Carrstone in Norfolk Buildings: Distribution, use, associates and influences 9781841716138, 9781407320144

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BAR 371 2004

Carrstone in Norfolk Buildings

ALLEN

Distribution, use, associates and influences

CARRSTONE IN NORFOLK BUILDINGS

J. R. L. Allen

BAR British Series 371 B A R

2004

Carrstone in Norfolk Buildings Distribution, use, associates and influences

J. R. L. Allen

BAR British Series 371 2004

ISBN 9781841716138 paperback ISBN 9781407320144 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781841716138 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

BAR

PUBLISHING

CONTENTS List of Tables................................................................................................................................................................iii List of Figures ..............................................................................................................................................................iii List of Plates.................................................................................................................................................................. v ABSTRACT ...............................................................................................................................................................vii PREFACE .................................................................................................................................................................viii CHAPTER ONE. BUILDING-MATERIALS SURVEY 1.1 Purpose and background. ............................................................................................................................. 1 1.2 Values and costs........................................................................................................................................... 2 1.3 Sources and lithologies ................................................................................................................................ 3 1.3.1 Kinds of source................................................................................................................... 3 1.3.2 Leziate quartzite ................................................................................................................. 4 1.3.3 Carrstone............................................................................................................................. 4 1.3.4 Chalk................................................................................................................................... 5 1.3.5 Flint .................................................................................................................................... 5 1.3.6 Ironpan................................................................................................................................ 5 1.4 Sorting, trimming and dressing .................................................................................................................... 6 1.5 Treatment during construction. .................................................................................................................... 6 1.5.1 Building in carrstone .......................................................................................................... 6 1.5.2 Randomizing....................................................................................................................... 6 1.5.3 Coursing ............................................................................................................................. 6 1.5.4 Snecking ............................................................................................................................. 8 1.5.5 Diagonal pattern ................................................................................................................. 8 1.5.6 Galleting ............................................................................................................................. 8 1.6 Repairs and phasing ..................................................................................................................................... 8 1.7 Re-use ..................................................................................................................................................... 8 1.8 Survey and sampling .................................................................................................................................... 9 1.8.1 General ............................................................................................................................... 9 1.8.2 Types of building.............................................................................................................. 10 1.8.3 Settlements ....................................................................................................................... 10 1.9 Summary ................................................................................................................................................... 11 CHAPTER TWO. GEOLOGICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND 2.1 Introduction................................................................................................................................................ 12 2.2 Solid geology (Jurassic-Cretaceous) .......................................................................................................... 12 2.2.1 Jurassic ............................................................................................................................. 12 2.2.2 Lower Cretaceous ............................................................................................................. 12 2.2.3 Upper Cretaceous ............................................................................................................. 15 2.3 Pleistocene ................................................................................................................................................. 15 2.3.1 Background....................................................................................................................... 15 2.3.2 Tills................................................................................................................................... 16 2.3.3 Gravels, sands and other deposits ..................................................................................... 17 2.4 Holocene ................................................................................................................................................... 17 2.5 Roads ................................................................................................................................................... 17 2.6 Railways ................................................................................................................................................... 18 2.7 Waterways.................................................................................................................................................. 18 2.8 Discussion .................................................................................................................................................. 19 CHAPTER THREE. BUILDING MATERIALS IN SETTLEMENTS 3.1 Introduction................................................................................................................................................ 21 3.2 Leziate quartzite ......................................................................................................................................... 21 3.3 Carrstone ................................................................................................................................................... 23 3.4 Red clunch.................................................................................................................................................. 24 3.5 Clunch (white chalk) .................................................................................................................................. 25 3.5.1 Sources of the stone .......................................................................................................... 25 3.5.2 Distribution, abundance and use....................................................................................... 26 3.6 Flint ................................................................................................................................................... 29 3.7 Ironpan ................................................................................................................................................... 30 3.7.1 Sources and distribution of the stone................................................................................ 30 3.7.2 Abundance and use ........................................................................................................... 32 3.8 Some imported building materials ............................................................................................................. 34 3.9 Sources and dispersal ................................................................................................................................. 35 i

CHAPTER FOUR. ECCLESIASTICAL BUILDINGS. 4.1 Introduction................................................................................................................................................ 37 4.2 Big carr ................................................................................................................................................... 37 4.3 Small carr ................................................................................................................................................... 38 4.4 Comparative distributions .......................................................................................................................... 39 4.5 Nonconformist chapels and meeting-houses .............................................................................................. 42 4.6 Discussion .................................................................................................................................................. 46 CHAPTER FIVE. BIG CARR. 5.1 Introduction................................................................................................................................................ 47 5.2 General distribution.................................................................................................................................... 47 5.3 Coursed big carr ......................................................................................................................................... 47 5.4 Snecked big carr......................................................................................................................................... 53 5.5 Randomized big carr .................................................................................................................................. 55 5.6 Diagonal big carr........................................................................................................................................ 58 5.7 Dressings of big carr .................................................................................................................................. 58 5.8 Puddingstone.............................................................................................................................................. 60 5.9 Discussion .................................................................................................................................................. 61 CHAPTER SIX. SMALL CARR 6.1 Introduction................................................................................................................................................ 62 6.2 Treatment ................................................................................................................................................... 62 6.3 Distribution in buildings ............................................................................................................................ 62 6.4 Discussion .................................................................................................................................................. 64 CHAPTER SEVEN. CARRSTONE IN COMMUNITY AND PUBLIC BUILDINGS, MEMORIALS AND MONUMENTS 7.1 Introduction................................................................................................................................................ 65 7.2 Schools ................................................................................................................................................... 65 7.2.1 Distribution over time....................................................................................................... 65 7.2.2 Mid nineteenth century ..................................................................................................... 66 7.2.3 Late nineteenth century..................................................................................................... 67 7.2.4. The twentieth century ...................................................................................................... 67 7.3 Libraries and reading rooms....................................................................................................................... 68 7.4 Village halls, theatres and clubs ................................................................................................................ 70 7.5 Almshouses, convalescent homes and hostels ........................................................................................... 70 7.6 Town halls.................................................................................................................................................. 70 7.7 Post Offices, toll houses and police stations .............................................................................................. 71 7.8 A lifeboat house ......................................................................................................................................... 71 7.9 Bridges ................................................................................................................................................... 72 7.10 Memorials and monuments ...................................................................................................................... 72 7.11 Water reservoirs ....................................................................................................................................... 73 7.12 Discussion ................................................................................................................................................ 73 CHAPTER EIGHT. CARRSTONE AND BRICK. 8.1 Introduction................................................................................................................................................ 76 8.2 The brick industry in Norfolk..................................................................................................................... 76 8.2.1 History of the industry ...................................................................................................... 76 8.2.2 Geology and bricks in Norfolk ......................................................................................... 77 8.3 Carrstone and red brick .............................................................................................................................. 79 8.4 Carrstone and ‘whites’ ............................................................................................................................... 81 8.5 Carrstone with polychrome bricks ............................................................................................................. 82 8.6 Brick the construction material of choice................................................................................................... 83 8.7 Discussion .................................................................................................................................................. 85 CHAPTER NINE. DECORATIVE CARRSTONE 9.1 Introduction................................................................................................................................................ 86 9.2 Blind arcading ............................................................................................................................................ 86 9.3 Panels ................................................................................................................................................... 86 9.4 Tympani and gables ................................................................................................................................... 86 9.5 Banding ................................................................................................................................................... 86 9.6 Chequerboard ............................................................................................................................................. 87 9.7 Diaper ................................................................................................................................................... 88 9.8 Diamonds ................................................................................................................................................... 89 9.9 Alternations................................................................................................................................................ 89 9.10 Spirals ................................................................................................................................................... 89 9.11 Discussion ................................................................................................................................................ 89 ii

CHAPTER TEN. CARRSTONE IN RAILWAY BUILDINGS 10.1 Introduction.............................................................................................................................................. 90 10.2 The railway companies ............................................................................................................................ 90 10.3 Ely-King’s Lynn (1847-).......................................................................................................................... 90 10.4 King’s Lynn-Swaffham-East Dereham (1846-8 to 1968) ........................................................................ 91 10.5 East Dereham-Fakenham-Wells next the Sea (1857-1964)...................................................................... 92 10.6 King’s Lynn-Hunstanton (1862-1969)..................................................................................................... 92 10.7 Heacham-Wells next the Sea (1866-1952)............................................................................................... 93 10.8 King’s Lynn-Fakenham (1879-1969)....................................................................................................... 94 10.9 Discussion ................................................................................................................................................ 94 CHAPTER ELEVEN. LEZIATE QUARTZITE: USE AND RE-USE 11.1 Introduction.............................................................................................................................................. 96 11.2 Petrology and mineralogy ........................................................................................................................ 96 11.3 Primary distribution in the west and north ............................................................................................... 97 11.3.1 Sources of the stone ........................................................................................................ 97 11.3.2 Roman use ...................................................................................................................... 99 11.3.3 Medieval use................................................................................................................... 99 11.3.4 Post-medieval use ......................................................................................................... 102 11.4 Secondary dispersion in the north .......................................................................................................... 103 11.5 Secondary dispersion in east Norfolk..................................................................................................... 107 11.6 Dispersal, use and re-use........................................................................................................................ 109 CHAPTER TWELVE. CONCLUDING DISCUSSION: CARRSTONE PATTERNS AND INFLUENCES 12.1 Introduction............................................................................................................................................ 112 12.2 Patterns in space..................................................................................................................................... 112 12.3 Structure of spatial patterns.................................................................................................................... 114 12.4 Patterns in time....................................................................................................................................... 115 12.5 Taste and fashion.................................................................................................................................... 115 12.6 Costs ................................................................................................................................................. 116 12.7 Place value ............................................................................................................................................. 117 12.8 Great estates ........................................................................................................................................... 118 12.8.1 Background................................................................................................................... 118 12.8.2 Activities....................................................................................................................... 118 12.9 Re-use ................................................................................................................................................. 119 12.10 The late twentieth century .................................................................................................................... 120 12.11 The future............................................................................................................................................. 120 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................................................. 122

LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Summary of the outcropping geological sequence in north and west Norfolk ........................................... 13 Table 9.1 Distribution of forms of decoration using carrstone between different kinds of building.......................... 87 Table 11.1 Heavy-mineral assemblages recovered from Leziate quartzite ................................................................ 97 Table 11.2 Comparative metrical properties of Leziate quartzite building blocks from buildings in the northern and eastern dispersions ................................................................................................................................................. 102 Table 11.3 Relative abundance of Leziate quartzite in medieval parish church and monastic buildings of the north Norfolk coast ................................................................................................................................................. 106 Table 11.4 Relative abundance of Leziate quartzite in medieval parish church buildings of the Reedham area, east Norfolk ................................................................................................................................................. 108 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Area covered by the building-stone survey................................................................................................. 2 Figure 1.2 Schematic representation of building-stone sources ................................................................................... 4 Figure 1.3 Schematic treatments of building stone ...................................................................................................... 7 Figure 2.1 Solid geology of north and west Norfolk .................................................................................................. 13 Figure 2.2 Cliffs at Hunstanton .................................................................................................................................. 14 Figure 2.3 Deeply weathered Carstone, Snettisham Quarry....................................................................................... 15 iii

Figure 2.4 Figure 2.5 Figure 2.6 Figure 2.7

Simplified Quaternary geology of the area ............................................................................................... 16 Turnpikes and main roads ......................................................................................................................... 18 Railways ................................................................................................................................................... 18 Waterways................................................................................................................................................. 19

Figure 3.1 Relative abundance of buildings with Leziate quartzite in settlements..................................................... 21 Figure 3.2 Relative abundanceof buildings with carrstone in settlements.................................................................. 22 Figure 3.3 Fall-off in relative abundance of buildings with carrstone........................................................................ 23 Figure 3.4 Findspots of buildings with Red Chalk ..................................................................................................... 24 Figure 3.5 Relative abundance in settlements of buildings with clunch..................................................................... 25 Figure 3.6 Fall-off in relative abundance of buildings with clunch............................................................................ 26 Figure 3.7 Findspots of buildings with dressed and coursed clunch .......................................................................... 27 Figure 3.8 Findspots of buildings with randomized/rubble clunch ............................................................................ 27 Figure 3.9 Findspots of late twentieth-century houses with randomized clunch........................................................ 29 Figure 3.10 Relative abundance of buildings with flint in settlements....................................................................... 30 Figure 3.11 Relative abundance of buildings with ironpans in settlements................................................................ 31 Figure 3.12 Findspots of buildings with cinderstone.................................................................................................. 32 Figure 3.13 Sources of supply of imported building stone......................................................................................... 36 Figure 4.1 Relative abundance of big carr in church buildings .................................................................................. 38 Figure 4.2 Relative abundance of small carr in church buildings............................................................................... 39 Figure 4.3 Relative abundance of Jurassic calcareous lithologies in church buldings ............................................... 39 Figure 4.4 Relative abundance of flint in church buildings........................................................................................ 40 Figure 4.5 Relative abundance of ironpan in church buildings .................................................................................. 41 Figure 4.6 Building dates of nonconformist chapels and meeting-houses in Norfolk from 1680 (data of Ede et al., 1994) ............................................................................................................................................. 43 Figure 4.7 Distribution of building materials in a sample of nonconformist chapels and meeting houses ................ 44 Figure 4.8 Chapel in big carr, Middleton ................................................................................................................... 45 Figure 4.9 Salvationist chapel in big carr, Snettisham ............................................................................................... 45 Figure 5.1 Rative abundance of big carr in carrstone buildings ................................................................................. 48 Figure 5.2 Building dates for structures with (A) coursed big carr and (B) big carr dressings .................................. 49 Figure 5.3 Findspots of coursed big carr in buildings ................................................................................................ 49 Figure 5.4 Neatly dressed and coursed big carr, The Square, Houghton Hall............................................................ 50 Figure 5.5 Cottage with roughly coursed, graded and galleted big carr, South Wootton........................................... 50 Figure 5.6 Spion Cop Cottages in roughly coursed and locally galleted big carr, West Winch................................. 51 Figure 5.7 House in neatly coursed big carr, Station Road, Snettisham..................................................................... 51 Figure 5.8 Coursed and galleted big carr, Rising Lodge, Castle Rising ..................................................................... 52 Figure 5.9 Neatly coursed , graded and galleted big carr, stables at Narford Hall ..................................................... 52 Figure 5.10 Distribution of late twentieth-century houses with carrstone.................................................................. 53 Figure 5.11 Late twentieth-century houses in roughly coursed big carr, Sedgeford .................................................. 54 Figure 5.12 Distribution of buildings with snecked big carr, (A) building dates and (B) geographical spread ......... 55 Figure 5.13 Villas in snecked big carr with limestone and big carr dressings, Cliff Parade, New Hunstanton.......... 56 Figure 5.14 Cottages in snecked big carr, Carmelite Terrace, King’s Lynn............................................................... 56 Figure 5.15 Building dates of structures in randomized big carr................................................................................ 57 Figure 5.16 Distribution of buildings with randomized big carr, (A) normal size and (B) giant size ........................ 58 Figure 5.17 Cottages of the Holkham (Coke) Estate in randomized big carr, Sparham............................................. 59 Figure 5.18 Late twentieth-century house in randomized big carr, Ingoldisthorpe .................................................... 59 Figure 5.19 Distribution of buildings with big carr dressings .................................................................................... 60 Figure 5.20 Big carr dressings, entrance to house in snecked big carr, Northgate, New Hunstanton ........................ 60 Figure 5.21 Big carr dressings, entrance to Voewood, High Kelling, Holt ................................................................ 61 Figure 6.1 Building dates of structures in small carr.................................................................................................. 62 Figure 6.2 Relative abundance of small carr in carrstone buildings........................................................................... 63 Figure 7.1 Figure 7.2 Figure 7.3 Figure 7.4 Figure 7.5 Figure 7.6 Figure 7.7

Construction dates and building materials of schools ............................................................................... 65 Distribution of mid nineteenth-century school buildings......................................................................... 66 Distribution of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century school buildings ........................................... 68 School buildings, Harpley......................................................................................................................... 69 Public (Carnegie) Library, King’s Lynn ................................................................................................... 69 Norfolk County Constabulary, Downham Market .................................................................................... 71 Lifeboat House, Wells-next-the-Sea ......................................................................................................... 72 iv

Figure 7.8 Triumphal Arch, Holkham Park, Holkham ............................................................................................... 74 Figure 7.9 Waterhouse, Houghton Park, Houghton ................................................................................................... 74 Figure 8.1 Geological basis of brick industries in north and west Norfolk and its surroundings ................................ 78 Figure 8.2 Relative abundance of carrstone buildings with red brick dressings......................................................... 79 Figure 8.3 Building dates of carrstone structures dressed in (A) yellow and (B) red brick........................................ 80 Figure 8.4 Building dates of structures in big carr dressed in (A) yellow and (B) red brick...................................... 81 Figure 8.5 Building dates of structures in small carr dressed in (A) yellow and (B) red brick) ................................. 81 Figure 8.6 Relative abundance of carrstone buildings with yellow brick dressings................................................... 82 Figure 8.7 Ratio of yellow to red brick dressings by numbers of buildings in big and small carr ............................. 83 Figure 8.8 Building dates of structures dressed in polychrome bricks ....................................................................... 83 Figure 8.9 Distribution and chief building dates of country and grand town houses ................................................. 84 Figure 9.1 Schematic forms of building decoration involving carrstone.................................................................... 88 Figure 10.1 The Ely-King’s Lynn-Hunstanton railways lines.................................................................................... 90 Figure 10.2 The King’s Lynn-Swaffham and King’s Lynn-Fakenham lines ............................................................. 91 Figure 10.3 The Heacham-Wells next the Sea and Fakenham-Wells next the Sea lines............................................ 92 Figure 11.1 Relative abundance and distribution by sub-region of buildings with Leziate quartzite: (A) relative location, (B) west Norfolk, (C) north Norfolk and (D) east Norfolk........................................................................... 98 Figure 11.2 Ruinous St. Felix, Babingley ................................................................................................................ 101 Figure 11.3 The East Lodge, Hillington Hall ........................................................................................................... 101 Figure 11.4 House in neatly dressed, coursed and galleted Leziate quartzite, Castle Rising ................................... 103 Figure 11.5 Tower arcade, All Saints, North Wootton............................................................................................. 104 Figure 11.6 Giant randomized Leziate quartzite, All Saints, Roydon ...................................................................... 104 Figure 11.7 Long and short dimensions of Leziate quartzite blocks at (A) chancel, St. Mary, Brancaster, and (B) barn, Thorpland Lodge Farm .............................................................................................................................. 105 Figure 11.8 Frequency distributions of area of Leziate quartzite blocks at (A) chancel, St. Mary, Brancaster and (B) barn, Thorpland Lodge Farm..................................................................................................................................... 105 Figure 11.9 Frequency distributions of the form-ratio of Leziate quartzite blocks at (A) chancel, St. Mary, Brancaster and (B) barn, Thorpland Lodge Farm...................................................................................................... 105 Figure 11.10 Long and short dimensions of Leziate quartzite blocks at St. John the Baptist, Reedham: (A) restricted sample, (B) general sample ....................................................................................................................... 107 Figure 11.11 Frequency distribution of area of Leziate quartzite blocks at St. John the Baptist, Reedham: (A) restricted sample, (B) general sample ....................................................................................................................... 109 Figure 11.12 Frequency distribution of the form-ratio of Leziate quartzite blocks at St. John the Baptist, Reedham: (A) restricted sample, (B) general sample ................................................................................................................. 109 Figure 11.13 Fall-off in relative abundance of Leziate quartzite in church buildings of the primary spread, west Norfolk ................................................................................................................................................. 110 Figure 11.14 Probable supply routes, Leziate quartzite, Norfolk ............................................................................. 110 Figure 11.15 Fall-off in relative abundance of Leziate quartzite in church buildings, secondary spread, north Norfolk ................................................................................................................................................. 110 Figure 11.16 Fall-off in relative abundance of Leziate quartzite in church buildings, secondary spread, east Norfolk ................................................................................................................................................. 111 Figure 12.1 Figure 12.2 Figure 12.3 Figure 12.4 Figure 12.5

Comparative summary distributions of indigenous building stones in north and west Norfolk ........... 112 Comparative summary distributions of carrstone treatments ................................................................ 113 Spatial structure of building stone distributions.................................................................................... 114 Spatial structure of the distribution of carrstone buildings in settlements ............................................ 116 Comparative summary of temporal patterns in the use of building materials in north and west Norfolk LIST OF PLATES

Plate 1.1 Building-stone re-use in a church and house ............................................................................................. 129 Plate 1.2 Building-stone re-use in a church .............................................................................................................. 130 Plate 3.1 Plate 3.2 Plate 3.3 Plate 3.4 Plate 3.5

Buildings with red clunch (Red Chalk) ..................................................................................................... 131 Buildings with clunch (Chalk)................................................................................................................... 132 Buildings with mixed stone ....................................................................................................................... 133 Buildings and walls with mixed stone ....................................................................................................... 134 Buildings in clunch or ironpan .................................................................................................................. 135 v

Plate 3.6 Buildings with ironpan .............................................................................................................................. 136 Plate 3.7 Buildings with ironpan .............................................................................................................................. 137 Plate 4.1 Plate 4.2 Plate 4.3 Plate 4.4

Church buildings with carrstone................................................................................................................ 138 Church buildings with carrstone................................................................................................................ 139 Religious buildings with carrstone ............................................................................................................ 140 Sunday School and chapel buildings ......................................................................................................... 141

Plate 5.1 Plate 5.2 Plate 5.3 Plate 5.4 Plate 5.5 Plate 5.6 Plate 5.7 Plate 5.8

Treatments of coursed big carr .................................................................................................................. 142 Buildings in coursed big carr..................................................................................................................... 143 Buildings in coursed big carr..................................................................................................................... 144 Treatments of snecked big carr.................................................................................................................. 145 Buildings in snecked big carr .................................................................................................................... 146 Treatments of randomized big carr............................................................................................................ 147 Buildings in randomized big carr. ............................................................................................................. 148 Dressings of big carr.................................................................................................................................. 149

Plate 6.1 Plate 6.2 Plate 6.3 Plate 6.4 Plate 6.5 Plate 6.6

Treatments of small carr............................................................................................................................ 150 Buildings in small carr............................................................................................................................... 151 Buildings in small carr............................................................................................................................... 152 Buildings in small carr............................................................................................................................... 153 Buildings in small carr............................................................................................................................... 154 Buildings in small carr............................................................................................................................... 155

Plate 7.1 Plate 7.2 Plate 7.3 Plate 7.4 Plate 7.5 Plate 7.6

Mid nineteenth-century school buildings .................................................................................................. 156 Late nineteenth-century school buildings.................................................................................................. 157 School and social club buildings ............................................................................................................... 158 Almshouses, a hostel and a toll house in carrstone.................................................................................... 159 Carrstone town halls .................................................................................................................................. 160 Carrstone road bridges............................................................................................................................... 161

Plate 8.1 Brick-dressed carrstone buildings ............................................................................................................. 162 Plate 8.2 Brick-dressed carrstone buildings ............................................................................................................. 163 Plate 8.3 Brick-dressed carrstone buildings ............................................................................................................. 164 Plate 9.1 Plate 9.2 Plate 9.3 Plate 9.4

Carrstone decorations ................................................................................................................................ 165 Carrstone banding and chequerboard ........................................................................................................ 166 Chequerboard decoration with carrstone ................................................................................................... 167 Carrstone decorations ................................................................................................................................ 168

Plate 10.1 Plate 10.2 Plate 10.3 Plate 10.4 Plate 10.5

Railway station buildings in carrstone and brick..................................................................................... 169 Railway buildings in carrstone ................................................................................................................ 170 Railway buildings in carrstone or brick and concrete.............................................................................. 171 Railway buildings in carrstone or brick................................................................................................... 172 Railway buildings in brick or concrete.................................................................................................... 173

Plate 11.1 Plate 11.2 Plate 11.3 Plate 11.4

Church buildings with Leziate quartzite.................................................................................................. 174 Treatments of Leziate quartzite ............................................................................................................... 175 Leziate quartzite in church buildings....................................................................................................... 176 Treatments of Leziate quartzite ............................................................................................................... 177

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ABSTRACT A number of geologically distinct, indigenous building stones have been exploited historically in north and west Norfolk and in some cases continue to be used. Those of Lower Cretaceous age are the Leziate Beds, procured from a point source, the carrstone, extracted from a linear source formed by the outcrop of the Dersingham Beds and Carstone, and the Red Chalk. The Upper Cretaceous Chalk has furnished hard chalks (clunch) and nodule flint from sources varying between linear and distributed. The Quaternary gravels and sands of the area provide an extensive, distributed source of cobble flint and of ironpan, the latter commonly but incorrectly described as carrstone. Bricks have been produced in most parts of the area from suitable clays available locally, especially the Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous mudrocks, the Pleistocene tills and the Fenland silts. Scattered over the area are small amounts of building stone sourced from outside north and west Norfolk, chiefly calcareous lithologies from Jurassic outcrops to the west and southwest of the Fenland, and quartzitic sandstones from Yorkshire. Depending on their size, the settlements of the area were either sampled or examined in full, in order to establish the whereabouts, character and date of buildings of all kinds in indigenous stone, as well as the relative abundance of different stone types in parish churches, monastic buildings, chapels and nonconformist meeting-houses. The mapping shows that, in general, each kind of stone is confined to a comparatively restricted but not exclusive zone with a focus on the source, the extent of use falling off with increasing distance away. The rate of fall-of is least in the case of carrstone, of which there are two forms, big carr and small carr, with relatively distinct but overlapping distributions. This material is more abundantly used and widely dispersed than any other stone except flint. Not only does it occur throughout north and west Norfolk, but it is also present in the east of the county and the middle Great Ouse basin. Big carr is the most versatile form of carrstone. Building dates assembled during the survey show that it has been treated by builders in different ways at different but overlapping periods, either coursed, snecked or randomized. The factors responsible are likely to have been changes in taste and buildings costs. From similar evidence, it is apparent that the use of differently coloured bricks for dressing is likewise sensitive to period, but also influenced by the kinds of brick that could be produced nearby. Although of relatively minor importance compared to other indigenous stone, Leziate grey quartzite from the Leziate Beds is also widely spread. It has a primary distribution around a point source near King’s Lynn, and secondary spreads, centred on proven or suspected Roman military buildings that were robbed, along the north coast and around Reedham to the east of Norwich. Although most use of indigenous building stone appears to have occurred within several kilometres of the quarries or pits, Leziate quartzite and big carr have been assigned a high place-value by some builders, aided by cheap transport by water, an improved road network and the introduction and spread of railways. Roman fort-builders seem to have been prepared to transport Leziate quartzite long distances by sea, in order to create ‘white’ installations (the stone is off-white for some decades after quarrying) intended either to impress or be visible to mariners negotiating an otherwise relatively featureless coast. Aware of the difficulties of building angled structures in flint, Saxon and Norman church-builders in the area valued ironpan for footings, quoins and butresses, and sometimes used the material in the fabric as a whole. In many cases, some of the stone seems to have contributed to the later medieval rebuilding of the churches. Carrstone has often been selected for prestigious buildings, especially the neatly coursed and snecked treatments of big carr. Examples include country houses and buildings for either religious, public or community use, as well as less grand private dwellings. The late nineteenth-century planned resort town of New Hunstanton is a striking testament to what can be achieved in carrstone. Many railway buildings in the area are modelled on the vernacular, although one company built almost everywhere in concrete. Some of the great estates also built in carrstone, either because suitable quarries lay within their bounds (Sandringham Estate) or out of a possible taste for the stone (Holkham (Coke) Estate). Carrstone cottages erected by the latter occur far and wide and are among the buildings more distant from the geological sources. New policies and regulations for planning and development have led in recent years to a renewal of interest in the use of indigenous building materials in many parts of the area. Carrstone, clunch and flint have all benefitted from this movement.

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PREFACE The work described in this monograph would not have been possible without a grant-in-aid from the British Academy, which is warmly acknowledged. I am especially grateful to Professor Grenville Astill and Professor Michael Fulford for their interest and generous support, and to Professor Martin Bell and my wife Jean for their patient encouragement. It is a pleasure to thank the many people who have answered queries, supplied information or otherwise helped, especially Mr and Mrs Ashworth, Mr D. Barker, Revd A.R. Bennett, Mr R. Burn-Murdoch, Mr R.M. Dobson, Dr R. Firman, Dr Peter and Mrs Jenny Friend, Mrs V. Grey, Mr D.A. Gurney, Lady Rose Hare, Mrs A. Harvey, Mr S. Heywood, Mr J. Norman, Mr Matthew Nield, Mr M.J. O’Lone, Mr E.J. Rose, Mrs J. Wood, Professor Peter Worsley and Mr D. Yaxley. The help and advice of the staff of the National Monuments Record is also gratefully acknowledged. Fieldwork for this study was carried out at intervals largely between early 2001 and late 2002. The locations of buildings discussed or illustrated in the text are for the most part given in terms of a six-figure National Grid reference and the name of the settlement or parish in which they lie. The settlements themselves are located using a four-figure reference. Three 100-kilometre squares come together in the area surveyed. In providing a location, the convention followed in each paragraph is to identify the 100-kilometre square in the first grid reference to appear, the letters being dropped from subsequent grid references in that square until a building located in a different square is mentioned. If necessary the process is repeated. For ease of consultation, the tables, figures and plates are numbered with reference to individual chapters. J.R.L. Allen (University of Reading)

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CHAPTER ONE

BUILDING-MATERIALS SURVEY Roman building materials. Blagg (1990) later takes a wider view. Sellwood (1984) describes the remarkable variety and far-flung sources of stone used for the town wall at Roman Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum). Marked attention is now being given to the character and meaning of the construction materials of the Roman Saxon Shore forts (Worssam and Tatton-Brown, 1990; Allen and Fulford, 1999; Pearson, 1999, 2002a, 2002b, 2003; Allen et al., 2001). Pearson and Potter (2002) describe the range of stone to be found in the medieval churches of Romney Marsh, a distinctive coastal wetland region of mixed influences. Gilchrist (1998, 2001) discusses the range of limestone freestones to be found in the great cathedral at Norwich. Many authors emphasize the distributions of particular kinds of stone, of which the work of Jope and Dunning (1954) on roofing slate, of Beavis (1970) and Leach (1978) on Purbeck marble, of Hudson (1971) on Bath stone, and of Roberts (1974) on a hard chalk (Totternhoe Stone) are excellent early examples. Although not strictly concerned with buildings, Peacock’s (1987) study of the distribution of querns of Lodsworth rock in the Iron Age and Roman periods is also an important early study. Worssam and Tatton-Brown (1994) describe the multi-period use of Kentish rag, a major building material in southeastern Britain. In the medieval period Reigate stone was also of some importance (Tatton-Brown, 2001). The extraordinary range of geological materials used in the construction of parish churches in the Thames Basin is the subject of a series of exemplary, semi-quantitative studies by Potter (1987, 1998, 1999, 2000a, 2000b, 2001a, 2001b, 2002). His researches clarify a scene not without confusion and emphatically make clear the value of secure geological foundations in work on historic buildings. It seems surprising that the erection of an ancient building - the Roman fort at Inchtuthil (Pitts and St. Joseph, 1985) - can be elaborately described while ignoring the provenance and barely mentioning the character of the stone used in its construction (Shirley, 2000).

1.1 Purpose and background This monograph is in its chief respects a celebration of the ordinary and the taken-for-granted. Its purpose is to examine, primarily from a geological perspective, the distribution and use of indigeneous construction materials - carrstone especially but also its competitors together with brick - in the hamlets, villages and towns of north and west Norfolk, part of the fourth largest county in England, without restriction as to period (Romanmodern) or kind of building (cottage, farm, great house, religious, public/community, official). The area embraced (Figure 1.1) roughly coincides with the physiographic sub-regions that Dymond (1985, fig. 1) distinguishes as the level, low-lying Fenland with its extensive controlled or artificial drainage (his Marshland and Peat Fen), the gently rising Western Escarpment, the North Alluvial Plain along the North Sea coast (a coastal slope rises upward to the south), the elevated (c. 50-75 m) but comparatively level and gently dissected Good Sands, with the Cromer Ridge in the north and east, and the sandy Breckland. A study on such a geographical and temporal scale must, however, be regarded as no more than a reconnaissance, but it brings light to bear on past changes in economic and social factors in these parts of the county, will serve as a springboard for detailed, local work in the future, and may interest conservationsts and those whose responsibilites include planning, development, and the preservation of the character of the area. Writing of monastic complexes in northern England, Senior (1989, 223) distinguished a number of factors that might lie behind the choice of stone for these particular buildings: a tradition of usage; the availability of dressed stone for re-use; patronage; communications and transportation; dissemination of information about materials and building methods; and the values (intrinsic, place) assigned at the time to the material. The list can be extended by rendering more explicit some of these factors, and by widening the range of buildings considered and the time-span under consideration. We may consequently add: patterns of trade; the expression of power and authority; the quest for prestige on the part of individuals or collectives; and policies for development and planning.

An understanding of building materials in north and west Norfolk is at a comparatively early stage and, surprisingly given the appeal of the created landscape, vernacular buildings in particular have not received their due (but see Messent, 1928). Jope’s (1954) work includes some reference to the area. Claude Messent (1967, 1974), a Norfolk clergyman of independent means, was intrigued by the carrstone buildings that give the west of the county so much of its character. Charming as are his books on this topic, with their personal illustrations, many in colour, his work is not systematic and does not always correctly identify the building materials seen. Harris (1990) recognized the importance of ironbound conglomerate - the ‘gravel’ of Potter’ (2001a) - in Norfolk churches, but his account is not extensive. The building materials of Norfolk’s ruined and redundant churches, and also some of its castles, are now well

Many overlapping and intersecting strands that embrace the regional, the documentary, the architectural and the geological can be traced in work on building materials and their use. In some cases research is confined to a particular region or county (e.g. Alexander, 1995; Steane, 1967-8; Hudson and Sutherland, 1990). Many investigators emphasize a particular period and kind of building, beginning with Neaverson (1947) on castles in North Wales and Jope (1964) on ecclesiastical constructions in southern Britain. From the latter region Williams (1971a, 1971b) describes the distribution of 1

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Figure 1.1. Area covered by the building-stone survey (adapted from Dymond, 1985) known as the result of a vigorous programme of recent survey and excavation (Coad and Streeton, 1982; Cushion et al., 1982; Heywood, 1982; Coad et al., 1987; Rogerson and Ashley, 1987; Rogerson and Williams, 1987; Davison, 1988; Heywood et al, 1989; Batcock, 1991; Morley and Gurney, 1997; Beazley and Ayers, 2001). The Statutory Lists of Building of Historical or Architectural Interest (Engish Heritage), and the surveys and preambles by Pevsner and Wilson (1999, 2002), are essential for any work in Norfolk, although not without limitations when it comes to building materials. The latter include in their two volumes highly generalized maps showing the distribution of buildings in ‘carstone’, clunch (chalk) and flint. Especially noteworthy is Hart’s (2000) recent account of the use of flint in East Anglia, a work that begins to address the comparative neglect of the vernacular, although it is stronger on the architectural than the distributional aspects of this varied material. Beckett (2002) has published notes that begin to define the distribution of a distinctive sandstone - Leziate quartzite - that originates in west Norfolk and was used from Roman times.

1.2 Values and costs Two kinds of value - unit and place - can be ascribed to a building stone (Senior, 1989, 223-4). Unit value is best understood as the intrinsic value of the material at the gate of the quarry or pit. It depends on the cost of detaching the material from the face and increases with the number and complexity of the preliminary operations that may subsequently be undertaken at the quarry to prepare the material for the builder. These can include splitting, trimming and preliminary dressing in the case of rubble stone, and sorting, splitting and squaring in the case of gravel. The unit cost is lowest for gravel as dug and for unsorted, irregular rubble. Place value has a more subtle meaning. As defined by Senior (1989), place value ‘relates the geographical disposition of the material to its unit value’. The nearer the quarry to the construction site, the higher is the place value of a building material. The monetary cost implied by place value is set by the total distance of transport to the building site and the means of transport available, that is, the product of the distance by the cost per unit at the 2

CARRSTONE IN NORFOLK BUILDINGS building is for whatever reason procured from just one location over the extent of an outcrop (Figure 1.2A). Focussed on such a source, in a low-lying, undulating landscape with equally good communications in all directions, a stone should exhibit a comparatively even pattern of dispersal, a consideration of place value suggesting that its relative abundance will fall off with distance as it increasingly meets competition from other materials.

quarry gate per unit of travel. A high transport cost is unlikely to be tolerated in the case of stone with a high unit value at the quarry gate. Consequently, such a material should be found nearer to its source than the same stone that received less preliminary treatment, and so left the quarry at a lower unit value. However, what the limiting distance is will be strongly influenced by the means of transportation available. Documentary sources in particular make it clear that, up to the early nineteenth century, transport by water was very significantly cheaper than carriage overland (e.g. Salzman, 1967; Jenkins, 1992-3; Alexander, 1995). Hence the presence of waterways in a region should spread a building stone more widely than if movement was restricted seasonally to indifferent roads. The development of canals and good roads in the eighteenth century, and of railways in the nineteenth, had the general effect of lowering transport costs relatively, and should also be factors that widen the dispersal of building materials. Nonetheless, economic factors are not always the sole determinant of place value. The individual builder may place an additional, special value on a building material, because of some particular property it is judged to have, such as aesthetic appeal, unusual workability, or expected showiness in the intended building. Under these circumstances a stone may be carried far from its geological source, and much further than rational, economic considerations alone would dictate.

Long but narrow outcrops are created where sedimentary formations have a significant dip or where, lying essentially horizontally, they intersect a tall escarpment or valley side. A linear source of building stone is created where such a formation has been quarried at a number of locations, each quarry effectively a point source (Figure 1.2B). Unless there is some natural barrier to one or other side, the stone from such a source may be expected to become dispersed symmetrically over a wide but elongated distribution zone with an axis of greatest relative abundance following the outcrop itself. Again, relative abundance should fall away across geological boundaries with increasing distance from the source. The zone may become distorted, however, if there are lines of communication that offer cheaper carriage than others, for example, a navigable river, canal or railway that transects the outcrop. The third kind of source is the distributed (Figure 1.2C). This type arises where quarrying takes place at many locations on the extensive outcrop of a flat-lying formation that underlies a gently dissected landscape. Little is exported across the geological boundaries of such a source. Dispersal is largely internal, each quarry or pit serving its immediate locality, provided that the outcrop is large compared to the spacing of the quarries and to the typical distance of spread of the stone away from any one of them.

The remaining costs are those incurred at the building site. These can include further work on the building stone, either preparatory to the erection of the structure or by way of finishing after construction. The former may involve the use of claw chisels and rasps to further dress the stone; the latter may require that the exposed faces of the built structure be smoothed using stone rubbers. 1.3 Sources and lithologies 1.3.1 Kinds of source

It is important to recognize that a building stone can have one or more secondary sources, especially in areas where stone is scarce. These are abandoned or redundant buildings that undergo demolition, the stone either being used for a new structure on the site or taken away for incorporation into a new building at some distance (Eaton, 2000; Doggett, 2002). In either case the demolished building becomes a secondary point source and is equivalent to a quarry. Such stone over a long period may be recycled at a decreasing level of relative abundance through a number of buildings and structures such as boundary walls, as each comes to the end of its useful life and in turn is exploited. Viewed geographically, the process of spread is one of diffusion (Figure 1.2D), although the outcome in terms of the outward decline in relative abundance may be impossible to distinguish from that arising from a primary point source (Figure 1.2A). If a generalization can given present evidence be made, the chief difference between the two is likely to lie in the general level of abundance of the stone within the distribution area. A building will ordinarily constitute a smaller and more rapidly

In regions underlain by sedimentary deposits, the different formations normally occur in extensive, threedimensional layers that may range in attitude from horizontal to variously dipping, depending on the particular geological history. If some of the formations include stone suitable for building, where they can be quarried or mined will depend on the shape of the outcrop, that is, the area formed by the intersection of the three-dimensional formation with the uneven surface of the ground. The primary sources of building stones differ according to the disposition of the outcrop and the extent to which the formation includes material of buildingstone quality. It is helpful, therefore, to distinguish point, linear and distributed sources of stone, as these give rise to different patterns of geographical distribution in buildings. Generally speaking, linear sources are larger in geographical scale than point sources, and distributed sources more extensive than linear ones. A primary point source exists where stone suitable for 3

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Figure 1.2. Schematic representation of building-stone sources A - Point. B - Linear. C - Distributed. D - Diffusive spread from a secondary point source buildings in a number of forms and comes from two geological formations that are closely related in age and outcrop in west Norfolk (Chapters 2.2, 3.3). The much reduced number and quality of exposures available today, however, are insufficient in the case of many buildings to resolve satisfactorily the precise geological origin of the material. Other names for the building stone are the widely used but sometimes misapplied ‘carstone’ (Messent, 1967, 1974; Pevsner and Wilson, 1999, 2002), ‘carr stone’ (Forrest, 1961) and, colloquially and as an element in a cottage name, ‘gingerbread stone’ (Messent, 1967, 24). Gallois (1994, 88, 176) has applied the useful, local terms ‘big carr’ and ‘small carr’ to the main forms of carrstone as a building material. These are the particular names that will be applied below.

exhaustible source than a quarry, and the stone from it may consequently be expected to figure much less prominently in the built environment. 1.3.2 Leziate quartzite Of subordinate importance as a building stone in west and north Norfolk is Leziate quartzite (Chapters 3.2, 11), also known as ‘sugar stone’ (Lee-Warner, 1884, 179), ‘blue Sandringham carstone’ (Pevsner and Wilson, 1999, 403) or simply Sandringham carstone (Pevsner and Wilson, 1999, 253), or ‘silver carr’ (Beckett, 2002). It is an offwhite, weathering gradually to iron grey, fine to medium grained quartz sandstone lightly cemented with secondary quartz. The name sugar stone is apt, as the incomplete cementation has left, on the quartz cement in the intergranular voids, crystal faces that sparkle in sunlight. It is otherwise inconspicuous in its weathered form.

Big carr, the ‘Snettisham carr’ of Forrest (1961, 5), is as the name suggests used in buildings as comparatively large masses. Typically, it is a rich orange, dull orange or yellowish brown, medium- to coarse-grained, ferruginous sandstone, commonly with irregular veins and jointcoatings of brownish-black ironstone. Generally speaking, big carr weathers well. The coarsest variety,

1.3.3 Carrstone This is the general name preferred herein for a distinctive but variable construction material that appears widely in

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CARRSTONE IN NORFOLK BUILDINGS trimmed off. For work in some buildings, nodules were carefully reduced to square or rectangular blocks.

known as ‘puddingstone’ and seen locally in buildings, is greyish brown, very coarse grained and rich in wellrounded granules and small pebbles of vein quartz. This variety has poor weathering properties.

Flint also occurs in geologically secondary sources, that is, as head deposits on slopes and in valleys on the Chalk downlands, glacial tills (boulder clays), glaciofluvial gravels, and marine beach gravels. Head deposits yield nodules. The tills include flint nodules and flint gravel. The various gravels afford rounded, waterworn pebbles and cobbles that are an important building material, commonly used without any treatment other than handpicking or screening to produce a particular range of sizes.

Small carr embraces the ‘shell carr’ of Forrest (1961, 3) and Messent (1967, 26, 44), Forrest’s (1961, 4) ‘block carr’, and the ‘carstone slips’ of Pevsner and Wilson (1999, 626-8). This form of carrstone is invariably used in small, platy masses, shell carr being the thinner and more common. According to Forrest, who had consulted local artisans, shell carr describes plate-like masses having a thickness of about one-third that of a modern brick; block carr is thicker at one-half of a brick. These distinctions seem to apply only to stone that has been unusually well-prepared at the quarry. More generally, a continuous variation is recognizable in the thickness of the plates or blocks from two to three centimetres to about eight or ten centimetres. There is similarly, a substantial but continuous variation in colour, sometimes evident in a single building, either upward in a wall or through intermingling, from very dark brown to yellowish brown. Small carr is a hard, fine- to coarse-grained, ferruginous sandstone and, like big carr, may have ironstone-coated joints. The rock weathers well, in many instances better than big carr.

1.3.6 Ironpan The term ironpan is used here to cover an important group of closely related, Norfolk building stones that are considered to have formed at various recent times in geologically secondary contexts as the result of the ferruginous cementation of sands and gravels in the zone of groundwater fluctuation (Chapter 3.7). Many writers, including Messent (1967), Pevsner and Wilson (1999, 2002) and some of the surveyors for the Statutory Lists, have referred to them as carstone, and many other names have been applied to the rocks, as Potter (2001a) has exhaustively demonstrated, including the especially unacceptable appelation ferricrete (Harris, 1990, 210). These rocks are, however, geologically distinct from carrstone as described above and should be carefully separated from it. Typically, they occur in buildings as large masses, commonly larger than big carr, but can also be found as small, irregular lumps associated with other materials. Platy forms are very rare, as the rock generally displays little or no signs of bedding.

1.3.4 Chalk Chalk or clunch is also widely seen as a building stone in north and west Norfolk (Chapters 3.4, 5). Of the two forms in which it is encountered, ordinary white chalk is by far the commonest. The rock is hard and white to grey or creamy, ranging from the pure to slightly marly or shelly. When freshly quarried it is easily worked, and the hardest chalk has good weathering properties on exposed surfaces. Red chalk, restricted to a small part of the area, is hard, nodular and shelly, but can weather poorly.

The three commonest but intergrading varieties of ironpan are ironbound conglomerate, ironbound sandstone and what is here called cinderstone. Hard and tough, with excellent weathering properties, the first two are distinguished by the yellowish, reddish or purplish black colour conferred on them by the cement of limonite-goethite that strongly binds the particles. Pebbles of flint predominate in the conglomerate but often other lithologies are also present. With the decline in the proportion of pebbles, ironbound conglomerate grades into pebbly ironbound sandstone and then pure ironbound sandstone. The grade of the quartz sand ranges from fine to coarse. Cinderstone - massive but vesicular and typically with no traces of internal layering - is also dark-coloured but a significantly finer grained rock that weathers less well. Isolated or scattered flint pebbles may be present in the rock, clearly linking it in period and mode of origin to the ironbound conglomerates and sandstones. A typical cinderstone displays closely spaced, irregular cavities 5-15 mm across that are defined by thin, uneven walls of almost black, ferruginously-cemented, very coarse silt or very fine sand. As seen on the external walls of a building, the vesicles appear empty but, when the stone is freshly broken, are generally found to contain free-running, very

1.3.5 Flint Perhaps the defining material of East Anglian vernacular and religious architecture (Chapter 3.6), flint is an earlydiagenetic precipitate of amorphous changing to cryptocrystalline to microcrystalline silica that formed at frequent intervals within the accumulating sediments of the later Chalk seas during the Cretaceous period. The Chalk is therefore the primary geological context in which flint occurs, in the form of horizons of irregular nodules to thick, continuous bands. As a rock flint is hard but brittle, extremely resistant to weathering, and surprisingly variable in character. Some is pale grey and almost transparent whereas other flint is white and opaque. Much flint is mid or dark grey to almost black and translucent in only the thinnest chips; some again is honey-coloured and almost transparent. Mottled flint is not uncommon. Unabraded flint nodules are widely seen as a building material. Either whole nodules were used or the nodules have been halved and the longer, horn-like projections 5

J.R.L. ALLEN contrast, Rhodes (2003, 56) asserts that, during the construction of New Hunstanton, the stone received no dressing until it reached the building site.

coarse quartz silt or very fine sand of a grey or occasionally rusty colour. A rare form of ironpan brashy ironbound sandstone - is breccia-like, consisting of variable amounts of small, angular lumps and plates of ferruginous sandstone in a matrix of ferruginouslycemented sand.

1.5 Treatment during construction 1.5.1 Building in carrstone

1.4 Sorting, trimming and dressing

As Chapters 5 and 6 will show in more detail, the builder in carrstone has a number of options in terms of the choice of material at the quarry gate and the treatment of the stone at the construction site. Writing of vernacular buildings in general, Brunskill (1978, 37-45) has described the architectural consequences of the considerable range of choices and treatments that obtain nationally. His comprehensive lists of illustrated categories and terms have been selectively adapted to meet the particular needs of the present survey.

Sorting, trimming and dressing at the quarry normally increase significantly the unit value of a building material at the quarry gate. Although each gravel deposit has its own particular, characteristic grade, the natural material is in reality a poorly sorted mixture of particles of many different sizes and to a lesser extent shapes, and is generally accompanied by sand. To be useful as a building material the gravel must be washed and in some measure graded, as the character of many Norfolk buildings in flint makes clear (Hart, 2000). In many instances, the degree of selection as to size, and also shape and degree of rounding, has been extreme, contributing to an appearance of mechanical regularity in the facings of some buildings. Sorting may be achieved either by handpicking or by screening at either a stationary or rotating device. As a further step at the pit, the selected cobbles may be halved using a lump hammer.

1.5.2 Randomizing The cheapest stone at the quarry gate is irregular rubble, and the least expensive way of facing a building with this material is to randomize the blocks, that is, position them in a disorderly fashion (random rubble), as in crazy paving, so that neither horizontal nor vertical elements can be distinguished in a wall (Figure 1.3A). This is one of the treatments Brunskill (1978, 39) ascribes to his category of ‘irregular stone’. The joints in a wall of random rubble are generally large and very variable in width, and some of the mortar may have been spread onto the uneven faces of the blocks. Although adding to the construction cost, such a wall can be smoothed and decorated after construction by trimming the exposed surfaces of the rubble using a claw-chisel. In principle random rubble should be without grain or pattern, but in practice a builder may, inadvertently or otherwise, subvert this intention by choosing blocks so as to oppose faces of a similar character or by selecting a sequence of blocks of a similar size and shape. Big carr is commonly randomized, as also is clunch and some flint.

In the case of stone there are several preliminary steps that may be taken to prepare the material for the builder depending on the extent to which the rock is bedded and jointed. Stone relieved from the quarry face may be split down to smaller sizes in various ways (Greenwell and Elsden, 1913; Ashurst and Dimes, 1977; Stanier, 2000) before being sorted as to size. Such material is generally irregular in shape and is best described as rubble. Selected blocks may be roughly dressed to approximate a regular shape by trimming off large flakes with a hammer; flint nodules and cobbles may be knapped down to the required size and shape. Other blocks may be dressed more neatly using an axe or adze, followed by the use of a range of chisels such as the drove, claw or bullnosed forms (Blagg, 1976). Perfectly flat surfaces can be achieved when required by the use of a rasp or abrasive stone; sawing the stone to shape achieves a similar result, although it may be necessary later to rub off any saw marks. Both procedures result in the best ashlar. The hand-sawing of sufficiently soft stone has been practised in Britain since the earliest Roman period, as at Fishbourne (Cunliffe, 1971) and Corfe (Sunter, 1987). A range of devices and machines became available in modern times for sawing stone (e.g. Ashurst and Dimes, 1977). At the only surviving big carr quarry in Norfolk, at Snettisham (TF 685349), the stone is cut into regular blocks using an electrically-driven, table-mounted wheel. Otherwise, irregular lumps are reduced to a convenient size but still irregular shape using a hand-operated, hydraulic splitter. Even this simple operation roughly doubles the unit value of the stone at the quarry gate. In

1.5.3 Coursing Coursing is the arrangement of blocks in continuous, horizontal rows, and is one of the most ancient and important of the treatments Brunskill (1978, 39, 41) describes from both his ‘irregular’ and ‘regular’ stone. In the case of carrstone, the most useful practical distinction is between rough coursing and neat coursing, although there can be no sharp boundary between the two, as the extent to which the blocks supplied have been shaped to regular forms varies considerably and continuously. Coursing is also seen in clunch and some flint. A roughly coursed carrstone wall consists of horizontal rows of trimmed to roughly squared blocks of about the same size and shape, the blocks being offset, or ‘mocked’, from one course to the next (Figure 1.3B). As with random rubble, joints are wide and mortar may have

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CARRSTONE IN NORFOLK BUILDINGS

Figure 1.3. Schematic treatments of building stone A - Randomized. B - Roughly dressed and coursed. C - Neatly dressed and coursed. D - Graded (coursed). E - Varied (coursed). F -Diagonal. G - Snecked. H - Galleted

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J.R.L. ALLEN buildings.

been spread onto the exposed faces of the blocks. A typical wall faced with neatly coursed carrstone - a much costlier proposition, predominantly in big carr - displays horizontal rows of carefully dressed blocks that show, in any one course, almost no variation in thickness, although their length may not be constant (Figure 1.3C). Joints are generally narrow and of a uniform width. In the case of the best ashlar, joints of just two or three millimetres can be maintained over a wall composed of blocks of the order of 0.25 m thick and 0.5 m long. An almost mechanical regularity can be achieved which may ultimately prove unattractive.

1.5.6 Galleting Galleting is a decorative treatment with no attendant structural significance. Common with especially big carr, frequent with clunch, and not unknown with brick, it involves pushing at intervals into the mortar of wide joints small pieces of either the same material or one of a contrasted colour (Figure 1.3H). The materials used for galleting in west and north Norfolk include carrstone, ironbound sandstone or other ironpan, red chalk, flint chips, small pebbles, broken brick or tile, and ironmaking slag. Some flint walls have been galleted with closely packed flint flakes.

Two variants on coursing occur in north and west Norfolk. A coursed wall may be described as graded when the scale, and especially the thickness, of the blocks gradually declines upward from course to course (Figure 1.3D). In varied coursing, which is less common, sets of comparatively narrow courses alternate with normally just one or two courses of larger blocks (Figure 1.3E), without there being any overall upward change in size.

1.6 Repairs and phasing Most older buildings have needed substantial repair at some time or other and many have been partly rebuilt, had windows or doors blocked up, or been enlarged or extended. These activities, which represent phases in the development of the structure, can leave characteristic traces in the visible fabric. Many Norfolk buildings, from cottages to churches, show evidence of such staged development.

1.5.4 Snecking A locally common treatment restricted to carrstone in north and west Norfolk is snecking (Brunskill, 1978, 39), the arrangement of roughly squared to neatly dressed blocks of a wide range of size proportioned in such a way that, ideally, neither horizontal nor vertical elements achieve emphasis (Figure 1.3F). The effect is somewhat like that of Mondrian’s grid paintings, except that the panels are of just one colour. In low-quality snecked walls, however, a sense of the horizontal is still projected, although not as strongly as in coursed walls. Joints in snecked walls vary from wide in the case of roughly squared stones to just a few millimetres where the best ashlar is used. The largest blocks tend to be almost square, and some may be rebated once or even twice, in contrast to the smaller, which are without re-entrants and usually more elongated in form. Very occasionally, large and small blocks may be fitted with the aid of wide corner chamfers.

Repair of a wall is usually evident as an irregular area where there is a slight change in the character or treatment of the stone or in which a different building material makes something of an appearance. A blocked door or window, on the other hand, has a more regular shape, and some of the original surround may have survived to partly define its original form; as with a repair, there may be a change in the nature and treatment of the stone used. Because the availability of freshlyquarried big carr has for some decades been restricted to the Snettisham source, some recent repairs to older carrstone building, especially in the southern part of the carrstone belt, are glaringly unsympathetic and may not be alleviated by weathering . That a building has experienced upward enlargement is indicated by the presence of roughly horizontal, gently inclined, or stepped boundaries in walls and gables across which there are changes in the nature and treatment of the building materials. The survival of an older roof line, commonly at a different pitch, also points to enlargement. Extension is revealed by vertical boundaries across which there is a change in the treatment and nature of the building materials. Furthermore, the new structure may not have been laced into the old, creating in the masonry a boundary that is sharp and abrupt.

On the whole, snecking must be accounted a more expensive treatment than ordinary coursing, as it depends on the provision at the quarry gate of just the right balance of block sizes, and requires a more considered approach at the building site. Some additional dressing may be necessary on-site in order to fit blocks well, for example, the cutting of rebates. 1.5.5 Diagonal pattern Occasionally, a carrstone wall displays a course or two composed of elongated, widely-jointed rubble tilted at the same, generally steep angle (Figure 1.3G). This mode of treatment, which may extend to the herringbone (Brunskill, 1978, 43), is more common in Norfolk with flint nodules and the more elongated cobbles. Hart (2002) has described and illustrated these and many other treatments of flint in Norfolk and other East Anglian

1.7 Re-use The complicated pattern of dispersal shown in Figure 1.2D depicts in effect one of the consequences of the protracted re-use of a building material. Re-use of building stone is time-honoured and widespread but not easily demonstrated. It may be considered with respect to 8

CARRSTONE IN NORFOLK BUILDINGS can be derived. The product of the two dimensions gives the exposed area of a block and is a measure of block size independent of shape. The form-ratio is defined as the ratio of the longest to the shortest exposed dimension. It describes the shape of a block and is independent of size.

both site and purpose. On-site re-use occurs when an existing building is taken down and the construction material after temporary storage is used with new material of the same or other kinds to raise a new structure in the previous location. Off-site re-use involves the robbing of an abandoned or redundant structure to make a new building or buildings at a new place. With respect to purpose, Stocker (1990) distinguishes between casual, functional and iconic re-use. In casual re-use, the kind most often seen, the original function of the stone is disregarded in its new use. Functional re-use sees the stone, or more commonly a set of stones, perform the same function as in the original bulding, for example, a door case or arch. Iconic re-use occurs when a particular stone is retained on account of its meaning to the builder, for example, as a link with an earlier authority or power, with ancestors or with a valued, earlier building.

There is another sort of re-use that does not involve a building as a source, although it is restricted to coastal areas. In west Norfolk, for example, ship’s ballast of Balto-Scandinavian origin discharged at King’s Lynn is considered to have contributed to medieval structures in the town (Clarke and Carter, 1977, 440), as well as to the extensive, probably early modern town wall called The Walks (Hoare et al., 2002). This kind of dumped but readily saleable material could also have been used in church fabrics and other settlements near to King’s Lynn. The latter may not have been the only port at which ballast was discharged and subsequently used in constructions. Old property walls at Wells-next-the-Sea, a significant trading centre on the north Norfolk coast, include many lumps and cobbles of high-grade metamorphic rocks more suggestive of Scandinavia rather than Scotland (e.g. Plummers Lane, TF 916433).

The presence of re-used stone in a building is incontrovertible in some cases but in most requires the cautious and simultaneous application of a range of criteria (Senior, 1989; Stocker, 1990; Sutherland, 1990; Gilchrist, 1998; Eaton, 2000; Pearson, 2002b; Potter, 2000a; Allen, 2004). Adapting a comprehensive set developed with respect to Roman and medieval buildings (Allen et al., 2003), we may suggest the following general list to be applied to the suspect stone: the presence of an inscription significantly earlier than the date of the building; the presence of a sculptured image in an earlier style; a higher place value (e.g. limestone freestone) than the building material generally; a mineralogy/petrology identical to the stone in a putative source building; a size, shape and treatment (including mouldings) similar to that in a putative source (a metrical approach can be helpful); the presence of incorrectly oriented features such as lewis and dowel holes; the survival of mortar different from, and overlaid by, that generally present in the building; the presence of marks of weathering or fire out of keeping with its location and attitude in the building; an association with building materials easily identifiable as of an earlier period (e.g. Roman brick and tile); and, finally, the location of the building within a graded, geographical dispersion of re-used material independently established (e.g. Figure 1.2D). The drives behind re-use are various (Stocker, 1990; Eaton, 2000), ranging from the practical, such as the lack of a tradition of quarrying or a restricted supply of building stone, to the iconic.

1.8 Survey and sampling 1.8.1 General The geographical distribution and use of a building stone in a region can be established through field work in a number of ways depending on the questions of interest and the resources available. The essential subjects of any such survey are buildings and related structures, especially boundary walls. A building is here understood to be a unified structure, such as a church, a school, a railway station, a detached dwelling or farmhouse, a barn, a pair of semidetached houses, or a terrace of cottages or houses. Also regarded as a single building is a close group of buildings that clearly represent a single project, such as a row of semidetached cottages raised at the same time. Monochrome and colour photography - the latter a necessity in an area of colourful building materials such as Norfolk - greatly assisted the recording of what were thought to be the more significant and interesting structures. All examples of a particular kind of building may be examined, in which case there can be a strong period bias. In north and west Norfolk most religious buildings, for example, are medieval, although a few date from the seventeenth or eighteenth century, and the fissiparous, non-conformist movements of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led to the erection of numerous meeting-houses and chapels, often more than one in some settlements. Most of the school and railway buildings date from the middle and late nineteenth century. Such buildings may be recorded on a range of levels varying from the general impression to a stone-by-stone analysis based on rectified photographs. The latter is clearly feasible only when a study is limited to one or a few buildings (e.g. Sutherland and Parsons, 1984; Rogerson

Re-use in north and west Norfolk is most obvious in church buildings, many of which appear to have been partly or wholly rebuilt more than once (on-site re-use), but it is also encountered in farm and domestic structures, especially those sited near former monastic constructions (off-site-re-use). A range of the more convincing examples is illustrated in Plates 1.1 and 1.2. When a metrical approach is to be adopted over an issue of re-use, and provided the stonework in question is dressed, it is helpful to measure the longest and shortest dimensions of a random sample of blocks exposed on a wall. From these measurements two further quantities 9

J.R.L. ALLEN religious buildings of many different sizes, from a chapel or small monastic ruin to the famously large parish churches, as well as to buildings of varying degrees of obscuration by rendering or the develoment of organic growths.

and Ashley, 1987; Rogerson and Williams, 1987). It is inappropriate for regional work on the present scale, in which a semi-quantitative approach is as much as can be expected. The settlements of west and north Norfolk vary in size from a cluster of cottages around a farmstead to villages of a few hundred people and to towns of several thousands of inhabitants. They also vary in their pattern of development and, as a consequence, in the age and variety of buildings that can be expected. Some settlements are the result of medieval town planning; others effectively made their appearence only in the nineteenth century. While all of the buildings in a hamlet can be examined in more or less detail, this is not practicable in the case of a larger settlement, where a survey must be based on some kind of sample of buildings. The purpose of the survey will largely determine where in the settlement the sampling will be concentrated. Such an approach is in a sense biased but, with the help of existing information, map-assessment and a little reconnaissance, can successfully target the most pertinent streets and buildings. The greatest problem arises with isolated dwellings and farms scattered over the rural area. Those noted in earlier reports can easily be visited, but it may only be practicable to record the remainder as they happen to be encountered in travelling through a region.

A steeply rising, semi-quantitative scale of abundance, varying with the building stone of interest, was also used by Potter (2000a, 2001a, 2002) in some of his studies of church fabrics in the London Basin. His scheme is of three steps (a further category ‘not recorded’ is implicit in all schemes). In the case of his ‘gravel’ (ironpan) churches, for example, the stone is reported as present in a ‘significiant amount’ if more than 0.5 per cent of the the total, external visible fabric is formed of it (Potter, 2001a, fig. 3). A category of abundance recorded as ‘little’ was subdivided into two, more than ten pieces, and less than ten pieces. Potter (2000a, fig. 8) erected similar classes of relative abundance for churches with travertine. A high proportion of London Basin churches include glacially-introduced cobbles of Bunter quartzite. Potter (2002, table 2) recorded these as a definite percentage ‘in certain parts of the church fabric’. Instructive contoured maps of the relative abundance of ironpan and gravel in the churches were created by giving a weighting on a sliding scale to the different levels of abundance. Contouring has not been attempted in the present study, but relative abundance is mapped and portrayed visually.

1.8.2 Types of building

1.8.3 Settlements

Although buildings of all kinds were included in the survey of the region shown in Figure 1.1, a particular attempt was made to establish semi-quantitatively by number of pieces the building-stone content of the structures erected for religious purposes. These are the parish churches (active, redundant, ruinous), monastic complexes, and non-conformist meeting-houses and chapels of the area. The monastic buildings and parish churches appear in the Statutory Lists and other publications together with a few of the non-conformist erections. Stell (2002) gives further information about the latter, although his survey is not comprehensive beyond the towns and principal villages. Reference has also been made to the more comprehensive coverage of Ede et al. (1994).

Hamlets were examined in full during the survey but villages and towns were assessed on the basis of the buildings seen along a sample of lanes or streets, with a bias toward areas and constructions that antedated the Second World War. Wherever possible, all buildings in the Statutory Lists were included, including those in rural settings remote from settlements. A typical sampling of a compact village involved a circular, zig-zag or figure-ofeight walk that included the main street and the back lanes. Normally, a single street, together with significant offshoots, was walked in a strung-out settlement. Each town, however, called for an individual approach. For example, the streets of New Hunstanton, the carrstone town par excellence, were walked in full. The centre of Downham Market, also rich in carrstone, was fully walked, together with the chief roads that radiated from it. The older parts of King’s Lynn, in which there is little carrstone, were assessed on the basis of selected streets. Fakenham, apparently without carrstone, was also sampled on the basis of selected, central streets.

The building-stone content of an ecclesiastical building was recorded as follows after an inspection of the external fabric at eye level and otherwise using binoculars. A lithology is said to be very rare if only one piece could be identified. If more than one but less than ten blocks or lumps are present the rock is described as rare. The material is common where the lithology is present to the extent of tens to a hundred or so pieces. A stone is recorded as dominant where it is the most prevalent lithology in the building. Although not without subjective features, this steeply increasing scale of relative abundance had the advantage in the field of simplicity, ease of application, flexibility and reproducibility. It could be confidently applied to

The relative abundance of a given building material was measured from settlement to settlement in a similar way to that described above for church building, and proved flexible with regard to settlement size. The lithology was recorded as dominant if the majority of the buildings in the sample displayed the material in whole or in part. Where a substantial fraction of the buildings included the lithology it was described as common. The lithology is rare where a few to several buildings incorporated it. 10

CARRSTONE IN NORFOLK BUILDINGS The material is very rare where it is present in only one or a few buildings. In many settlements the parish church is the only building to display certain lithologies.

1.9 Summary A wide variety of indigenous building stones have been used during the last two millennia in Norfolk, some coming from point or linear geological sources and others from distributed sources. These materials have been subjected to a variety of treatments, ranging from the simple to others that raise costs considerably. Factors other than the purely economic are likely to have determined the geographical distribution of the building stones. Some of the materials appear to have been reused in various ways. A scheme for the sampling of the fabric of constructions, and for recording the relative abundance of building stone in settlements and in buildings of a particular kind, is suggested as suitable for a regional survey at an essentially reconnaissance level. It is semi-quantitative, flexible and reproducible, and is suggested to be adequate to bring to light geographical and temporal patterns of building-stone use.

Under this method of survey, an abundance category ‘not recorded’ is clearly essential, but this characterization does not necessarily mean that a particular lithjology is actually absent. Because assessment was on the basis of sampling, there could, for example, be one or more carrstone buildings in a settlement that were not seen, and therefore not entered into the record, because they were neither previously reported nor located on the lanes and roads that were walked. Some error at the lowest levels of abundance therefore attaches to the various distribution maps presented in later chapters.

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CHAPTER TWO

GEOLOGICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND east, in the Good Sands and the Breckland, Pleistocene tills, brickearths, gravels and sands, together with Holocene valley alluvium, largely conceal the bedrock. The area falls into two from the standpoint of transportation and communications. In the Breckland, Good Sands and Western Escarpment, roads joined later by the railways afforded the chief means of communication (e.g. Cossons, 1951; Joby, 1993a, 1993b; Wright, 2001). Few navigable waterways penetrated eastward into these sub-regions (e.g. Joby, 1993c). In the Fenland to the west, by contrast, a myriad of rivers and drains of various sizes (e.g. Clarke and Carter, 1977; Joby, 1993c) allowed vessels from sailing barges and steam tugs to poled dinghies and punts to range far and wide, southward along the Great Ouse into the East Midlands and southwestward along the Nene into the uplands of Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire. The Wash itself, and the inshore waters of the Norfolk coast, also provided important routes. Wisbech in medieval and early modern times, and King’s Lynn from the medieval period to the present, are but the largest of many havens and landing places that existed on the littoral or on the boundary between the Fenland and the other sub-regions. These two towns lie on the former estuaries of respectively the Nene and Great Ouse. The combined estuary of the Bure, Yare and Waveney is likely to have allowed access into the interior when, in Roman times, a west Norfolk building stone was used for construction in the far east of the county (Chapter 11).

2.1 Introduction The aim of this chapter is briefly to review the geological and geographical background that is relevant to the use of building stone and related construction materials in north and west Norfolk. Geologically, the area is both simple and complicated. It is simple to the extent that sedimentary deposits of very few periods - Jurassic, Cretaceous and Quaternary - are present at the surface and relevant to the survey, and that the earlier of these have on a regional scale a very gentle eastward dip. The area is complicated in that, during the Quaternary, covering the last c. 1.5-2.5 million years and the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs, rapid climate change and especially the frequent shifts between glacial and interglacial conditions became expressed by complex stratigraphical and geomorphological responses that are fragmented, difficult to date and not yet fully understood. The early reports by Rose (1835-6, 1862, 1865) and Jackson (1911), and the first set of Geological Survey memoirs (Bennett, 1884; Woodward, 1884; Blake et al., 1888; Whitaker et al., 1893; Whitaker and Jukes-Browne, 1899), are invaluable for their inclusion of local details on such activities as quarrying and brick-making that are difficult or impossible to verify now because the mainly pit and quarry exposures no longer survive. Recent accounts and memoirs cover west Norfolk (Peake and Hancock, 1961; Casey and Gallois, 1973; Gallois, 1979, 1994) and the Ely area in the southwest (Gallois, 1988). In addition to the descriptions of King’s Lynn and Ely, Geological Survey sheet maps (combined solid and drift) are available for Fakenham (146), Wisbech (159) and Swaffham (160), but not yet traditional memoirs. Neither maps nor memoirs have so far been published for two important parts of the area, Wells-next the-Sea (130) and Cromer (131) strung along the north coast. Bowen (1999) discusses the principles of classification and correlation of Quaternary deposits generally, and Lewis (1999) provides a useful survey of literature covering the area of the present survey. Andrews et al. (2000) describe the Holocene sequence of the North Alluvial Plain (North Norfolk Barrier Coast), and Brew et al. (2000) give an account of the Fenland. Table 2.1 summarizes the relevant geological succession in the area.

2.2 Solid geology (Jurassic-Cretaceous) 2.2.1 Jurassic The Kimmeridge Clay (Gallois, 1979, 1988, 1994) high in the Upper Jurassic of the area (Figure 2.1) has a considerable subcrop beneath younger beds but a much more limited outcrop, chiefly in a narrow band between King’s Lynn and the Downham Market area and then more extensively around Ely. Of shallow-marine origin, the formation consists of grey, commonly bituminous, richly fossiliferous mudstones with doggers and tabular beds of calcareous, occasionally dolomitic, muddy cementstones. The Kimmeridge Clay has been worked locally for brick-making and for oil shale. 2.2.2 Lower Cretaceous An erosional break divides the Kimmeridge Clay from the overlying Sandringham Sands (Table 2.1). These are largely of Lower Cretaceous age but the lowermost beds are assigned on faunal grounds to the uppermost Jurassic (Casey and Gallois, 1973; Gallois, 1994). The Sandringham Sands, like the overlying formations in the Lower Cretaceous sequence, accumulated in shallowmarine environments.

Geographically, the area falls as Dymond (1985) showed into relatively few sub-regions (Figure 1.1). From the standpoint of access to rock worth quarrying as a building stone, the most important of these sub-regions are the Western Escarpment and the coastal slope immediately to the south of the North Alluvial Plain. To the west lies the Fenland, where the rocks are concealed beneath unconsolidated Fenland silts, sands and peats. To the

12

CARRSTONE IN NORFOLK BUILDINGS much obscured by Quaternary deposits, they can be traced at outcrop along the lower slopes of the Western Escarpment from Snettisham southward to near Downham Market where, on the north side of the Wissey valley east of Denver, the formation is overstepped by the Carstone. The Leziate Beds, an important source of sand for building and especially glass-making, are widely exposed in temporary excavations and in several huge pits. Gallois (1994, 74-8) describes them as mostly white or grey, fine-grained, well-bedded, loose sands with subordinate bands of silt or clay. In the vicinity of Castle Rising, however, to the northeast of King’s Lynn, the available historical and current evidence suggests that a band of lightly quartz-cemented sandstone occurs within the Leziate Beds. This rock (Leziate quartzite), of disputed origin (Chapter 11.3.1), has been worked over a long period as a building stone, but it is not as important as either the Carstone or Chalk. Lithified sands attributable to the Leziate Beds are not known to occur at any other locality.

Table 2.1. Summary of outcropping geological sequence in north and west Norfolk HOLOCENE (