William of Malmesbury's Chronicle of the Kings of England from the Earliest Period to the Reign of King Stephen: J. A. Giles: 2016

Historia Anglorum: Henry of Huntingdon: In translation as The History of the English People, 1000 - 1154: Diana Greenway: Oxford World Classics: 2009

The Chronicle of John of Worcester, Volume 3: 1067 - 1140: In translation by R. R. Darlington: Oxford Mediæval Texts: 1995

Gesta Stephani: In translation by K. R. Potter and R. H. C. Davis: Oxford Mediæval Texts: 1976 

Feudal Documents from Bury St. Edmunds: British Academy Records of the Social and Economic History of England and Wales: Donald C. Douglas: 1932

Francis Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: 1753 to 1775

The Oxford History of England: 1087-1216: From Domesday to Magna Carta: Austin L. Poole (ed): 1951

The Anarchy of King Stephen's Reign: Edmund King (ed): 1994

Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context: T. A. Heslop: 1994

Stephen and Matilda : The Civil War of 1139 - 1153: Jim Bradbury: 2005

The Pipe Roll Society: Archive Editions (various): online resource

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Second - Anarchy in the UK - Chapter IV

1141 … A mere twenty years since the completion of Norwich Castle as Henry the First's Royal Palace.

Empress Matilda holding a suspiciously blank charter.

Courtesy our friends the interweb.

And here we are with Empress Matilda, Henry's nominated successor, about to be crowned Queen of England. The usurper 'King Stephen' is her captive in Bristol Castle, chained and manacled and all Matilda has to do is win over the London Mob. Don't cock it up, Matilda …

Too late … The London Mob loves a good bribe and Stephen had exempted the city from royal taxes. Matilda demands the resumption of taxation and - by contemporary accounts - acts all hoity-toity and empress-y, haughtily haranguing them about her rights and their duties.

The Mob chase Matilda and her entourage out of London and she flees to Oxford Castle. Cue Stephen's wife, Queen Matilda and her Flemish mercenaries under William of Ypres. Queen Matilda promises to restore Stephen's tax bribe and - with the riotous support of the Mob, heads off in pursuit of the Empress. At last, the Matilda versus Matilda smackdown!

Well nearly … Getting back to the whole point of these talks, we (briefly) return to architecture.

Always remember to let go of the trebuchet.

Courtesy of an Arabic mediæval illuminator with a sense of humour.

 

As the Anarchy took hold across England, a siege tactic peculiar to this conflict was born; that of the "counter-castle".

The remains of the counter-castle constructed at Oxford for the siege. Courtesy the interweb.

So many new castles were built during Stephen's reign and so many earldoms granted that inevitably squabbles broke out when the scorched-earth warfare of the Anarchy left the new earls with little to eat and still less to loot. 

Brian FitzCount complained that the destruction of his lands forced him to "take things from other people in order to sustain my life and the lives of my men."

Any earl or baron wishing to rob his neighbour now simply blockaded their castle and built another castle between three and four-hundred yards away (just out of bowshot but ideal for launching siege weapons), as you can see was done at Oxford (above).

Historian and Norman monk Robert of Torigni estimated at the time that as many as 1,115 castles and counter-castles were erected during Stephen's chaotic reign. Most were demolished under Henry the Second but a few mounds, such as at Oxford. still remain.

Empress Matilda Flees Oxford Castle.

Courtesy The British Library's wonderful Flickr resource

of over a million copyright-free vintage illustrations.

Under cover of a snowstorm, Empress Matilda was bundled up in white sheets and sneaked out across the frozen River Thames, heading for Bristol Castle. George R. R. Martin wrote this episode into GoT as Sansa Stark fleeing Winterfell in much the same manner. I wish he'd hurry up and finish Winds of Winter; it's not as if we've run out of history for him to use.

Empress Matilda now set out with Robert of Gloucester, Henry the First's favourite bastard and the leader of Matilda's army to Winchester in an attempt to secure what was left of Stephen's treasury; they lay siege to Wolvesey Castle.

Queen Matilda gathered up William of Ypres' army and some thousand armed militia from the London Mob and rushed to raise the siege. On September the fourteenth, 1141, in what became known as the Rout of Winchester, they defeated Robert's army and captured him, Empress Matilda managing to escape once more.

Queen Matilda offered to swap Robert of Gloucester for Stephen, still in chains in Bristol Castle, but Empress Matilda was having none of it, intending to hang on to Stephen. Instead she offered a dozen or so earls and a shedload of gold for Robert's release.

While they were haggling, Queen Matilda went behind the Empress' back and got a message to Robert's wife Amabel at Bristol Castle. The two of them agreed to swap Robert for Stephen. Empress Matilda threw a Trump-like tantrum but with no army left she retreated to Anjou to raise more forces.

The result of the smackdown: Queen Matilda, one … Empress Matilda, nil.

King Stephen clambered back onto the throne and there we were, back at the start again. Sheesh!

There followed thirteen more years of dread and terror as the earls and barons, mercenaries and Mob chased one another all over the country, laying waste to towns and villages, burning crops, castles and churches, spending more time robbing, raping and murdering the citizens and peasantry than actually fighting one another.

When they did have a scrap, they wouldn't kill one another … hell no! They were the aristocracy (their worthless descendants still are) and merely captured one another for ransom. It was everybody else who got killed.

The Golden Age of Chivalry was a really shitty time to be alive. Next time, more unpleasantness, but after that we'll relieve things with some gratuitous grossness and the odd giggle. I promise.

Sources:

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (various): C. Clark (ed): 1970

Historia Novella: William of Malmesbury. In translation as William of Malmesbury's Chronicle of the Kings of England from the Earliest Period to the Reign of King Stephen: J. A. Giles: 2016

Historia Anglorum: Henry of Huntingdon: In translation as The History of the English People, 1000 - 1154: Diana Greenway: Oxford World Classics: 2009

The Chronicle of John of Worcester, Volume 3: 1067 - 1140: In translation by R. R. Darlington: Oxford Mediæval Texts: 1995

Gesta Stephani: In translation by K. R. Potter and R. H. C. Davis: Oxford Mediæval Texts: 1976 

Feudal Documents from Bury St. Edmunds: British Academy Records of the Social and Economic History of England and Wales: Donald C. Douglas: 1932

Francis Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: 1753 to 1775

The Oxford History of England: 1087-1216: From Domesday to Magna Carta: Austin L. Poole (ed): 1951

The Anarchy of King Stephen's Reign: Edmund King (ed): 1994

Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context: T. A. Heslop: 1994

Stephen and Matilda : The Civil War of 1139 - 1153: Jim Bradbury: 2005

The Pipe Roll Society: Archive Editions (various): online resource

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Second - Anarchy in the UK - Chapter III

And so to the second siege of Norwich Castle … 1136: King Stephen, having survived a brush with death by arse-gravy, entered the city, probably still walking a little gingerly and set out his siege lines.

At which point rebel Earl Hugh Bigod bravely surrendered and pledged fealty to his new sovereign. As you shall learn in coming chapters, the Bigods made an almost obsessional habit of switching sides the wrong way and yet somehow they always managed to survive.

Bungay Castle at the time of Hugh Bigod's big sulk. Courtesy Norfolk Museums Service

Stephen accepted Hugh's surrender but promptly booted him out of Norwich Castle and replaced him with his own son, William of Blois, who now moved in - via Hugh's recently completed flat-roofed porch extension - and was named the new Earl of Norfolk.

The citizens of Norwich had their liberties and benefits removed by King Stephen, which was hardly fair as they hated the Bigods for having robbed them blind for years.

Hugh Bigod was given the meaningless title Earl of the East Angles, deprived of his old income and sent to the family home of Bungay Castle to skulk and sulk.

Three years later, in 1139, Stephen eased up a bit on the citizens of Norwich, granting their liberties back for a bribe of twenty-five pounds, so desperate was he for cash as Matilda had just invaded. 

The good folk of Norwich ponied up and breathed a big sigh of relief, but they sighed too soon, as Hugh Bigod, understandably hacked off at having to live in Bungay, declared for Empress Matilda against the king. Stephen immediately seized back the liberties of Norwich and the citizens rolled their eyes and probably said some nasty words and muttered and rhubarbed amongst themselves.

Their revolt - the first of many … we're pretty revolting around here - will feature in a future chapter.

Meanwhile, King Stephen stomped off to Bungay Castle and took it from Hugh Bigod. Amazingly, Hugh managed to retain his head but was now drafted into the king's army and the next we hear of him he is fighting on the king's side at the First Battle of Lincoln two years later.

Bit of a bummer for Hugh then, that the king lost that one …

King Stephen, his battle axe broken, is unceremoniously bonked on the head with a rock.

Picture courtesy of the good old interweb.

King Stephen by all accounts behaved with honour and bravery that day. After hours of terrible bloodshed and slaughter Stephen was overwhelmed and surrounded, his earls and knights - including with yawning predictability, Hugh Bigod - abandoning him and fleeing the field; the king himself rather heroically berserking on foot until his sword broke and then, having grabbed a battle axe, laying about him until he broke that as well.

Eventually, bloodied, battered and knackered, someone hit him over the head with a rock. All very chivalrous. King Stephen was captured, carted off to Gloucester and then on to Bristol Castle where he was held in chains by Empress Matilda.

Next time: The Matilda versus Matilda Smackdown!

Sources:

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (various): C. Clark (ed): 1970

Historia Novella: William of Malmesbury. In translation as William of Malmesbury's Chronicle of the Kings of England from the Earliest Period to the Reign of King Stephen: J. A. Giles: 2016

Historia Anglorum: Henry of Huntingdon: In translation as The History of the English People, 1000 - 1154: Diana Greenway: Oxford World Classics: 2009

The Chronicle of John of Worcester, Volume 3: 1067 - 1140: In translation by R. R. Darlington: Oxford Mediæval Texts: 1995

Gesta Stephani: In translation by K. R. Potter and R. H. C. Davis: Oxford Mediæval Texts: 1976 

Feudal Documents from Bury St. Edmunds: British Academy Records of the Social and Economic History of England and Wales: Donald C. Douglas: 1932

Francis Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: 1753 to 1775

The Oxford History of England: 1087-1216: From Domesday to Magna Carta: Austin L. Poole (ed): 1951

The Anarchy of King Stephen's Reign: Edmund King (ed): 1994

Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context: T. A. Heslop: 1994

Stephen and Matilda : The Civil War of 1139 - 1153: Jim Bradbury: 2005

The Pipe Roll Society: Archive Editions (various): online resource

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Second - Anarchy in the UK - Chapter II

Alas, poor King Stephen, slinking back to England after his army slaughtered itself before his very eyes.

Stephen was not the most proactive of rulers. Having attained the throne by simple bribery, whenever something came up his preferred solution was to rush over and throw money at it. The Gesta Stephani has him "running hither and thither all over England," bribing his uppity aristocracy with gifts of earldoms and castles.

Starting in 1136, the granting of earldoms and castles was soon hopelessly out of control and Stephen's royal power and royal finances disappeared down the shitter in short order.

All hell broke loose. The Welsh rebelled, the Scots invaded and the earls and barons behaved like earls and barons.

Welcome to The Anarchy, England's first, full-on civil war since the Norman Conquest. It lasted nineteen years and trashed most of Britain and Normandy.

The Anarchy was a particularly nasty, brutal, scorched-earth, massacre-and-pillage style war, but apart from a small handbag fight, which we shall outline below, the closest the slaughter came to Norwich was Ely, which bore yet another siege, assault and confiscation of whatever body parts were left after the last cull.

To top it all, in 1139, Empress Matilda and hubby Geoffrey Plantagenet invaded England, in league with Matilda's half-brother, Robert of Gloucester and her Uncle, King David the First of Scotland, who took and held much of northern England in her name.

Yet another invasion. Courtesy the interweb.

Quick digression: I don't know why most folk think that the last time England was invaded was in 1066.

Already, by 1135, we've been invaded by Edgar the Atheling (twice), Sweyn Estridsson (twice), Robert Short-Arse (failed through lack of interest - see Part the First) and in this period, both Stephen of Blois, who invaded and was crowned king by the London Mob after exempting them from royal taxes and now by Empress Matilda.

After that come so many invasions it makes your head spin; I'll add a list of them at the end of Part the Second should anyone wish to discover just how invasion-prone we are.

But back to Norwich, where faithful Hugh Bigod, enjoying being Earl of Norfolk and Constable of Norwich Castle was happy to swear fealty to the newly crowned King Stephen and eager to crack on with his flat-roofed porch extension.

1136, and elsewhere in the kingdom trouble was brewing …

Quite early in the Anarchy, having been haring hither and thither around the country, walloping Welshmen, slaughtering Scots and flattening (or bribing) anyone else who got in his way, King Stephen succumbed to his own fit of arse-gravy mayhem and the rumour swept through England that he had died.

Earl Hugh, on hearing the rumour, immediately claimed Norwich Castle as his own, without waiting for news of Stephen's runny demise.

King Stephen - courtesy the interweb

Big mistake!

Occasionally, even in the twelfth century, people's bottoms dried out and they recovered from dysentery.

Inevitably - and you know there's always an "inevitably" in these talks - this was what happened to Stephen.

Newly dry-bottomed King Stephen - once he could sit on a horse again - brought his army up to Norwich and lay siege to the castle.

I like a cliffhanger. Tune in next time to discover the fate of Hugh Bigod and Norwich Castle.

Sources:

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (various): C. Clark (ed): 1970

Historia Novella: William of Malmesbury. In translation as William of Malmesbury's Chronicle of the Kings of England from the Earliest Period to the Reign of King Stephen: J. A. Giles: 2016

Historia Anglorum: Henry of Huntingdon: In translation as The History of the English People, 1000 - 1154: Diana Greenway: Oxford World Classics: 2009

The Chronicle of John of Worcester, Volume 3: 1067 - 1140: In translation by R. R. Darlington: Oxford Mediæval Texts: 1995

Gesta Stephani: In translation by K. R. Potter and R. H. C. Davis: Oxford Mediæval Texts: 1976 

Feudal Documents from Bury St. Edmunds: British Academy Records of the Social and Economic History of England and Wales: Donald C. Douglas: 1932

Francis Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: 1753 to 1775

The Oxford History of England: 1087-1216: From Domesday to Magna Carta: Austin L. Poole (ed): 1951

The Anarchy of King Stephen's Reign: Edmund King (ed): 1994

Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context: T. A. Heslop: 1994

Stephen and Matilda : The Civil War of 1139 - 1153: Jim Bradbury: 2005

The Pipe Roll Society: Archive Editions (various): online resource

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Second - Anarchy in the UK - Chapter I

 

I couldn't resist. One of my all time favourite cartoons.

Anyhoo … to the matter at hand. My long-standing series of monthly lunchtime lectures is supposed to be on historic building conservation, teaching our young graduates stuff they no longer teach at university. Covering one or more of the RIBA's CPD Core Curriculum subjects gives attendees an hour off their annual Continual Professional Development duties. Occasionally I veer a little off topic, hence the opening paragraphs of this one below. Here goes …

Hokay, so I started writing the notes for this presentation and then had to stop at the Matilda versus Matilda smackdown because I found I'd written over ten-thousand words before I even got part way through the Anarchy. And that's just the notes; I hadn't even put in any bum jokes yet.

Mostly it was just about ghastly people doing ghastly things to other ghastly people; great fun for me as a mad mediævalist, and I know also for the odder folk among you, but the RIBA CPD Core Curriculum subjects don't specifically include madness, murder and mayhem, or indeed bum jokes, more's the pity and I am required to include at least some history and conservation of buildings to give you a legit hour's CPD.

So instead of a narrative of nineteen years of earls, barons, kings, queens and an empress chasing one another all round the country like the end of a Benny Hill show you'll be getting the bits that affected Norwich Castle … er … mostly.

Henry the First. Courtesy of the interweb.

At the end of our previous talk we left Norwich Castle at Christmas 1121, with the porpoise-eating party of Henry the First and Adeliza of Louvain.

As we learned, Henry lived on until the beginning of December 1135, when his chugging of a surfeit of lampreys caused a week-long, agonising death by bowel cramps and bum-gravy.

So we rejoin our tale in 1135. Plenty went on between 1121 and 1135 but none of the juicy bits occured anywhere near Norwich Castle so for today's purposes we can fast-forward over those years.

First week of December 1135, however, saw Henry the First emit his last, dying, fishy, wet fart and the real life Game of Thrones kicked off.

Let's start with Empress Matilda. Only surviving legitimate child of Henry the First and his queen Matilda, the king had married her off at age eleven to the elderly Holy Roman Emperor, another Henry (I hope you're keeping notes; I'll be asking questions later … though all the answers will probably be Matilda or Henry, there are so many of the buggers).

In 1125, elderly Emperor Henry popped his clogs and two years later Henry the First brought Matilda back to England to be declared his true heir.

A woman? A WOMAN? This was too much for your typical twelfth-century misogynist and the aristocracy let Henry know in no uncertain terms that they would only accept a queen if she was suitably married to a noble who would rule as king; preferably one of their own. But Henry cocks it up … He marries Matilda to Geoffrey Plantagenet of Anjou, traditional enemy of the Norman aristocracy. Henry had to force the barons to swear oaths of allegiance to Matilda and Geoffrey in 1127, 1128 and again in 1131.

NOT the mummified hand of Saint James, but the severed hand of Sir John Heydon, which you can find in Norwich Castle Museum should you be so inclined. Photo - courtesy Old Dive.

Empress Matilda was a bit of an odd fish in that she carried the mummified hand of Saint James wherever she went. And where she went now was off to Anjou with her new hubby, leaving the barons and earls to grumble and rhubarb amongst themselves.

Enter one Stephen of Blois. Remember him? As Henry's nephew he had a lesser but still legitimate claim to the throne and Henry had married him off to wealthy Matilda (surprise) of Boulogne. He was also the guy who chickened out of sailing with William Adelin on the White Ship as he felt the passengers and crew were too drunk to sail. Smart move.

In another smart move, he gathered his military retinue and raced across the Channel as soon as he heard news of Henry's demise, landing in London on the eighth of December.

The London Mob traditionally claimed a right to elect the sovereign of England (as later they elected Mary Tudor, usurping Edward VI's nominated heir, Queen Jane after only nine days as monarch). They liked the look of Stephen and they liked his promise of tax cuts and bribes even more. 

Stephen's brother - yet another Henry - was Bishop of Winchester and delivered Stephen the support of the church in exchange for his granting the church the right to extort even more money from the people. Bishop Henry bribed Hugh, the son of Roger Bigot to swear that King Henry had changed his mind on his deathbed and had named Stephen his heir in place of Matilda.

This was good enough for the London Mob, so on the twenty-sixth of December 1135, Stephen was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey.

Meanwhile, back in Norwich Castle our old chum Roger Bigot, the Norman Knight and ruthless exploiter of the local population was succeeded at the turn of 1136 by his son, Hugh (he of the above bribe), who changed the family name to Bigod (pronounced By-God apparently) and who was named the First Earl of Norfolk and Constable of Norwich Castle.

Hugh was marginally less rapacious than his dad had been and rather enjoyed living at the castle, so recently completed and fitted out as a royal palace.

Like anyone moving into a new home, however, he felt the urge to fiddle with it. The splendid Norman entrance archway was at that time reached by a simple timber stair with a drawbridge at the top. Quite rightly, Hugh felt it kinda let the rest of the castle down.

And so we can lay at his feet the blame for one of the English people's more horrendous perversions as at this point he decided to build England's first known flat-roofed porch extension …

The horror … the horror. Photo courtesy of the interweb.

But this wasn't just any old flat-roofed porch extension … oh no … this was the utterly blinging flat-roofed porch extension that has become known as the Bigod Tower.

The Bigod Tower today … or rather last March. Photo courtesy Old Dive.

This enclosed the main entrance arch and provided a much grander covered stairway into the castle's Great Hall.

The Bigod Tower and Stair, prior to the Victorians buggering it up. Courtesy Old Dive's personal collection.

 

You can make out the dashed line of the stair and drawbridge on the picture above. This no longer exists since Edward Boardman (of whom much more later) realigned the stair in the 1880s and replaced it with the current, awkward dog-leg configuration. As part of our Royal Palace Reborn project we're going to put it back the way it should be. Yay, us!

Back in early 1136, Empress Matilda was exceedingly dis-chuffed at the news of Stephen usurping the English throne that was hers by right. Matilda and Geoffrey gathered their army and invaded Normandy, trashing and looting as they went in preparation for an invasion of England to take back her throne.

Stephen, king de facto rather than de jure, ventured south across the Channel to stop them. We end today with perhaps the silliest battle in English history.

Stephen's army consisted of his own Flemish mercenaries under the command of William of Ypres together with the personal armies of his Norman Barons. Each side loathed the other. 

Hence, Matilda and Geoffrey were rewarded with the Pythonesque sight of a pitched battle between the two halves of Stephen's army, hacking and slaughtering one another while Matilda's army could only roll their eyes and probably giggle a lot.

The surviving barons then deserted King Stephen, who slunk back to England with his tail between his legs, promising to pay Matilda and Geoffrey 2,000 marks a year to leave him alone.

Next time, the Anarchy really kicks off and Norwich Castle comes under siege again.

Sources:

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (various): C. Clark (ed): 1970

Historia Novella: William of Malmesbury. In translation as William of Malmesbury's Chronicle of the Kings of England from the Earliest Period to the Reign of King Stephen: J. A. Giles: 2016

Historia Anglorum: Henry of Huntingdon: In translation as The History of the English People, 1000 - 1154: Diana Greenway: Oxford World Classics: 2009

The Chronicle of John of Worcester, Volume 3: 1067 - 1140: In translation by R. R. Darlington: Oxford Mediæval Texts: 1995

Gesta Stephani: In translation by K. R. Potter and R. H. C. Davis: Oxford Mediæval Texts: 1976 

Feudal Documents from Bury St. Edmunds: British Academy Records of the Social and Economic History of England and Wales: Donald C. Douglas: 1932

Francis Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: 1753 to 1775

The Oxford History of England: 1087-1216: From Domesday to Magna Carta: Austin L. Poole (ed): 1951

The Anarchy of King Stephen's Reign: Edmund King (ed): 1994

Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context: T. A. Heslop: 1994

Stephen and Matilda : The Civil War of 1139 - 1153: Jim Bradbury: 2005

The Pipe Roll Society: Archive Editions (various): online resource

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the First - The Rise of Castle Blanchefleur - Chapter VI

Wherein bowel cramps, bum-gravy and open-crotched breeks …

Henry the First's wife Matilda - so many Matildas and yet more to come - having died in 1118, the king was now desperate to remarry and produce an heir, a matter made more pressing when his only legitimate son, young William Adelin drowned in the wreck of the White Ship in 1120.

Henry chose the young and reportedly beautiful Adeliza of Louvain, a descendant of Charlemagne, and they were married in January 1121. King Henry, however, by that stage appears to have run out of bullets. Having previously fathered two legitimate children and at least twenty-two bastards, he never managed to produce a child with Adeliza, even though, after his death she went on to remarry and produce seven kids in short order.

To celebrate the completion of the royal palace at Norwich, Henry and Adeliza moved in at Christmas, 1121 and proceeded to use the word party as a verb in no uncertain manner.

A still from the 3D survey of the keep showing the black line on the strata. Courtesy ggs.co.uk

This picture shows what last season's archæologists found in the basement under the Great Hall kitchen.

We initially thought the dark layer was from one of the many (really many) Great Fires of Norwich, but on analysis it was found to contain the waste from the hearth and kitchen in the Great Hall. The food remains were almost exclusively rare and exotic fare, including peacock, swan and at least one porpoise. Now that it has been properly dated it is concluded that this is the waste from the weeks of feasting Henry and Adeliza hosted around Christmas 1121, which was then simply dumped in the half-finished basement and covered in straw and clay when they left.

As part of my work for the "Norwich Castle - Royal Palace Reborn" project another section of glass floor will be put in over that, with a holographic display explaining what the hell you're looking at. My current glass floor count (we keep finding more stuff worth looking at) runs to two in the basement, six more in the British Museum Gallery adjoining the archæology and two on the Great Hall level.

There is a charming, almost Pythonesque model in the Castle Museum, illustrating Henry and Adeliza's Christmas party.

 

 Photos courtesy Old Dive

The Norman entrance archway was once brightly painted, as shown here (from analysis of tiny fragments remaining on the stone). It might seem a teensy bit kitsch for our 'modern' tastes but it was all the rage in Norman times.

They held a particular fondness for red and blue clothing, especially on their hosiery. The most popular choice among men was a brightly coloured woolen pair of tights fitted closely to the leg, open at the crotch (your tunic covered your bits) and with each leg a different colour. Can't wait for that to come back into fashion.

Anyhoo … King Henry, having previously locked Robert Short-Arse in the wine cellar of Devizes Castle, now turned his attention to his other realm in Normandy and to his succession.

Prior to William Adelin's death, Henry had married off his only other legitimate child, eleven-year-old Matilda (yup) to the elderly German Holy Roman Emperor, Henry V (creepy, huh?). Our King Henry forced the English earls and barons to take an oath accepting Empress Matilda as his legitimate heir should he not produce another boy, passing over his nephew, Stephen of Blois, though he ensured Stephen's future by marrying him off to a wealthy woman named … you guessed it … Matilda. The Empress Matilda versus Queen Matilda smackdown is coming soon, I promise.

First, however,  we need to kill off King Henry.

Henry was over in Normandy on a hunting trip at Lyons-sur-Forêt in 1135.

Eat Me! Photo courtesy the interweb.

The contemporary chronicler Henry of Huntingdon records that - against the advice of the royal physician, who knew that the things didn't agree with the king's digestion - Henry the First consumed "a surfeit of lampreys."

A week of bowel cramps and arse-gravy later, on the first of December, King Henry the First of England became ex-King Henry.

His corpse was embalmed for return to England (where it was interred in Reading Abbey), though not before his ghastly, rotting lamprey-fragranced entrails were removed. These were slopped into a pot which was then buried at the nearby Priory of Notre-Dame du Pré. Precisely what the resident nuns thought of that is sadly unrecorded.

So let us take a look at the outside of the royal palace that was Norwich Castle, gift to the nation of the sons of William the Bastard.

Here's the south elevation as it stood in 1995, when it was surveyed by Norwich City Council. In Norman times the basement level (below the decorative arcading) was faced in flintwork; only the main floor and upwards was faced in ashlar Caen stone. This was because only the upper levels could be seen from the city as the basement was obscured by a palisade and later a wall.

The soubriquet Castle Blanchfleur was given to the castle due to its shining white Caen stone facings. The quarries at Caen were owned by William the Bastard's family and it was cheaper and easier to barge Caen stone across the Channel, up the coast and river to a specially cut canal (now Pull's Ferry, opposite my office) supplying the castle and cathedral with stone than it was to cart quarried Bath or Portland stone across the Fens from England.

Round to the right and here's the east elevation. You can see each elevation differs considerably from the others. This one features the Bigod Tower (more on which later) and much of it is obscured by Victorian toss, which I shall gleefully remove to make the original walls visible again.

On the north elevation you can see the extra buttress the Norman masons put it to stitch the crack and stop the east end sliding down the mound. The lower right is another Victorian "embellishment", up until this year used as the café kitchen. You'll be pleased to know that as I write, it is being carefully demolished to reveal the missing section of Norman wall.

The west elevation features some lovely chevron-cut arcading on the top level. It also features eight little chutes within the two larger arches at basement level. These are the eight great poop-chutes from the garderobes above and we shall be meeting those quite often in the coming chapters.

[adopts James Brown voice] … "Take it to the Bridge!"

Meet Stumpy. Photo - courtesy Gabriela

Stumpy is the suspiciously short bridge over the moat leading to the castle keep. Until 2000 this was believed to be an early nineteenth century replacement.

The exposed bridge foundations. Photo credit: Current Archæology: Issue 170: 2000.

Five yards below the current moat level the original Norman Caen stone foundations were located in 2000. Further investigation revealed that the whole of the Norman bridge is still in situ, just re-faced in knapped flint in around 1830.

Centuries of folk dumping their shit in the moat (more on which later) has resulted in Stumpy's inelegant proportions.

Here endeth Part the First … Coming next: the Great Anarchy. Yay, fun!

Sources:

Francis Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: 1753 to 1775

The Oxford History of England: 1087-1216: From Domesday Book to Magna Carta: Austin Lane Poole (ed.) 1951

Frank Barlow: The Norman Conquest and Beyond: 1983

T. A. Heslop: Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context: Centre for East Anglian Studies: 1994

Elizabeth Popescu: The Norman Connections - Castles: Part 1; Norwich Castle: 2010

T. A. Heslop: The Shifting Structure of Norwich Castle Keep, 1096 to c.1230: 2011

James F. King: Norwich Castle Keep: Dates and Contexts: British Archæological Association: 2015

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the First - The Rise of Castle Blanchefleur - Chapter V

 Being some rather dull stuff about castle building and what to do with a drunken sailor. 

In contrast to the fame of the earlier, timber castle-builder, one Herbert the Ditcher (possible relation of Roger the Shrubber), the name of the master mason who gave us the stone keep of Norwich Castle has not come down to us. We do, however, know his methods …

T. A. Heslop states, "The designer of the building employed the English perch of 16'6" as the standard measure. Multiplications of it (5'6", 11'0", 16'6", 22'0", 33'0", 55'0" and 77'0") occur in the plans of basement and first floor levels.

Alongside this ran an almost obsessive application of 1 to the root 2 (the relationship between a square and its diagonal) in both the plan and the elevation."

Mister Heslop proceeds at some (exhaustive) length quoting examples from all over the castle but for our purposes all we need to know is that the perch and the ratio 1: √2 (1.4142) are the basic units employed. 

However exacting our master mason may have been, there is little doubt that William Rufus would have wanted his palace finished while he was still alive to enjoy it. 

A client renowned for his regular bouts of stuttering, apoplectic rage, who happens also to be king, is not a person who wants to hear that the newly extended mound should be allowed to settle for twenty years before plonking a great heavy stone castle on top of it. 

The new castle being larger than the old mound inevitably meant that one end of it overhung the compacted ground, which had settled properly over the years. Before the builders were even half-way up the basement walls the east end began to lean outwards. a large crack appearing in the north wall about 20' from the north-east corner.

                                                Yikes! Photo courtesy Old Dive. 

"Pile some wood in front of it and don't tell the king" just wasn't going to cut it.

Attempts to stitch the crack didn't really help much, as can be seen here, with the original stitching of Caen stone in the cracked flint wall. Those are the original putlog holes, by-the-bye, dressed with Barnack stone for strength.

To prevent things getting any worse, the design of the north elevation was hurriedly changed.

Ah, the blissful days before planning authorities. It's taken us five years to get all our approvals through (not just the local planners but Historic England and the Scheduled Ancient Monuments people; and don't get me started about the Victorian Society … I've fought those asshats my whole professional career; "This is a Norman Castle, you dickwads! Those disastrous Victorian excrescences are going, whether you like it or not!"). If only we could have said, "The king wants it changed or you're for the chop!"

Anyhoo, windows were omitted, arcading realigned and a big-ass buttress added to strengthen the wall, which seems to have done the trick, at least for the time being.

One of Francis Stone's 1833 survey drawings showing the additional buttress where the crack had opened up. Courtesy Old Dive's personal collection.

Other attempts at remedying the slow slide of the east wall into the old ditch included construction of a new spine wall to reduce the loading on the wall by transferring some of it to the old, stable mound and the inclusion of tree trunks embedded horizontally in the flint rubble core of the walls.

The rectangular pad foundations for the spine wall in the basement were extended in another attempt to spread load away from the east wall.

Here you can see the joint between the original and the enlarged foundation pads. Photo courtesy Old Dive.

Here we come across what we have seen before in our talks on mediæval buildings and the panicky trial and error methods of their masons: "Let's just throw everything we can at it and hope it stays up."

Stitch it, buttress it, enlarge the foundations; hell, let's embed whole tree trunks in the flint rubble core. Then stand back and hope. while awaiting the invention of duct tape.

                                                Exciting post holes. Photo courtesy Old Dive

While we're in the basement with the archæologists, let us see what's been getting them all excited.

Those rather unprepossessing holes in the photo are thought to be the post holes from the original timber keep or its palisade … holes dug under the supervision of Herbert the Ditcher himself in 1068.

We shall be putting a glass floor over them so that visitors can gasp in awe at something that would get TV archæologist Alice Roberts all tingly.

                                This is an ex-staircase. It has ceased to be. Bereft of life, etc. 

To return to our narrative, the castle builders had almost reached the height of the main floor at the time of William Rufus' unfortunate hunting accident. Matilda, renamed wife of Henry the First loved a good banquet and so, rather than have the food prepared in the basement and lugged up the spiral stone staircases, she decided to build a big bling kitchen for the Great Hall.

This resulted in the abandonment of the spiral stair in the north-west corner of the keep and the use of the space as a fireplace. You can't really see it from the above photo, but if you peer down there you can see the last few steps before the stonemason rolled his eyes and downed tools. Again, we're putting a glass floor in here with the abandoned staircase properly lit.

Alas poor Matilda; she died in 1118 without ever having enjoyed her new banqueting hall. Alas poor Henry, too, as he suffered another family tragedy in 1120, just a year before the completion of Norwich Castle.

His sole legitimate male heir, William Adelin drowned in the wreck of the White Ship, along with at least two of Henry's bevy of bastards, Richard of Lincoln and Matilda Fitzroy.

Young William Adelin, by all accounts a bit of a roister-doisterer, decided to race supposedly the fastest ship afloat, the Blanche-Nef, from Barfleur in Normandy to England in record time. 

With the family trait of cack-brained stupidity proudly to the fore, the day before sailing he provided the crew with alcohol in great abundance and thus fortified they waited for that night's tide. Of the three-hundred or so aristocrats in William's drunken party, only one - Stephen of Blois - chickened out of sailing (we shall hear more of him later).

That night, with the tide turned and the water calm, William's alcohol-fuelled crew set off at speed and steered the White Ship straight onto what became later known (with Gallic drollery) as Quillebœuf Rock. Around three-hundred nobles and drunken sailors drowned, many while overloading the only lifeboat. The sole survivor being one Berold the Butcher from Rouen who managed to reach shore and related the whole sorry tale.

Next time we'll take a look at the finished castle, chow down on peacocks and porpoises and discover why the nuns of the Priory of Notre Dame du Pré in Normandy received a peculiarly gross gift.

Sources:

Francis Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: 1753 to 1775

The Oxford History of England: 1087-1216: From Domesday Book to Magna Carta: Austin Lane Poole (ed.) 1951

Frank Barlow: The Norman Conquest and Beyond: 1983

T. A. Heslop: Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context: Centre for East Anglian Studies: 1994

Elizabeth Popescu: The Norman Connections - Castles: Part 1; Norwich Castle: 2010

T. A. Heslop: The Shifting Structure of Norwich Castle Keep, 1096 to c.1230: 2011

James F. King: Norwich Castle Keep: Dates and Contexts: British Archæological Association: 2015