Here Be Dragons

So … You've seen the outside of The Old Barge Inn, now before we go inside and take a look around, here's an aerial photo taken in 1979, the year I did my day's guest dig with my college class on the archæological site.

Just off the bottom of the photo is the river and the remains of buildings being excavated in the foreground are the wharves for the stock being traded in the great hall.

There are very few extant houses left in the country (or indeed anywhere on the planet) from pre-Tudor times. Of course, in Norwich we have the Castle and the Cathedral which were begun 150 years earlier, two years after the Norman Conquest, but virtually no timber buildings survive in Britain from this period, and only one house; this one. The Jew's House on Steep Hill in Lincoln and The Music House a few doors along King Street in Norwich are both slightly older but are built of stone and very little of their interiors remain original.

Here in the cellar is part of the archæological dig left as an exhibit, showing the post holes of an earlier house on the site from around 975 A.D.

The brick undercroft, like so many in Norwich (and we have over a hundred beautifully preserved) dates from around 1200AD, but whereas most of the houses that now sit above those undercrofts date from the 1400s to the 1700s, this one was built in around 1220 and remains substantially unchanged.

The main changes came around 1400, when local merchant Robert Toppe bought the building and converted part of the great hall to a trading floor.
Norwich was then the richest city in the country, thanks to the wool trade. Worsted is just up the river and supplied English cloth to the the known world. At the mouth of the river sits Great Yarmouth, then a major herring port and just across the North Sea the cloth merchants of Amsterdam.

Toppe was an astute merchant and this house became the entrepôt for the English cloth trade, making him and his Guild Of Saint George obscenely wealthy.
In the aerial photo you can see the huge arcade he installed at the rear of the house and this is the same arcade seen today, with a protective glasshouse installed.

This is the same arcade from the inside.
From this room, English worsted cloth was carried down to barges and out across the North Sea to Holland and south to the ports of the Mediterranean.

Toppe divided the great hall in two. The further end in this photo is his domestic living quarters and the near end the trading hall.
The magnificent crown post roof is from the original great hall of 1220.

When Toppe had made enough money to buy himself and his children into the gentry with vast country estates, he sold off the trading house and over the next two hundred years it declined until, in the early 1600s his house became the Three Merry Wherrymen Inn (later, in the 18th century becoming The Old Barge Inn) and the trading hall was divided up into a series of smaller houses.
The great hall had an additional floor installed at the level of the transom halfway up this window, which was still in place when I visited the dig in '79.


This panel has been left in place to show the original wattle and daub infilling to the walls and some scraps of Tudor rose wallpaper, probably from Victorian times, when the top floor was domestic bedrooms.

Here you can see the marvellous carving that had just been uncovered from its hiding place within a bedroom wall when I first came here, and what gives the house its present name of Dragon Hall.


Toppe was the leading member of the merchants' Guild Of Saint George and this was his - and their - symbol.


He inserted this beautiful carving into the roof bracket just above the entrance to the great hall and it was somehow built over in the 1600s and not discovered again until 1979.


This dragon on Saint Ethelbert's gate at the top of Cathedral Close celebrates his and his guild's munificence in funding the building of the gate after the townspeople stormed and burned the Cathedral's monastic buildings in protest at Norman taxes.
Toppe, being an Englishman who had risen to power under the Normans would have been keen to appease the Plantaganet Norman King but proud enough to assert his own power as an Englishman on the new monument.

So that's the oldest surviving timber dwelling house left to us.

Norwich has a vast treasury of early mediæval houses, from the earlier but stone-built Music House, just along King Street, to the fabulous Stranger's Hall, a vast Elizabethan house that's now a museum. And indeed many others that I may well wander into on my travels.

The city was ridiculously rich in the pre-Tudor period, rivalled only by Venice, but with the opening up of the cloth trade its fortunes gradually declined after the reign of Elizabeth the First and - due to its isolation behind the fens - it was ignored and remained untouched and unchanged for centuries, which has left us with a fantastic treasury of original mediæval buildings.
Even though a disastrous "slum clearance" policy in the 1930s and Nazi bombing a few years later deprived us of perhaps seventy percent of the best examples in the city it still has one of the finest stocks of beautiful mediæval buildings anywhere.

A Visit To An Olde Friend.

Well that's just bloody typical: I get home and the sun comes out.
If I'd known it was going to be sunny I'd have gone off to the beach with my camera again, but the stupid weather forecasters said "dull and cloudy", so I did an indoor shoot instead.

As my recent posts about crusty old piles of mediæval stuff seem to have gone down particularly well in the Colonies, I decided today to reacquaint myself with an exceedingly "olde" friend; the building formerly known as The Old Barge Inn on King street in Norwich.


This is an etching of it that hangs in my stairwell.
It was made in 1933 by my late lamented chum and hugely respected Norwich artist James Starling, whose gorgeous Victorian etching press he bequeathed to my mate Richard. The etching is one of a pair of King Street scenes old James gave me shortly before he died.


This is the first etching Richard produced on James' old press; the gnarly pear tree outside my old office window.


And this is The Old Barge Inn as it is now. Today we'll just look at the outside, but (as Maria would say) "Boy, Howdy!" When we get inside in the next post you'll see something a little bit special.


When I was a student in the late seventies, this was an archæological site. For centuries the house had been divided into The Old Barge Inn and several houses, with additional floors inserted into the great hall.


We were given a tour round the archæological works when they were stripping out all of the sixteenth century conversion work. What they found underneath was stunning, as you'll discover if you tune in tomorrow.


Next door sags the sadly mutilated remains of Anne Boleyn's father's house, the entire ground floor of which was gutted in the 1960s to form an electrical retailer's shop (Bennett's Discount Electrical Store; curse them and their family for all eternity).
The shit-for-brains owners have now been kicked out and the place awaits the same sympathetic restoration as The Old Barge has received.


Just a sneaky taster for tomorrow: This rare ogee arched door dates from the early 1200s and is a teensy hint of the wonders within.
Tune in tomorrow to discover them with me.

Nice Thatch

Right.
Last pretty post for a while as we've run out of sunshine.
Tomorrow I'll be back to the usual crap so make the most of this.

Just next door to the church from yesterday's post sit the very few but very beautiful houses that constitute Blythburgh.

They're mostly sixteenth century but with the remains of earlier buildings mingled in, plus some later additions.

I'll let them do the talking for themselves while I twiddle my thumbs for a bit.

Twiddle

This one is the old priory for the church.

This flint end is Tudor but the main hall that you can see behind it is mostly fourteenth century with sixteenth century bay windows added.

If you can afford to live here I want to marry you.

All Saints, Blythburgh

As threatened, we're off today to visit All Saints' Church at Blythburgh.
Blythburgh is a tiny hamlet sitting on a sandy hillock just inland from Southwold and overlooking a vast tidal salt marsh, permanently a'twitch with birdwatchers.
It boasts about ten houses clustered around one of the largest churches in this or any other area.
And nothing else.
At all.
It's an odd kind of place.
You can see the outside of the church and the magnificent view of it from across the marsh in the piece I posted earlier this week, when I trudged across the frozen mud to photograph it.

The outside is beautiful; a massive, late Gothic, perpendicular priory church that would grace any city, yet here it is all on its lonesome, miles from anywhere.
Of course, my favourite part of the exterior is the quite astonishing dancing bear with a monster stiffy which I photographed for my second ever post (you'll have to click the link to see it because I'm sick of loading bloody photographs).
Those mediæval stonemasons liked a good giggle.
As you can only see it with a telephoto lens the size of your leg it has remained unnoticed for centuries and it was only thanks to Helly wanting me to photograph all of the carvings so she could reproduce some in her studio that we came across it.

Right. Enough prattle. Let's take a look inside, shall we?
(cue: sound effect of creaking door) …


A general view from behind the font gives an idea of the airy spaciousness achieved by the "perpendicular" style of late Gothic church architecture.
Contrast this with my photos of the massive, chunky Romanesque Norwich Cathedral (I can't be arsed to do another link; if you want to look, follow the "Norwich" link in the sidebar … it's somewhere down near the bottom of that).
I love the warmth of the old brick pamment floor. The whole church has a lovely "feel", not cold or uninviting like some places.

This is what most historians and architects come to see.
What can only be described by words such as beautiful, magnificent, spiffy or boffo; the incomparably splendid "Angel Roof".

Good, innit?

Blythburgh boasts a fabulous set of misericords, probably second only to Boston Stump.
I've got a full set of photos of these but I'm buggered if I'm loading all that lot up, so this will have to do.
Some of them are very odd indeed.

As is this guy.
I have no idea what he is, but I think all we need to know is that he is wearing a chamberpot on his head and sports a quite startling codpiece, which seems to have acquired somewhat more of a lustrous polish than the rest of him.

Spooky time.
Call in the Scooby Gang.
Shortly after the church was built a massive storm brought down the tower and the congregation cowering inside the church were not particularly comforted by the appearance of Satan himself.
Apparently he turned up in fancy dress as a big black dog, ran around for a bit and clawed his way out through this very door, leaving his burnt claw marks on the right hand leaf.
According to local folklore he then went off to terrorise Bungay, a tradition that little brother Phil and his reprobate cronies carry on most weekends to this very day.

This is a photo of one end of the rood screen.
Somewhere in it is hidden Old Dive.
Can you spot him?

Yup. There I am, bestowing my benedictions upon you all from a very odd little window, the use of which I've never quite figured out, though the BBC made good use of it when they recorded Songs Of Praise from here.
I have yet to be convinced that the mediæval builders put it there for the benfit of TV cameras, however.

This is the cool little staircase that leads up to it.

I like this one.
Clerestory windows are designed to do just this.
Lovely.

Here's that wonderful roof again, with the light from the clerestory doing its thang.

So that's Blythburgh All Saints' Church.

Spiffy, huh?

A Southwold Gallimaufry

Before we leave Southwold and head off to Blythburgh Church, here's a last view of the town from the entrance to Walberswick harbour, accompanied by a gallimaufry of images left over from earlier in the week.
Gallimaufry, by the way, is a word that Peahen dredged from the musty past and hurled at me one day. It means a collection of various things; a hodgepodge, jumble or confused medley; a miscellany; a mishmash. Isn't language a strange and wonderful thing?

Apparently, you're not allowed to bring cats, dogs, rats, rabbits, monkeys or mice into Southwold from the lands of Johnny Foreigner.
America has homeland security at its entrepôts; we have a lone seagull on a stick to keep an eye on things.
Be sure and leave your monkeys at home when you visit or you risk a good pecking.

Seaweed, mussels and mud; a typical East Anglian harbour.

We do still have some defences up on the clifftop, unconquered by the Spanish Armada, Hitler, the Soviets and our eternal foe, those cheese-eating surrender-monkeys across the channel.


These cannon stare menacingly out over Sole Bay, scene of the historic Battle of - quel surprise - Sole Bay, which kicked off on May 28, 1672, and starred an Anglo-French fleet under the Duke of York facing off against - for some unfathomable reason - the Dutch fleet.

Of course, just before the battle started those craven, garlic-scented poltroons in the French fleet turned tail and ran away, leaving our gallant lads to fight those perfidious tulip-loving dope-smokers on our own.
After a day of knocking the shit out of one another the contest was declared a draw and everyone went home for tea.


Southwold's cannon were not recovered from that battle, but are much earlier, having the Tudor Rose stamped on them.

These days we use them to execute pensioners.
This couple were discovered eating chips on the pier and are about to be scattered severally over Sole Bay, to the cheers of happy local children.


Another military relic sits above the pier; a deactivated mine from the Great War of 1914-18. This is now a moneybox with a slot in the front for donations to a local seafarers' charity.


One last look at Lynn's House from the clifftop. This, too, as you can see in the foreground is protected by cannon.

So … That was Southwold.
Tomorrow we'll be off to look at Blythburgh All Saints Church, which you glimpsed across the frozen marshes earlier this week.

Toodle-pip!

Southwold Again

And so we meander along to the pretty end of town to look at some of the houses I will never be able to afford.

As we wander up the cliffs from the dunes a pleasing vista of Georgian houses and fisherman's cottages greets us.
No crappy town planning here; just a mess of different styles and periods jumbled together as it sould be.


Here we have a grand Georgian villa, quaint Victorian cottages and pretty town houses clustered around one of the greens leading down to the dunes and to Walberswick across the marshes.


This lovely Georgian flint cobble house has always been a particular favourite. Its front windows look out over the clifftop with a panoramic view of Sole Bay and its side windows gaze across the dunes and marshes.

This is my personal favourite, however, a Regency villa perched right on the clifftop with a grand ballroom overlooking the sea.


Another favourite of course is the pubs.
Southwold is home to Adnams' brewery, makers of the world's finest ales (they won CAMRA's top award so many years it's hardly worth bothering to enter any more).
This is the beer that has suckled Old Dive for many a decade.
And this is the sort of place I sup it.

Though this is my favourite pub in Southwold, the Sole Bay Inn.
Nestled under the lighthouse with a bunch of crusty fishermen enjoying a lunchtime pint of Adnams.
Glorious.

All around Southwold's handsome lighthouse are delightful little alleys.

This is Primrose Alley, leading to the clifftop.

And here is what - after her comments earlier this week - will forever be known as "Lynn's House".
While we wandered round town looking at the houses we were constantly going "Ooooh! Lynn would LOVE that!"
And we were right. Hee hee.


She'd also probably enjoy this. The Amber Shop. Though she could always walk along the beach and pick the stuff up for herself.

If you can afford to live in Southwold you can afford to shop here.
Hey ho.
More coastal gallimaufry tomorrow.