Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era [1 ed.] 9781784918323

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Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era edited by

Liz Thomas and Jill Campbell

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era edited by

Liz Thomas and Jill Campbell

Archaeopress Archaeology

Archaeopress Publishing Ltd

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ISBN 978 1 78491 831 6 ISBN 978 1 78491 832 3 (e-Pdf)

© Archaeopress and the authors 2018 Cover: Store Heddinge Church, Denmark, section (see pages 113–126).

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners. Printed in England by Oxuniprint, Oxford This book is available direct from Archaeopress or from our website www.archaeopress.com

Contents Buildings in Society International Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������iii Liz Thomas and Jill Campbell What is Building History? Emergence and Practice in Britain and Ireland������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 1 Mark Gardiner The Domestic, Ritual Use of ‘Salt Niches’ in Southern and Eastern England, c.1500 to 1700 AD�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 9 Jonathan Duck Architecture and Community at Hummingbird Pueblo, New Mexico���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 23 Evangelia Tsesmeli Andrine Nilsen and Göran Tagesson Houses and Buildings – on Physical and Social Space ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 39 Structures and Social Order in a Medieval Italian Monastery and Village: Architecture and Experience in Villamagna���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 51 Caroline Goodson Ethnic Buildways: Phenomenology in the Architectural Grammar of Later Medieval Córdoba (Spain)�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 63 D.A. Lenton Hybrid Vernacular: Houses and the Colonial Process in the West of Ireland in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 79 Eve Campbell The Development of the Apartment Building in 18th century Vienna��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 95 Paul Mitchell Store Heddinge Church – a Mystery Solved?������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 113 Leif Plith Lauritsen Creating a Choreographed Space: English Anglo-Norman Keeps in the Twelfth Century���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 127 Katherine Weikert A Convict History: The Tale of Two Asylums���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 141 Susan Piddock

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Buildings in Society International Introduction Liz Thomas and Jill Campbell

School of Natural and Built Environment, The Queen’s University of Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN, United Kingdom email: [email protected]; [email protected]

Buildings are amongst the larger artefacts created by humans, but are more than just ‘machines for living in’ as Le Corbusier (1927: 95) famously argued they should be. There is a continuing relationship between buildings and those who build them, those who use them and those who look upon them. Buildings may be constructed to convey meaning, but any meaning is perpetually re-defined both as the structure changes and also as society changes. People shape buildings and buildings in turn shape people’s perceptions, experience and behaviour. Yet in spite of the importance of architecture in structuring our environment, the relationship between architecture and societies in the past remains poorly understood and under-theorized.

power, buildings and symbolism and identity. Together, they generate a valuable new insight into the study of buildings in the historic period. The first chapter in this volume engages with the fundamental question, what is building history? Mark Gardiner examines the roots of building history and explores the issues in studying buildings as monuments representing the past. He concludes that building history embraces multiple approaches to built structures including their relationship to society and should therefore be considered as artefacts with many meanings. The chapters under ‘Domestic Space’ investigate the way in which building materials, architectural forms and features informed on social identity and expressed the beliefs of those who lived there. Jonathan Duck’s chapter looks at the uses of niches as having both a practical and spiritual function in domestic buildings in eastern England during the post-medieval period. Using archaeology, architectural and documentary evidence he considers how an individual’s spiritual values came to be expressed within the fabric of a home. Lia Tsesmeli’s chapter focuses on the architectural remains of a settlement in Hummingbird Pueblo, New Mexico from the early thirteenth century to the midfifteenth century and explores how temporal and spatial diversity of architectural form, construction methods and internal organisation of built space can reveal how a population has to evolve and adapt to changing social conditions in the way in which they shape their environment.

In response to the increasing pressure to create a more joined up approach to the study of buildings across disciplines, three archaeologists (two post-medievalists and one historical-archaeologist) organised, with the generous support of The Queen’s University of Belfast (QUB) and the Belfast City Council, an interdisciplinary conference, Buildings in Society International (BISI) in June 2014 at QUB. The aim of BISI was to create a forum for international experts from a variety of disciplines including archaeology, history, architectural history and heritage to discuss and to consider current new approaches to the study of buildings. The agenda was to debate the benefits of trans-historical and multi-disciplinary approaches which placed buildings in their social context and considered not only the construction of buildings, but also the responses to them over time. The speakers presented a wide range of buildings including, but not limited to, churches, houses, castles, prisons and asylums and drew upon examples from the twelfth to the twenty-first century from across America, Australia and Europe.

The second section of the volume, ‘Urban and Village Spaces’ engages with the way in which archaeology, the study of architecture with the documentary record can be used to meaningfully examine the built environment. Göran Tagesson and Andrine Nilsen analyse evidence from the archaeological and standing buildings record from Swedish towns during the medieval and early modern period. A multi-disciplinary approach is also used by Caroline Goodson to explore the remains of a monastery and abbey church of the tenth to thirteenth century as well as the village where the monastery’s

This volume arose out of selected papers presented at the conference, but has been augmented with invited chapters to provide a more rounded overview of the state of the study. The chapters fall in to four different defined sections, yet address similar themes such as domestic space, theoretical approaches, buildings and iii

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era estate workers lived. Goodson suggests that the site at Villamanga can be used to explore how buildings may have been experienced by a community over time.

approaches’ in the way buildings have been examined within different scholarly fields. It concluded that interdisciplinary research with careful theorisation will be one of the greatest challenges but exciting areas of future research within the subject (Giles and Kristiansen 2014: 9-10). Future research must adequately capture the complexity of the relationship between humans and buildings, and examine whether it is multi-facetted so that it will consistently evade generalizing theories. Contextual interpretation may provide richer and more nuanced approaches.

The third section in this volume, ‘Buildings and Identity’ explore how expressions of identity can be recognised in built structures. Ash Lenton examines the phenomenological or buildways of architectural grammar as one way to interpret the social groupings. Lenton uses the example of medieval Córdoba’s (Spain) religious architecture to interpret the actions of ethnically aware people. Eve Campbell investigates the idea of ethnic identity in buildings, examining the conception that the vernacular stone thatched dwelling in Ireland represented ‘Irishness’ itself. She suggests that the buildings of the underground gentry were hybrid in character, and their dwellings which emerge in a distinct colonial context, held ambivalent and divergent meanings. They were built in a way which reflected older traditions, but were the products of people creating a space in an ever changing society. Paul Mitchell examines the origins of Viennese apartment buildings and drawing on evidence both from architects’ plans and from on-site analysis.

The discussion in this book reflects the latest approaches to the study of buildings from the historic period. This volume does not examine buildings as architecture, but adopts an archaeological perspective to consider them as artefacts, reflecting the needs of those who commissioned them. It is fundamentally important to consider the historical context in which buildings were constructed and equally to consider their subsequent uses and interpretations. Studies have sometimes failed to seriously consider the historical contexts in which the buildings were constructed and how they were subsequently used and interpreted. The papers in this volume situate their interpretation in their social context. Buildings can inform us about past cultures as they are responsive and evolve to meet people’s needs over time. Many of the papers show that as scholars, we need to recognize that architecture has conscious and unconscious intentions, and buildings have a diversity of meanings beyond their actual function. Those meanings may be mis/understood, resisted or denied by those experiencing the building, through habitation or use. Buildings (from conception to construction and reconstruction) exist in different times – being re-structured, re-thought and re-experienced by subsequent generations. They are not static objects but have a dynamic biography. Buildings do not have a single meaning, but multiple and changing meanings.

The final papers explore approaches to buildings other than urban or rural dwellings, including churches, public institutions and castles. Leif Plith Lauritsen shows the importance of challenging traditionally held views of buildings and reinterpreting them to reveal the truth of the buildings function. Katherine Weikert examines how spatial and access analysis can be used to reinterpret Anglo-Norman keeps. She argues that the role of spatial planning and structures remains unexplored and with further investigations could reveal how space was intended to display or indeed hide symbols of social authority. The final paper of the volume by Susan Piddock considers how buildings and their use form the material culture, which then can be used to examine attitudes to certain groups of people. She explores what life was like for those living in penal colonies of Tasmania and Western Australia, and concludes how the built environments can reveal much about the gap between the rhetoric of care and the reality of living within the asylum.

Approaching the study of buildings in a trans-historical and multi-disciplinary approach is still in its infancy within the academic field, however, it is required in order to create a clearer definition of what buildings were, what they meant, and how this evolved not only on a local level but also at a regional and international stage. Buildings have countless layers which hide symbolism and ideas that we are only just beginning to understand. We must embrace different scholarly strands to fully decipher the code and truly appreciate how these buildings were intended to be seen, how they portrayed contemporary attitudes, social organisation and tastes.

A Way forward? As has been discussed, the study of buildings is a rapidly expanding scholarly field due to increasing pressure to create a more joined up approach to the study of buildings across the disciplines. The move to a more diverse way of approaching buildings was identified in Dwellings, Identities and Homes, a conference held in 2010 with a subsequent publication which debated approaches in the field of medieval housing culture. It too summarised that there had been a ‘diversity of

The volume is unified not simply by the study of buildings, but also by a perspective which looks at the interaction between people and societies more iv

Liz Thomas and Jill Campbell: Introduction References Cited

generally, and the built structures they have created. It considers the design of the buildings, their role, and how they were flexible enough to evolve and grow as their function changed and as the needs of those who owned or used the buildings also developed. It emphasises the need for further international multi-disciplinary approaches in order to understand how ideas, styles, approaches and designs spread over time and space. In short, we must consider a new approach to the study of buildings and the study of the relationships which societies have with buildings.

Giles, K. and Svart Kristiansen, M. E. (2014) Introduction. In Giles, K. and Svart Kristiansen, M. E. (eds) (2014). Dwellings, Identities and Homes.: European Housing Culture from the Viking Age to the Renaissance. Hojbjerg, Denmark: Aarhus University Press / Jysk Arkæologisk Selskab, pp. 7-10 Giles, K. and Svart Kristiansen, M. E. (eds) (2014). Dwellings, Identities and Homes.: European Housing Culture from the Viking Age to the Renaissance. Hojbjerg, Denmark: Aarhus University Press / Jysk Arkæologisk Selskab. Le Corbusier, (1927) Towards a New Architecture. Trans. F. Etchells. London

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What is Building History? Emergence and Practice in Britain and Ireland Mark Gardiner

is Reader in Heritage, School of History & Heritage, University of Lincoln email: [email protected] Abstract: The roots of the emerging study of building history are traced to ethnology, architecture, archaeology and history. The approaches of these disciplines, particularly in the formative period of the decades around 1900, are examined. Buildings were gradually recognized, not only as objects of aesthetic appreciation and historic monuments, but also as important sources for understanding the history of human society. The range of structures examined was broadened beyond great houses and cathedrals to include institutions and farm buildings. Building history has developed as interdisciplinary, combining the study of structures, with written and drawn documents, examining the structures within their social context. Keywords: Architecture, Ethnology, History, House

Buildings are some of the largest and some of the most complex artefacts created by humans and their study poses fundamental problems. How do we approach houses which are central to human self-presentation and security, which have been occupied and altered by generations of people over many decades, often over hundreds of years; objects which are sometimes deemed to have a moral dimension in moulding the behaviour of their users (Watkin 1977), and certainly have social and economic implications? The response in the past to comprehending the many-dimensional aspects of buildings has been to draw upon a range of existing disciplines with established methodologies. However, from these approaches is gradually emerging an interdisciplinary method which draws upon written and drawn sources in conjunction with the study of material culture – the building itself. The way in which this distinctive approach has emerged and the changing thinking about buildings is examined below.

humanities, of which architectural history is merely one. To understand how it has emerged, it is necessary to trace the development of the subject back to its roots in four different fields – ethnology, architecture, archaeology and art history. Building history has no origin itself outside these four disciplines; so, whereas archaeology has its roots in antiquarian investigation and art history sprung from connoisseurship, building history has no Enlightenment parent which it can claim as its own. Training in architecture has traditionally included a study of buildings of the past, particularly great houses, cathedrals and public buildings. Architectural training, however, has largely been concerned with practical, rather than academic skills, so history has not had a central role. During the course of the twentieth century a further, and an important factor emerged to account for the failure of architects to lead the study of the history of their subject. Modernism sought to establish a break with preceding styles, rejecting many of the previous values. From that perspective the study of the past was no longer a relevant or even desirable part of an architect’s training. The field of the history of buildings was thus left open to others to fill.

Building history is not the same as architectural history, though they clearly have things in common. Pevsner (1957: 23) argued that the term ‘architecture applies only to buildings designed with a view to aesthetic appeal’ and the practice of architectural history has been largely limited to such buildings. Building history applies no such bar, but embraces all structures, functional as well as decorative, which contribute to the built environment. This is not a trivial distinction, because if we set aside aesthetic value as a central value of a building, it is necessary to approach the subject with entirely different matters in mind. The aims of building history are discussed towards the end of this paper. The first task is to identify the roots from which building history has emerged.

Ethnology One of the strongest influences on the early development of building history was ethnology which viewed houses as one aspect of the broader understanding of folklife. The roots of the interest in buildings lay in the 1851 Great Exhibition in London and developed in subsequent international exhibitions. These presented domestic scenes of folklife, using dioramas and tableaux vivants. The public interest in exotic ways of life was also provided for in Germany by Carl Hagenbeck’s ‘anthropological-zoological’ displays, initially using a group of Sámi with their reindeer and herding

The argument in this paper is that building history is the off-spring of a number of different branches of the 1

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era dogs, all set within a traditional camp. Hagenbeck later introduced other groups of people to recreate ethnographic performances (Baglo 2015: 53–54). Folklife was used to communicate a nationalistic idea of a timeless culture strongly rooted in place (DeGroff 2012: 232–36; Stoklund 1999: 4). Initially, the buildings used in the international exhibitions were simply pavilions or idealizations of national architecture but, with the establishment in 1891 of the first open-air museum at Skansen in Stockholm, original peasant houses started to be moved to new sites to play a part in the presentation of folklife. Houses were, however, at first not a central element in the display of national culture. For Artur Hazelius, the founder of the museum and the collector of the items which filled the houses, the buildings were merely a part of the vision of a harmonious society. The houses were the mis-en-scène, rather than objects of study in themselves, and in this he reflected the established perspective in which museums displayed artefacts: museum buildings were the vessels to contain the exhibits. However, Hazelius was trying to capture a way of life, albeit in an idealized form, and that necessarily had to include the houses in which people lived.

archaic (Lysaght 1990: 30). When Aarge Roussell (1934) visited the Scottish islands in 1931, he was seeking to find parallels for the buildings he had been excavating and recording in Iceland and Greenland. He persuaded himself that the building forms were indeed derived from the medieval Norse settlers. Much the same agenda informed the visit of Sven Kjellberg and Olof Hasslöf to the Western Isles of Scotland in 1934 in which they took particular interest in the buildings and the fishing methods (Fenton and Mulhern 2012). The strongest influence coming out of this approach arose from the work of a further Swedish ethnographer, Åke Campbell, who made visits to Ireland from 1934 onwards and to Scotland in 1939 and 1948 (Lysaght 1993; Walker 1989). In 1935 Campbell was accompanied on his fieldwork in Mayo and Galway by Caoimhín Ó Danachair, who subsequently adopted the same ethnological approach to the study of buildings in Ireland (Danaher 1938). This set the way in which Irish houses were studied for over a generation. One example of the persistent influence of such studies can be seen in the work of Estyn Evans and his student, Alan Gailey in the north of Ireland, but in their hands it was merged with the interest in oral folklore, more common in England. Evans, in particular, was influenced by a perspective which regarded folk practices as existing out of time, though this was a widespread view amongst many ethnologists (Gardiner 2011; Hegardt 2014, 290–91). As a consequence, Gailey could write that ‘this north-western house type probably developed from very early dwellings in Ireland, perhaps going back to prehistoric times’ (Gailey et al. 1974: 6–7; see also Gailey 1977: 229–31). By contrast, Ó Danachair was rather more cautious, merely saying that there were houses which were constructed in the ‘same way as at the beginning of the Christian era or earlier’ (Danaher 1938: 226). The view that folk practice had arisen out of a ‘timeless past’, ultimately set ethnology at variance with the historical subjects which used time as a backbone for their study.

The growing appreciation that houses were an important element of the study of folklife, therefore, came not only from the earliest skansens, the term which was applied to all open-air museums on the Swedish model, but from the emergence of ethnology as a scientific study. We can distinguish two strands in this new discipline. The first prominent in the English and German approach to the subject laid particular emphasis on the traditional beliefs, legends and customs of the inhabitants. It stressed the immaterial over the material, and in this it reflected an emphasis on oral folklore that was manifest particularly in the work of the Grimm brothers in Germany. Leerssen (2012: 11) has traced the deeper roots of this emphasis on orality to the view of the eighteenth-century historian, Gaimbattista Vico and his argument that nations emerged suddenly with the establishment of a body of myths, epic poetry and language. A second, strongly Scandinavian strand emerged, as we have noted from museum work. Before creating the openair museum at Skansen, Hazelius had first established a more traditional museum to house his Scandinavian Ethnographic Collection (Skandinavisk-etnografiska samlingen).

Ethnological perspectives on vernacular buildings persisted longest in Ireland and the highlands and islands of Scotland where it was argued that folk traditions preserved ancient traditions. In Wales, where the study of buildings had been conducted from an archaeological perspective, particularly by Cyril Fox and Lord Raglan (1951), the ethnological approach was rather different, being more chronological in perspective, while emphasising a strongly nationalistic viewpoint. Nevertheless, the Welsh approach to the study of vernacular buildings even as late as the 1980s clung to the view that the authentic traditions survived only in rural Welsh-speaking areas and consequently largely excluded the urban and industrial heritage (Dicks 2000: 81).

The persistent Scandinavian concern with the material culture as the heart of ethnology is evident in the work of those from that region who came to study Britain and Ireland during the 1930s. Swedish ethnographers had turned their attention to an examination of the Atlantic fringe of Europe where the way of life and the building styles were perceived to be both primitive and 2

Mark Gardiner: What is Building History Architects, of course, were also prominent. Ashbee set up the Survey of London to record historic buildings in the capital and another early member was Walter Godfrey, also an Arts and Crafts architect. But while the Survey of London concentrated on the buildings of the city, elsewhere there was a growing interest in the vernacular architecture of the countryside. George Devey in the mid-nineteenth century had pioneered the study of vernacular architecture as a model for new buildings, but the idea was taken up by Arts and Crafts architects who saw this as a chance to revive local crafts (Richardson 1983: 11–15). The architect, Philip Webb turned to vernacular buildings for the inspiration for the design of new buildings (Burman 2005: 69) and the influence is particularly apparent in the work of Frank Baines, who first trained under Ashbee and then in 1911 went on to work for the Office of Works. In a rather nice connection between the principles of conservation and return to the vernacular, Baines office designed a cottage and ticket office for the custodian at the Roman site of Richborough Castle in a local style with a timberframed entrance and walls faced with waney-edge boards. The same pre-occupation with the vernacular influenced by the Arts and Crafts style is seen in the estate designed by Baines’ office for munitions workers at Well Hall in Eltham which sought to recreate the character of a local village with gardens and tile-hung houses (Thurley 2013a: 69, 99–100).

Architecture Ethnology, so important in the emergence of building history in Scandinavia, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, played an insignificant role in the development of the subject in England. In part, as noted above, it was because English ethnologists followed an approach which focussed upon oral survival rather than material culture. However, the full explanation is more complex. England was a country in which ‘the folklore paradigm’, as Jonathan Roper (2012: 252) termed it, failed to flourish, in spite of work by collectors of folksong and dance. The reasons for this have been inadequately explored, but to a large degree it reflects the almost entire disappearance by the end of the nineteenth century, when collectors of folklore were active elsewhere, of a peasant class, which might have been idealized as the custodians of folk memory. By that time, the English had been thoroughly penetrated by commerce, which made it difficult to argue that the past had survived unchanged. The realization that traditional life had long ago disappeared was one of the guiding influences of the Arts and Crafts movement as it developed in England. Unable to revive living traditional crafts, it looked back under the influence of John Ruskin and William Morris to a lost period, an imagined Middle Ages (Evans 1988: 248, 256). The idea that tradition had to be revived from historical precedents rather than by invigorating existing folk practices led naturally enough to an interest in what had survived from the past. Morris and his colleagues established the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in 1877, initially to counter the tendency by architects to over-restore ancient churches. For other organizations influenced by the Ruskinite perspective, the emphasis was on the preservation of buildings, either through campaigns to raise public awareness or by purchasing and restoring them. A group under the Arts and Crafts architect, C. R. Ashbee, took the former approach. The Committee for the Survey of London met first in 1894 spurred on by the destruction of a Jacobean hunting lodge at Bromley-by-Bow. Although, it is now known for its volumes recording historic buildings in the capital, it also served as a campaigning body, arguing in its first year for the preservation of Trinity Hospital in Mile End Road (Hobhouse 1987: 26–30). The work of purchasing and restoring buildings was meanwhile undertaken by the National Trust which acquired in 1896 amongst the first of its properties, the Clergy House, Alfriston, a fourteenth-century building.

For all the interest in vernacular buildings as a source, there remained very little knowledge of the history of their development. C. F. Innocent noted in his 1916 volume on The Development of English Building Construction that ‘he found that there was hardly any information easily available as to the design and construction of the smaller secular buildings’ (Innocent 1916: v). Innocent was studying as an architect and had a professional need to study such buildings, but by the time his book was published the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement on contemporary design was already beginning to fade, and vernacular ideas had been assimilated into a general ‘tudoresque’ style which made only passing reference to historical buildings (Ballantyne and Law 2011). It was not until the period after the Second World War that scholarly interest in the history of vernacular architecture began to revive, and this time the reasons for its study were more diverse. Certainly, some architects continued to play a prominent role in the study of vernacular architecture. R. A. Cordingley and his pupils from Manchester University, of which the most prominent was Ronald Brunskill, played a formative role in the study in the 1950s. Cordingley trained his students by having them sketch minor domestic vernacular buildings, and then began a programme of regional survey conducted by his staff

Inevitably, there was an overlap in membership of these bodies. Octavia Hill, one of the founders of the National Trust and the director of the restoration work at the Clergy House was a member of the Survey of London, as was William Morris and the Laurence Gomme, the pioneering folklorist and antiquarian. 3

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era and postgraduates (Salmon 2002: 11–16). However, it soon became clear that those involved in the study of vernacular buildings extended far beyond that narrow circle. Increasingly, archaeologists were showing an interest not only in medieval buildings, though that certainly was a gradually increasing area of interest in the 1950s, but also in later structures. The study of vernacular structures also began to extend to enthusiasts, reflecting an appetite for a detailed study of old buildings amongst those for whom such subjects were peripheral or unrelated to their careers. The training at Manchester was an exception and did not reflect the trend in architectural teaching within Britain. In the post-war period there was a strong and growing reaction against the value of pre-modernist architecture in the training of students, as noted above (Powers 2013: 73-74).

distinguished the various phases of construction. Peers himself wrote many of these and established standards of display of the ruins (Thurley 2013a: 140–46). Developments in Ireland moved largely in parallel with those in Britain, with the notable difference that the entire work in the Irish Free State (1922–37) fell upon one person, Harold Leask. He had the responsibility for directing the works on the ancient monuments, preparing them for public display and writing guides to them. The situation in Northern Ireland (1921–) was rather similar, and there, somewhat improbably, the work was shouldered by the Deputy Keeper of Records, David Chart (Fry 2005: 160–62). The policy both north and south of the border closely followed that adopted by Peers in Britain: to preserve rather than restore, and to mark any fragments which were re-erected as such (Carey 2003: 27–28; Fry 2005: 163–64). A particular burden of responsibility for ecclesiastical ruins fell on the authorities both in Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State. The 1869 Irish Church Act empowered the Board of Public Works to take over church ruins while providing very modest funds for looking after them, so inevitably such sites were prominent in early conservation work.

Archaeology The third strand in the development of building history was archaeology. The close study of buildings, mostly ruins, had been an important part of antiquarian activity from the outset of that study. By the midnineteenth century that understanding was being applied to standing buildings, notably by Robert Willis who sought to examine the evidence of the fabric of cathedrals to work out the sequence of construction. He illustrated his interpretation of the work on Canterbury cathedral using a block or phase diagram (Buchanan 1994: 107–08; Willis 1845: figs 5, 6). As a result, by the late nineteenth century the phased plan had become a common feature in the scholarly analysis of churches and in the hands of William St John Hope and Harold Brakspear colour diagrams were used equally for upstanding and excavated remains. Monastic sites, which were almost invariably ruined, provided the place at which the study of the standing and disinterred remains could most usefully be combined (Greene 1992: 37–39).

The archaeological study of vernacular buildings was precipitated rather dramatically in 1937 by the building of the Bodleian extension in Broad Street in Oxford and the evidence which was exposed by the demolition of standing structures. The houses revealed during these works were timber-framed buildings of the first half of the seventeenth century. No systematic work had previously been undertaken on typical urban buildings of this period. William Pantin, who was a tutor at Oriel College and had worked previously on ecclesiastical history, set about recording the plans and sections of the houses, both before and as they disappeared. He recognized that the buildings were not of a single period, but had multiple phases of construction and sought to link these to the documentary record. What was most remarkable was not only the methods applied, but the realization of the historical value of the buildings, Pantin argued that ‘These old houses deserved to be studied as systematically and as seriously, as if they were something excavated at Ostia or Knossos or Ur (Pantin 1939: 200).

It was the acquisition by the state of decaying ruins, not only monasteries, but also castles, and the urgent need to conserve them, as well as display them, that precipitated a more systematic approach in their study. Charles Peers, who became Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Britain in 1913, played a key role in the study of building fabric. He had earlier produced phase plans of buildings as the architectural editor of Victoria County Histories of England, and in the inspectorate he was able to apply the approach to a range of state care monuments. As the Office of Works acquired more monuments, particularly in the inter-war years, it had to develop methods of interpreting and displaying them. That involved transforming monuments from romantic ivy-covered ruins to sites laid down to neatly cut grass and the compilation of guidebooks which carefully

It is disappointing that the revelations of Broad Street were not followed up, although Pantin continued to be interested in urban buildings throughout his life and contributed many seminal papers on the subject. The revival of an interest in vernacular architecture as a subject in the 1950s has been noted above, but the distinctively archaeological contribution to the understanding of the subject was the realization that buildings had survived from the past because they had 4

Mark Gardiner: What is Building History been adapted to new uses. It might be thought that this should have been evident from the outset and indeed was implicit in Pantin’s Oxford record, but building historians interested in identifying the earliest phases often ignored the later modifications. The appreciation that buildings have ‘biographies’ or histories of use did not re-emerge into academic thinking for some decades (Rogasch 2014). It was next expressed most clearly in the study of Devon houses where it was recognized that changes or the ‘modernization’ of the internal layout of existing buildings had started even during the course of the late Middle Ages (Alcock and Laithwaite 1973).

Art History Architectural history was to some degree an offspring of art history, a study which itself had rather shallow roots in British soil. Art history barely existed as a subject in universities until the establishment of the Courtauld Institute in 1932 and research in the subject was reinforced by the arrival from Hamburg the following year of the library of the Warburg Institute. Amongst the staff at the Warburg was the architectural historian, Rudolf Wittkower, though his work was largely on continental architecture (Watkin 1980: 145–54). The study of British and Irish buildings was poorly developed, so Sir John Summerson looking back could describe the work of his predecessors between the wars as ‘muddled vapourings which passed for architectural history’ (quoted in Colvin 1999: 292) and Mordaunt Crook writing as late as 1984 could still argue that architectural history was at an early stage of development (Crook 1984: 555). The post-war advance in the subject was marked by an end to the attribution of buildings to architects based on style alone, an approach which had been inherited from art history, and instead, founded it firmly on documentary study. Historical rigour was brought to the study of buildings in Britain by Howard Colvin who revolutionized the subject, initially through his Biographical Dictionary of English Architects, 1660-1840. In so doing, it pulled the study of buildings away from aesthetic appreciation and set them in a firm historic context. This brought the aims of architectural history into the realm of mainstream historical studies, but Colvin did not pursue the next step, using the evidence of buildings to contribute to the wider understanding of the past. His interest was the history of buildings, not buildings as history.

The possibility of constructing detailed histories of buildings remained remote until the problems of dating construction phases could be solved. Typological dating allowed a broad general sequence to be established and work in particular on the evolution of carpentry by Cecil Hewett (1980) offered the chance of greater precision, but his findings remained controversial and were not widely accepted. The emergence of dendrochronology and its widespread application to vernacular buildings solved that problem. Not only was it possible to provide accurate dates for the age of the wood, but because timber was used shortly after felling, it was possible to give dates of construction precise to within a year or so. The development of archaeological study of buildings occurred in a rather unexpected way in the late 1980s in the field of castles studies, a subject which had hitherto been notably conservative in its scholarship. The prevailing view that castles were built solely for warfare was challenged by an interpretation which saw them also as expressions of power and status, and this in turn led to a consideration of how they were set within the landscape and structured to enhance that perception (Liddiard 2005: 39–46). Buildings could no longer be studied as functional spaces which merely served as shelters, but as expressions of personhood. Such ideas had already been employed in the study of some high-status buildings: no one could consider Rushton Triangular Lodge, for example, without examining what it was intended to symbolize and how it reflected the character of Sir Thomas Tresham. House and personality seem to have been particularly closely associated in the buildings of the elite of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. The extension of this approach to earlier periods, and also to buildings of the gentry class, was a significant step (e.g. Campbell 2014). At the same time, archaeologists were also beginning to think about the meaning of space and the ideas which underpinned domestic planning (Austin and Richards 1990: 57–60). It began to become clear that not only were certain rooms habitually used for certain functions, even in quite small houses, but rooms had symbolic associations which were as important, or more so, than any functional considerations (Gardiner 2008).

Colvin’s initial interest in buildings had stemmed from archaeological work, and he appreciated the use of excavation to reveal building plans. He was commissioned in 1951 to direct a history of the English Office of Works, which eventually appeared as the five volumes of The History of the King’s Works. During the course of the research Colvin enrolled the Ancient Monuments Inspectorate to undertake excavations to recover the plans and pattern of development of medieval and later buildings. The King’s Works led to an enormous programme of study, both in the field and in the archives, producing a monumental work which has been fundamental to the understanding of building history (Thurley 2013b). However, while recognizing the value of archaeology to his study, by the late 1950s he no longer wished to be associated with the subject, but instead sought to identify himself only as an historian who examined the records of buildings, stressing the primacy of the written source over the uncertainty of the physical remains alone (Whyte 2013: 12). 5

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era What is building history?

since any structure was of potential interest, what criteria should be applied?

The discussion above has identified the decades around 1900 as a formative period in the early development of the disciplines which were to contribute to building history. To the long-standing aesthetic appreciation of buildings – largely limited to cathedrals and great houses – was added an assessment of the historic value of buildings, though these too tended to be generally the same type of structure – monasteries and castles. In contrast to this patrician view of these buildings which were intended to illustrate the history of the nation, the approach of the National Trust established in 1895 was much broader and was strongly influenced by Ruskin’s vision of the medieval past with its strong communitarian character. Melanie Hall has argued that the Trust’s early buildings, ‘clergy houses, a court house, a guild hall, a market house, a minor country house – reveal its interest in traditional forms of social organisation and governance’ (Hall 2005: 139). Such ideas of the value of historic buildings remained largely unchanged throughout the first half of the century, even though the patterns of buildings collected by the Office of Works on the one hand, and the National Trust on the other altered slightly. The latter in the interwar years began acquiring more great houses, but the assessment of what constituted building value barely shifted. One exception should perhaps be mentioned – the acquisition of the blackhouse at Croft 14 on Callanish in the Hebrides by the National Trust for Scotland. This was purchased to preserve an ethnological example of what was perceived to be an ancient way of life. The subsequent history of the house which fell into ruin reflected, however, a growing uncertainty about the building’s value as doubts emerged about the ethnological approach (Fraser 2000).

The response of the state body in England, English Heritage was to turn first to those buildings in its own estate for which it had a particular duty of care – buildings for supporting the aged and the sick, and then recent military buildings. In taking this action under public pressure English Heritage was propelled into the forefront of academic thinking. It defined the value of hospitals, for example, as providing, ‘strong architectural evidence of changing attitudes to the sick and destitute, and have long been some of our most functional buildings, as well as among our largest. Their design can say much about changing social attitudes, and about science’s impact on architecture too’ (English Heritage 2011a: 2). The criteria for listing made clear that, though architectural merit was to be considered, the value of the buildings lay as much in their use for understanding social history. The buildings were regarded as having a general historical value quite separate from aesthetics and antiquity. They were viewed as material culture to be investigated, placing them in the same category as archaeological artefacts. Hospitals had a value which lay in their potential for future understanding as much as their present worth. This was rather different from the listing criteria applied to military structures, which began by declaring, ‘Britain’s military buildings and structures are eloquent witnesses to the impact of world events on our national story’ (English Heritage 2011b: 2). That statement contained more than an echo of Curzon’s argument in favour of the 1913 Ancient Monuments Bill, that such buildings were a record of ‘the history of the nation’ (Thurley 2013: 76). English military buildings were therefore not to be valued for their evidence of society or for their research potential, but as monuments of history.

Aesthetics and antiquity remained very largely the measures of building value and therefore of academic attention until the 1970s. This was true even amongst those studying vernacular architecture for whom buildings of the later medieval period and sixteenthcentury date tended to be valued more highly than those constructed subsequently. A shift in thinking was finally precipitated by the popular reappraisal of the concept of heritage which increasingly was extended to include not merely the ancient but also the more recent past (Lowenthal 1998: 17–19). The foundation in 1979 of the Twentieth Century Society, at first named the Thirties Society, to campaign for the better protection of modern architecture was a clear marker of changing ideas. The Society was established to fight for the preservation not merely for buildings by modernist architects, an argument already put by Nikolaus Pevsner, but also less architecturally pioneering neoclassical buildings, such as Edwin Cooper’s 1928 office building for Lloyd’s of London. The movement in public attitude threw into relief the problem of building value:

The contrast between these two views is emblematic of the difficult birth of building history. It has struggled to free itself from a perspective which views buildings as monuments representing the past, and to work towards a view which sees structures as artefacts with multiple meanings which can be explored. Implicit in the concept of a building as monument is that idea that it serves as a reminder of an event or message – an idea fixed by its builders. The approach of building as artefact (for example, Piddock 2007: 216) sees it open to investigation and continuing reinterpretation: it exists in a perpetual discourse with the present. As part of this approach, building history has moved away from a study centred upon the act of creation – the design and erection of structures – to an analysis of the on-going history of buildings within society. The moment of its construction, while important, is only one element 6

Mark Gardiner: What is Building History of the study. Buildings existed, if only as conceptions, before their construction and continued to exist in use until they were demolished, after which they persist in memory and record. The task of capturing the breadth of the impact of a building is enormous and it is no wonder that it has become an interdisciplinary study which examines both the material and immaterial aspects.

Campbell, J. 2014. A house is not just a home – means of display in English medieval gentry buildings. In Svart Kristiansen, M. and Giles, K. (eds), Dwellings, Identities and Homes: European Housing Culture from the Viking Age to the Renaissance: 175–84. Højbjerg: Jutland Archaeological Society. Carey, A. (2003). Harold G. Leask: aspects of his work as Inspector of National Monuments. Journal of the Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 133: 24–35. Colvin, H. M. (1999). Essays in English Architectural History. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Crook, J. M. (1984). Architecture and history. Architectural History 27: 555–78. Danaher, K. (1938). Old house types in Oighreacht Uí Chonchubhair. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 68: 226-40. DeGroff, D. A. (2012). Artur Hazelius and the ethnographic display of the Scandinavian peasantry: a study in context and appropriation. European Review of History 19 (2): 229–48. Dicks, B. (2000). Heritage, Place and Community. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. English Heritage (2011a). Designation Listing Selection Guide: Health and Welfare Buildings. London: English Heritage. English Heritage (2011b). Designation Listing Selection Guide: Military Structures. English Heritage, London. Evans, T. H. (1988). Folklore as utopia: English medievalists and the ideology of revivalism. Western Folklore 47: 245–68. Fenton, A. and Mulhern, M. A. (2012). A Swedish Field Trip to the Outer Hebrides, 1934. NMS Edinburgh: Enterprises. Fox, C. and Raglan, F.R.S. (1951–54). Monmouthshire Houses: A Study of Building Techniques and Smaller House-Plans in the Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries. Cardiff: National Museum of Wales. Fraser, S. M. (2000). The materiality of desire: building alternative histories for a Hebridean crofting community. Archaeological Journal 157: 375–98. Fry, M. F. (2005). Preserving ancient and historic monuments in state care in Norther Ireland, c. 1921 to c. 1955. Part two: developing a system of care. Ulster Journal of Archaeology third series 64: 160–71. Gailey, A. (1977). Vernacular dwellings of Clogher diocese. Clogher Record 9: 187–231. Gailey, A., Kelly, V. and Paul, J. (1974). Rural Housing in Ulster in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. Belfast: HMSO. Gardiner, M. F. (2008). Buttery and pantry, and their antecedents: idea and architecture in the English medieval house. In Kowaleski, M. and Goldberg, P. J. P. (eds), Medieval Domesticity: Home, Housing and Household in Medieval England: 37–65. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gardiner, M. F. (2011). Folklore’s Timeless Past, Ireland’s Present Past and the perception of houses in early

The physical structure of the building was only in the most narrow of studies the only aspect of interest. However, for building history the study is focussed upon the building within society. It is this feature which particularly distinguishes building history, as it is currently practised, from earlier studies. The interaction of people with houses, institutions, factories and farm buildings is at the centre of recent work. Having created buildings, people then react to their own construction. The process of fashioning built-space is at least partially an unconscious process in which we may not know what we intended, but we and others respond to it once it is standing in ways not anticipated. When Whyte (2006) asked the question, ‘what do buildings mean?’, he concluded that no single answer will suffice. Buildings have multiple meanings from conception to construction, and we might add, during the entire period of their existence. The problems of disentangling these meanings are so enormous that no single line of study can hope to recover all the complexity. Building history embraces multiple approaches to built structures and their relationship to society. References cited Alcock, N. W. and Laithwaite, M. (1973). Medieval houses in Devon and their modernization. Medieval Archaeology 17: 100–25. Austin, D. and Richards, J. (1990). The ‘proper study’ of medieval archaeology: a case study. In Austin, D. and Alcock, L. (eds), From the Baltic to the Black Sea: Studies in Medieval Archaeology. London: Unwin: 43-78. Baglo, C. (2015). Reconstruction as trope of cultural display. Rethinking the role of ‘living exhibitions’. Nordisk Museologi 2: 49–68. Ballantyne, A. and Law, A. (2011). Tudoresque vernacular and the self-reliant Englishman. In Guillery, P. (ed.), Built from Below: British Architecture and the Vernacular. Abingdon: Routledge: 123–44. Buchanan, A. (1994). Robert Willis and the Rise of Architectural History (unpublished PhD dissertation, University College London). Burman, P. (2005). Defining a body of tradition: Philip Webb. In Miele, C. (ed.), From William Morris: Building Conservation and the Arts and Crafts Cult of Authenticity 1877-1939, Yale University Press, New Haven and London: 67–99. 7

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era historic Ireland. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 15: 707–24. Greene, J. P. (1992). Medieval Monasteries. London: Leicester University Press. Hall, M. (2005). Affirming community life: preservation, national identity and the state, 1900. In Miele, C. (ed.), From William Morris: Building Conservation and the Arts and Crafts Cult of Authenticity 1877-1939: 129– 57. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Hegardt, J. (2014). Time stopped. The open-air museum Skansen of Artur Hazelius. In Bak, J. M., Geary, P. J. and Klaniczay, G. (eds), Manufacturing a Past for the Present: Forgery and Authenticity in Medievalist Texts and Objects in Nineteenth-Century Europe: 287–306. Leiden: Brill. Hewett, C. A. (1980). English Historic Carpentry. Chichester: Phillimore. Hobhouse, H. (1987). Ninety years of the Survey of London, Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society 31: 25–47. Innocent, C. F. (1916). The Development of English Building Construction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leerssen, J. (2012). Oral epic: the nation finds a voice. In Baycroft, T. and Hopkin, D. (eds), Folklore and Nationalism in Europe during the Long Nineteenth Century: 11–26. Leiden: Brill. Liddiard, R. 2005. Castles in Context: Power, Symbolism and Landscape, 1066 to 1500. Macclesfield: Windgather Press. Lowenthal, D. (1998). The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lysaght, P. (1990). Swedish ethnological surveys in the Western Isles of Scotland, 1939, 1948: some data from Ireland. Review of Scottish Culture 6: 27–51. Lysaght, P. (1993). Swedish ethnological surveys in Ireland 1934-5 and their aftermath. In Cheape, H. (ed.), Tools and Traditions: Studies in European Ethnology Presented to Alexander Fenton: 2-31. Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland. Pantin, W. A. (1939). The recently demolished houses in Broad Street, Oxford. Oxoniensia 4: 171–200. Pevsner, N. (1957). An Outline of European Architecture (fifth edition). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Piddock, S. (2007). A Space of their Own: The Archaeology of Nineteenth Century Lunatic Asylums in Britain, South Australia and Tasmania. New York: Springer. Powers, A. (2013). Modern history and the history of modern. In Airs, M. and Whyte, W. (eds), Architectural History after Colvin: 71–81. Donington: Shaun Tyas. Richardson, M. (1983). Architects of the Arts and Crafts Movement. London: Trefoil Books.

Rigold, S. E. (1971). Eynsford Castle and its excavation. Archaeologia Cantiana 86: 109–71. Rogasch, J. (2014). Building biographies. In Smith, C. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology: 1030–33. New York: Springer. Roper, J. (2012). England – the land without folklore? In Baycroft, T. and Hopkin, D. (eds), Folklore and Nationalism in Europe during the Long Nineteenth Century: 227–53. Leiden: Brill. Roussell, A. (1934). Norse Building Customs in the Scottish Isles. Copenhagen: Levin and Munksgaard. Salmon, F. (2002). R. W. Brunskill and the study of vernacular buildings at the University of Manchester School of Architecture. Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society 46: 11–24 Stoklund, B. (1999). How the peasant house became a national symbol: a chapter in the history of museums and nation-building. Ethnologia Europaea 29 (1): 5–18. Thurley, S. (2013a). Men from the Ministry: How Britain Saved its Heritage. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Thurley, S. (2013b). Monumental history: The History of the King’s Works. In Airs, M. and Whyte, W. (eds), Architectural History after Colvin: 94–101. Donington: Shaun Tyas. Walker, B. (1989). Edited notes of Hebridean buildings from Åke Campbell’s field notebooks of July 1948. Vernacular Building 13: 47–61. Watkin, D. (1977). Morality and Architecture: the Development of a Theme in Architectural History and Theory from the Gothic Revival to the Modern Movement. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Watkin, D. (1980). The Rise of Architectural History. London: Architectural Press. Whyte, W. (2006). How do buildings mean? Some issues of interpretation in the history of architecture. History and Theory 45 (2): 153–77. Whyte, W. (2013). The success of Sir Howard Colvin and the curious failure of architectural history. In Airs, M. and Whyte, W. (eds), Architectural History after Colvin: 1–17. Donington: Shaun Tyas. Willis, R. (1845). The Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral. London: Longman.

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The Domestic, Ritual Use of ‘Salt Niches’ in Southern and Eastern England, c.1500 to 1700 AD Jonathan Duck

Centre for Local History at the University of Leicester. Email: [email protected] Abstract: The conceptual parameters considered in this paper concern religious, magical and cultural belief as expressed in the early modern home, from circa 1500 to 1700. The paper considers the attitudes and lives of individuals who populated the area through a period of 200 years, through an examination of the role that expressed belief played, as witnessed through the internal adornment of houses in the villages of the southern fen, north of Cambridge. This paper will show how the home was used as a vehicle for extra-curricular, idiosyncratic beliefs over and above the employment of transient decoration, during a prolonged period of religious and social chaos. Keywords: Early modern homes, architectural history, buildings archaeology, art history and social geography.

This monograph illustrates how the recess in some fireplaces, known colloquially as a ‘salt niche’,1 was employed in some situations, for the storage, exhibition and veneration of significant spiritual objects, rather than simply for the storage of foodstuffs. If one applies a vocal metaphor to this form of expression, niches could be described as ‘projected’. The location of these features, predominantly within halls and parlours, suggests a level of communication in which every individual within the room would have experienced and understood their meaning.

already beginning to be replaced in the mid sixteenth century by the word ‘cupboard’, indicative of a genealogical relationship between the secular and the sacred.3 James Ayres noted the formation of salt-boxes in North Yorkshire, and observed that openings were normally about 6’ x 6’, which would be appropriate for access to a small salt cellar. However, despite his observations on their dimensions, he did not question their use.4 The most comprehensive analysis of recesses within houses comes from the Channel Isles. John McCormack (2015) gives a thorough account of their evolution and argues they were used for washing. He states that ‘In recent centuries, their real usage completely forgotten, they have wrongly been associated with Catholic rituals and have been said to have been taken out of churches at the Reformation….In origin the lavabo might indeed have been copied from church piscinae….And the formality of the Mass might also have been emulated by the ritual of mealtimes in sophisticated medieval households’.5

Considering the quantity of recesses in houses across England and the hundreds of architectural historians concerned with the evolution of vernacular dwellings the historiography is quite limited. Stephen Van Dijk and Joan Walker considered the ecclesiastical origins of church cupboards (called aumbries), and in passing noted that cupboards both open-fronted and secured with doors were a common feature of domestic architecture. They also recorded closed aumbries in churches, suggesting an evolutionary link between the two. ‘The purpose of these aumbries is obvious: the storage of valuables for the ministry, such as….candles… and the holy Eucharist’.2 Another interpretation of the function for aumbries in monasteries was for the storage of books. whilst there is no suggestion of a connection with domestic application, the term was

I have looked at the casual description of the recess as a ‘salt niche’ and suggest that in some instances they performed dual functions of both a practical and a spiritual nature. While their initial employment in churches, monasteries and grand houses evolved in the period before the Reformation, it is argued here that during the sixteenth century, and as a personal badge of affiliation to Catholicism, the niche was introduced more widely into the home. I also propose that domestic brick

While many vernacular architectural historians refer to the ‘salt niche’, Brunskill termed the recess either a ‘spice cupboard’, if it featured a door, or a ‘keeping hole for the candles’ if it did not. R.W. Brunskill, Traditional Buildings of Britain (1981; London, 1997), pp.107, 113, 115. 2 S.J.P. Van Dijk and J.H. Walker, The Myth of the Aumbry. Notes on Medieval Reservation Practice and Eucharistic Devotion (London, 1957), pp.41, 42. The origins of the aumbry as a hole in the wall were considered the result of a decree by Pope Innocent III; John McCormack’s as yet unpublished book on the historic houses of the Channel Isles features a chapter on recesses. J. McCormack, ‘Channel Island Houses’ (unpublished, 2014). 1

E.T. Joy, English Furniture, AD.43-1950 (London, 1962), p.8; D. Knell, English Country Furniture: The National and Regional Vernacular, 1500-1900 (London, 1992), p.39. 4 J. Ayres, The Shell Book of the Home in Britain (London, 1981), p.36. 5 J. McCormack, ‘Channel Island Houses’, no page numbers.This book has been published now. This needs to be updated. 3

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Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era fireplaces came as a timely architectural development, enabling a great many householders to construct their niche in the fashionable new material. Recesses in the fabric of a dwelling vary in size and are situated in different rooms overwhelmingly found on ground floors. The purpose of many niches was not limited to storage of foodstuffs. Amos Rapoport stated that ‘much of the meaning [of the interior space of the home] has to do with personalisation and hence perceived control, with decoration [and] with moveable elements, rather than with architectural elements’.6 In these instances it is considered the householder oversaw the construction of recesses which were, by virtue of their role, at times both personal decoration and architectural elements. A niche was employed to accommodate the symbolic accoutrements which helped preserve the Catholic tradition, to bolster individual faith and to express both in the relative privacy of the home, at a time of religious and individual persecution.

within the confines of the church, it is not untoward to propose a similar development of sub-superstitions around the domestic fireplace. The hearth was certainly a numinous space where the family came together to replenish, to commune and to engage in business. The rural house was usually the centre of a working farm and the kitchen, butteries and brew-houses the centres of production.11 The semiprivate space of the hall, in which a notable number of recesses are found, would have been experienced by a range of people. By the late fifteenth century the open hall had in many instances taken on a ceremonial function.12 Storage and Use The employment of a recess in the fireplace within a hall suggests that in some instances the space was utilised for the overt and the everyday, including the storage of salt.

Fireside Activity

The observation made by Michael Wilson that ‘what we today call a cupboard was, quite simply, an aumbry – a term still used to this day [1977] for church cupboards in which sacred vessels are kept’ is tantalizing, and offers another early glimpse of a link between the secular and the spiritual within the domestic arena.13 In Wymondham in Norfolk, Phillip Cullyer’s inventory from January 1625 featured ‘certain implements in a little ambrie’ located within the little parlour.14 This places the use of the term and the domestic application of these cupboards, in the early seventeenth century, which helps substantiate my argumentthat employment of the recess was at least in part adopted for the purposes of spiritual expression.

The range of activity carried out around the fireside was relatively broad and an attempt has been made to explore its use and significance as a spiritual space, by illustrating the conflation of aspects of life which are argued to be interrelated. They include the coincidental chronology of masonry fireplace construction, the Reformation,7 the resulting removal and sale of Catholic religious accoutrements and the subsequent ownership of a range of significant copper alloy or ‘latten’ objects,8 possession of which appears to have diminished coterminous with the abatement of Reformation turmoil in the seventeenth century. Secular life played out in the same theatre as the spiritual. Great sacredness was attached to the private hearth for centuries, and the concept of it as the centre of the house lends itself to metaphor, as evidenced in the Latin phrase ‘pro aris et focis’ – for the altars and hearths. 9. While considering the metaphor, it is also relevant to quote from Keith Thomas who stated that ‘a plethora of sub-superstitions….accumulated around the sacrament of the altar’.10 And if this was the case

Salt - Symbolism and Ceremony In medieval England salt was considered ‘the salvation of body and soul’, and ‘wherever you are sprinkled let every delusion and wickedness and every craftiness of devilish cunning, scatter and depart when called upon’.15 Its domestic ceremonial use is evident from at least the thirteenth century, and by the sixteenth century an understanding of the proper ordering of society had become a fundamental characteristic of high

A. Rapoport, The Meaning of the Built Environment (1982; Tucson, 1990), p.22; M. Johnson, An Archaeology of Capitalism (Oxford, 1996), p.171. 7 M. Johnson, English Houses, 1300-1800: Vernacular Architecture, Social Life (Harlow, 2010), p.107. ‘The rebuilding of houses and the reformation of churches went hand in hand’. 8 There is debate however over the constituent parts of latten. Alexander O. Curle described latten as one of a variety of names given to brass which had been formed by copper and calamine, and used largely for sepulchral brasses. A.O. Curle, ‘Domestic candlesticks from the fourteenth to the end of the eighteenth century’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 5 ser., 12 (1926), pp.183-214. 9 J. Hastings (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, VI (Edinburgh, 1913), pp.563, 560. 10 K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (1971; London, 1991), p.38. 6

M. Johnson, English Houses, 1300-1800, p.54. R.H. Leech, ‘The symbolic hall: historical context, and merchant culture in the early modern city’, Vernacular Architecture, 31 (2000), pp. 1-10. 13 M.I. Wilson, The English Country House and its Furnishings (London, 1977), p.22. 14 J.H. Wilson, (ed.), Wymondham Inventories, 1590-1641 (Norwich, 1983), p.10. 15 W.G. Henderson (ed.), Manuale et Processionale ad Usum Insignis Ecclesiae Eboracensis (Durham, 1875), p.1, in E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400-c.1580 (1992; London, 2005), p.281. 11 12

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Jonathan Duck: The Domestic, Ritual Use of ‘Salt Niches’ culture.16 The time of the salt’s arrival at the table and its display reinforced its sacredness, though the concept probably also developed as salt became symbolic of wealth, authority and power.17 This connotation with status is notable and it has long been understood that the high end of many dwellings was distinguished by a greater degree of ornament.18 The messages contained within the regulations of ceremony devolved both in their prescription and their reference to the nobility, so that by our period both gentlemen and yeomen were conversant with the domestic arrangements for salt.

In the inventory of the goods of St. Mary’s guild in Boston in Lincolnshire, dated 1534, ‘xj saltes of lay metall, brokyn and whole’ were listed. However, on the same page were listed a ‘salte of latten’, illustrating a clear distinction from lay metal and possibly, by virtue of its material, if not its provenance, a spiritual one.23 The specific location for the storage of salt cellars within a room is, inevitably, missing. Given the range of furniture in halls during the period, and the symbolic significance of cellars, one may suggest that they were stored in an open-fronted cupboard, left permanently on the table, or housed within a recess.24 However, there were alternative methods for its storage. Francis Steer observed that ‘Salt boxes, usually kept near the fireplace or else in a specially constructed tunnel at the side of the chimney, [which might actually describe a recess] are not listed so often as one would expect in view of the importance of salt’.25

In considering the liturgical ceremonies from which domestic rituals may have derived, Eamon Duffy explained that on Sundays salt and water were blessed and then mixed. The altar and the congregation were sprinkled with this holy water which was subsequently taken to the homes of parishioners where it was sprinkled on the hearth to fend off evil. He stated that ‘Such practices provided the laity with sources of unstoppable power which they used against fear of every kind’. 19 However, whilst the sentiment is clear, such a broad assertion remains to be questioned.

Book Storage Another observation relating to the assumption that salt was stored in these recesses concerns the occasional employment of wooden doors, which in their closing would have obscured the cellar from view.26 This is arguably counter-intuitive in an age when expression of status and wealth was important and the ceremonial significance of the condiment widespread. Some recesses would have been employed for the storage of books including bibles.27 Nevertheless, in a similar way to his assertion on salt boxes, Steer assured us that ‘owners of bibles no doubt kept them in oak boxes known as bible boxes, often carved and with sloping lids, but they are not mentioned in inventories’.28 The obvious response is to question his assumption in light of their apparent invisibility in inventories. It remains equally plausible, perhaps more so given the

The Domestic Inventory Wills, and by extension inventories, were considered the domain of wealthier members of the community, though their use had generally increased after the sixteenth century.20 Transcribed inventories from St. Stephen’s parish in St. Albans in Hertfordshire indicate that goods ranged from as little as £3.14s to in excess of £290.21 Inventories from individuals from most financial backgrounds regularly included salt cellars. These were occasionally described as being pewter or silver and in various wills their importance was illustrated by the fact that the cellar was not only considered worthy of consideration in the first place, but that the owner invariably chose to gift such an item to immediate family members.22

‘sylver salte of xiii unncys gyldyd [to his daughter] at the day of her maryage’. p.47. 23 E. Peacock, English Church Furniture, Ornaments and Decorations at the Period of the Reformation, as Exhibited in a List of Goods Destroyed in Certain Lincolnshire Churches, AD.1566 (1866; London, 2011), p.210. 24 Parker, All My Worldly Goods, II, pp.29-249. Of 77 inventories, dating from 1545 to 1644, in which the layout of the house was described room by room, and included the hall – or, was sufficiently clearly explained to ascertain what the hall alone contained, there were:102 tables, benches, trestles or boards; 81 cupboards; 58 formes; 189 stools; 76 chairs; nine beds; nine chests; four shelves. (I have excluded soft furnishings for the sake of clarity.) On average therefore, a hall might contain 1.3 tables, one cupboard, 2.45 stools and one chair. Only one in nine halls contained a bed and a chest, two in every three halls had a forme, while only one in 19 contained shelves. 25 F.W. Steer (ed.), Farm and Cottage Inventories of Mid-Essex, 1635-1749 (Colchester, 1950), p.19. This variation of storage facility and the consequent status of the salt may reflect the differing sorts of individuals and the generally later date of the inventories and thus, the reduced significance of the commodity. 26 Hall clarified that she called these recesses spice cupboards. Email correspondence, June 27, 2012. 27 Hall observed that a family in Devon employed one of their two wall cupboards in the entrance hall for the storage of the ‘family bible’. Email correspondence, June 27, 2012. 28 Steer (ed.), Farm and Cottage Inventories of Mid-Essex, p.19.

X Girouard, Life in the English Country House, p.46; N. Cooper, ‘Display, status and the vernacular tradition’, Vernacular Architecture, 33 (2002), pp.28-33. 17 X Girouard, Life in the English Country House, p.319. Bishop Grosseteste wrote the household regulations for the Countess of Lincoln, ‘Statuta Familiae’ in the late thirteenth century. Of the list that Girouard included, the latest dated from 1821: ‘Some Rules and Orders of the Government of the House of an Earle’. 18  X Cooper, ‘Display, status and the vernacular tradition’, pp.28-33. 19 X Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, pp.124, 281, 282. 20 R.C. Richardson, ‘Wills and will makers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – some Lancashire evidence’, Local Population Studies, 9 (1972), pp.33-42. M. Takahashi, ‘Village inheritance in early modern England: kinship structure, inheritance customs and generation continuity’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Ehemi, 1998). 21 M. Parker, All My Worldly Goods, II (St. Albans, 2004), pp.132, 178. 22 Ibid., p.122. The inventory of John Cowley, April 29, 1595. ‘fower saltes’ are noted in the lower parlour. The inventory of Robert Antrobus from April 12, 1597, mentions that the hall contained ‘fyve saultes’. p.124. In his will, January 5, 1598/99, William Lane gave away a salt cellar each to his second and third eldest daughters (of six) and to his wife. Alexander Zinzano’s will, September 21, 1557 offered a 16 

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Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era notable volume of extant recesses, that significant items such as bibles might actually have been stored there instead, though with the burgeoning industry in devotional books, some would no doubt have been stored elsewhere.29

and Plato, surely not unique in their siting and, as fashionable pieces with an arguably religious overtone, possibly emulated by the middling sorts.34 Catherine Richardson observed that the domestic life of the middling sort was one of richness, where individuals expressed their status through a range of furniture.35 George Edelen noted that farmers garnished their ‘cupboards with plate….and their tables with carpets and fine napery’.36 So we see a domestic room decorated not only with the occasional hanging, a table, a cupboard and a salt cellar, but some bristling with textiles and vibrant with pewter, silver and latten, some of which was probably ex-Catholic Church paraphernalia,37 and it would have generated an almost tangible spirituality within a room alive with liturgical practices.

The prominence and openness of many recesses are as obvious as they are exposed, being designed primarily for display. However, in reflecting the paradigm which runs through this monograph that behind the practicality of the everyday lay the spiritual or, as Glassie put it, that ‘material expression is but a mask of mind’, access was necessary not only for reasons pertaining to use, or for aesthetic appreciation, but for the spiritual nourishment of the householder. 30 The Illuminated Display of Goods Lena Orlin stated that ‘Each beneficiary of this redistribution of once inalienable resources discovered his sense of individual identity enlarged in his possessions’.31 Decoration and finishes were developing. In the case of Thomas Thomas, whose will was proved in 1588, he owned latten candlesticks, a ‘deaths head in gold’ and a ‘standing cup’ of double gilt which was valued at £7.10s. Both items were stored in his chamber.32 In amplifying this spirit of piety the appropriately named Peter Bright, who died in 1545, had displayed five scochyns of latten in his hall, whilst in one of his chambers he exhibited to a smaller audience ‘two tables of images’, attesting to and fortifying his personal spiritual identity.33 The significance of this evidence is that these properties employed remarkably overt items to convey personal devotion, albeit cautiously within private spaces. So, whilst on an architectural spectrum their properties lay nearer that of the yeoman’s dwelling, on the spectrum of spiritual expression they lay substantially closer to Girouard’s medieval country houses which employed Catholic oratories. And whilst documentary evidence of the precise locations of any individual objects is lacking, it is nevertheless feasible that they belonged in niches. Certainly, a pair of opposing niches in Lord Lumley’s castle contained relief carvings of Aristotle

Alternative Shapes

M. H. Patterson, Domesticating the Reformation – Protestant Best Sellers, Private Devotion and the Revolution of English Piety (Madison, 2007), p.53. Robert Starr of Sawston, will proved in April 1662, kept a bible in his chamber over the hall. Cambridgeshire CRO, Ely Bonds and Inventories. Spool no. 2301111; 437. 30 Of the 22 properties with at least one recess, the average number (excluding those in Kirtling which, extraordinarily, number eight) is 1.9 per dwelling. In summary, 16 dwellings feature three or less, two contain four recesses, one has five and one has seven; H. Glassie, ‘Eighteenth-century cultural process in Delaware Valley folk building’, in Upton and Vlach (eds), Common Places, pp.394-425. 31 L.C. Orlin, Private Matters and Public Culture in Post-Reformation England (London, 1994), p.22. 32 Gray and Palmer (eds), Abstracts from the Wills, pp.66, 67. 33 A ‘scochyn’ (escutcheon) was a small shield-shaped emblem bearing a coat of arms. Gray and Palmer (eds), Abstracts from the Wills, p.7.

34

Inventories from the period mention several items diminutive enough to be have been placed in a small recess, and they include silver spoons and cups, salt cellars, beads, money purses, ready money including ‘angilles’, gold rings and occasionally items such as a cup with a silver cover, valued at 17s.1d.38 However, because inventories for small objects seldom note their specific location, there is scope for alternative theories. Decoration in recesses A pair of niches found in Cottenham are consciously finished and reflect the decorative form and qualities of church windows. The symmetry and symbolism of their arrangement might fairly be compared to the symmetricality about the altar, and the employment of candlesticks to illuminate the space which, given their associated reverence, reinforces an overtly religious message. Their proportions appear consistent with the space required to accommodate early modern candlesticks, which were generally less than 30cm tall, and they featured a broad base for stability.39

M. Aston, ‘Gods, saints and reformers: portraiture and Protestant England’, in L. Gent (ed.), Albion’s Classicism. The Visual Arts in Britain, 1550-1660 (London, 1995), pp.181-220. 35 C. Richardson, Shakespeare and Material Culture (Oxford, 2011), p.21. 36 Edelen, The Description of England, p.200. 37 See E. Duffy, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (London, 2001); Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars; Duffy, Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition; Aston, ‘Gods, saints and reformers’, pp.181220. 38 Parker, All My Worldly Goods, II, pp.6, 15, 30, 40, 124, 163, 226, 242. The ‘angille’ was a colloquial term for a gold coin. ‘Few….men cared for gold because it was not so ready payment and they were enforced to give a penny for the exchange of an angel’. Edelen, The Description of England, p.202. Margaret Pilgrim’s will, proved February 25, 1547, included a ‘cup with silver cover’, valued at 17sh.1d. Gray and Palmer (eds), Abstracts from the Wills, p.31. 39 Curle, ‘Domestic candlesticks’, pp.183-214.

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Jonathan Duck: The Domestic, Ritual Use of ‘Salt Niches’ At Long Melford in Suffolk, a late fifteenth or early sixteenth-century timber framed dwelling accommodates two brick recesses above the hall fireplace, with finely carved one-piece, moulded heads. The property may have been in the ownership of devout Catholics during the sixteenth century when the village, and much of the county, continued to express strong Catholic sympathies and when Melford Hall was owned by the abbots of Bury St Edmunds.40 In magnifying the ritual significance of these niches, the chamber above the hall features a fine vaulted timber ceiling, extremely rare in domestic construction but reminiscent of those to be found in churches across East Anglia. This emphasis on a religious architectural heritage reinforces the assumption that in some instances these features were employed for ritual purposes, in reflection of church practice. The aspiration to introduce the symmetry, formality and convention of church into the home is clearly illustrated here and substantiates the hypothesis that the niche was employed for spiritual purposes.41

for the purpose of securing good fortune. The fact that these recesses are clearly in view suggests the act of concealment was acknowledged by those who would have visited the hall. Indeed, stowing an item may have been undertaken in the presence of others, whose understanding and experience heightened the significance of the practice. In Leicestershire, the late thirteenth-century Donington le Heath Manor features a recess and channel of a similar design. While it might be that this particular structure establishes the form of spiritual niche in at least the medieval period when the Manor was erected, the property was heavily modified in 1618, when the store rooms were converted into a kitchen and parlour – and it may therefore represent an alteration from the early modern period approximately commensurate with the construction of the fireplaces in the three former examples.44 Perhaps more compelling still as evidence of symbolic storage, is again to be found in Kirtling. The two final examples of niches in this cottage comprise a pair of approximately cuboidal recesses with lancet tops and side channels, situated at a height in excess of 2.3m above floor level, within the darkness of the chimney flue. Their location points to a role both secretive and ritualistic. Facing one another at this height it is tentatively suggested their function was to contain a pair of objects employed as ‘spirit catchers’, to prevent witches or their familiars from accessing the house via the chimney, in a way that Ralph Merrifield considered a boot was used by John Schorn, a priest who captured the devil, in the fourteenth century.45 The form of these recesses clearly indicates fabrication at the point when the chimney was built.46 Their apotropaic nature remains the most robust of the various possible uses, even in light of the argument that they served for the concealment of valuables, perhaps themselves of ritual significance. If concealment of expensive items had indeed been the original intention, their symmetricality and the secret channels facing the viewer, rather than against the opposing jambs, would appear a little odd. It is now timely to consider the architectural development of the chimney at the vernacular level and the theoretical ramifications on the ability of the chimney to amplify belief.

Spiritual Repositories In the hall in several properties, and set within the back wall of the brick fireplace, is a recess with a channel running behind the face of the brick, leading off to one side. Two examples were once plastered, though the channel was not finished in the same way, and none appear to have employed a door or a frame. They are all located in relatively high-status properties and appear to date from the mid to late sixteenth century. Each recess is located in the chimney stack within the hall, so any suggestion that the void served to conceal items of financial significance, truly intended to be hidden from view, is questionable. Hall suggested that of the cupboards she analyzed in Gloucestershire those situated on the first floor were probably for the storage of valuables.42 I propose that the containment of small offerings was perhaps of lightweight monetary value but of weighty spiritual significance. In much the same way that Ralph Josselin buried a coin in the ground when he had finished planting his orchard in Essex in the mid seventeenth century,43 so the residents of these properties would have placed something such as a coin or a celestial candle stump into the recess, They are believed to date to the 1530s by the architectural historian Leigh Alston. Correspondence between him and the owners, March, 2006. 41 Whilst many churches are asymmetrical, those in Bottisham, Stow Cum Quy and Swaffham Bulbeck are symmetrical. S.D.T. Spittle (ed), An Inventory by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments in the County of Cambridge 2 North-East Cambridgeshire (London, 1972), pp. 3, 92, 98. 42 In correspondence with Hall, June 2012. 43 A. MacFarlane (ed.), The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616-1683 (1976; Oxford, 1991), p.441. 40

http://www.leics.gov.uk/index/leisure_tourism/museums/ donington/doningtonmuseum_about.htm 45 R. Merrifield, The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic (London, 1987), pp.134-135; See the chapter on ‘Introspection – Concealment’ in which the mediaeval priest John Schorn is discussed in regard to his containment of the devil in a boot. 46 English Heritage describe this property as sixteenth century and, by virtue of the fact that there is no mention of an inserted stack they consider the chimney and the frame to be of the same phase. List Entry no. 1126293. 44 

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Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era Masonry Chimneys

form of house was able to specify the position of doors, windows and other fittings,53 thus leaving open to the vagaries of personal style and belief the opportunity to introduce a recess into a new fireplace. By the late sixteenth century brick was manufactured and used in East Anglia where it was employed in significant early medieval structures such as Buckden Palace in Huntingdonshire. Its use in domestic buildings carried with it an obvious status partly, it is suggested, because in the eyes of the reverential its use was so closely allied to important new religious structures.54 This desire to reflect the meaning of religious buildings is significant, as was the desire to create a more ceremonial focus around the fire, in reflection of the symbolism of the altar.

From the later sixteenth century, when brick finally became economical enough for the wealthier residents of a village to employ, many smoky and hazardous timber framed smoke bays were replaced. There is, however, disagreement over the reason for its introduction, and the rate of domestic architectural evolution. Ian Mortimer considered its use spread simply through its reduced costs and its mass manufacture.47 However, Johnson considered that the falling price of brick was as much a consequence as a cause of rising demand, and he thought it doubtful whether its price would have reflected the traditional pattern of supply and demand. As such, his assumption was that the availability of brick at the middling level probably depended on the proximity of a builder who employed a brick maker, rather than simply on market forces.48

It is relevant to note as a point in parallel to the adoption of brick at various levels of society, Harrison’s observation that ‘in times past men were content to dwell in houses built of sallow, willow, plum tree, hardbeam and elm, so that the use of oak was almost wholly for churches, noblemen’s lodgings and navigation’.55 Harrison’s implication was that oak was slowly being adopted for domestic properties at most levels of society. It is tempting to consider an individual’s desire to create a niche was as a result of a wish to emulate a similar detail within church.

In regard to their adoption, Ruth Goodman suggested a slow pace of change from the medieval open hall with its open hearth. This was at least partly due to the inefficiency of burning fuel beneath a flue, which required three times the volume of timber as the medieval hearth which drew significantly less oxygen into the flame.49 In 1577 Harrison questioned the old men of his village to discover what had most changed since their day. They mentioned three things, the first of which was ‘the multitude of chimnies latelie erected’.50 This observation would have recalled the first half of the sixteenth century, a time when some considered the change from an open hall was being resisted by builders and homeowners. Whilst allied with Goodman’s belief in the slow rate of adoption, Johnson considered the reason for the apparent reticence was that the hall was seen ‘in the context of the social life that went on within it and the social meanings that it carried’.51 In opposing these theories, Hall suggested an acceleration of enclosure, prompted by a change in climate, with colder winters more frequent from the mid sixteenth century, necessity ever the mother of invention.52

Hoskins’ post-war theory concerning the ‘great rebuilding’ of Britain during the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has been heavily qualified.56 Nevertheless, vast numbers of dwellings witnessed the construction of a brick chimney in this period, evidenced in the numbers that remain across the country.57 Johnson observed that during the period between the mid sixteenth and mid seventeenth century the increasingly wealthy middling sorts chose to spend their money not on their church, but on their home. This was due in part to the abolition of the doctrine of purgatory which had previously offered the sinner an express route to Heaven through the purchase of pardons, and in part to the recurrent statesanctioned removal of church accoutrements which the populace felt was subject to seemingly irrational and inexplicable change.58

What is more certain, however, is that the choice of house plan gradually became the domain of the customer, rather than the builder. By the end of the seventeenth century the owner of the new, closed

Johnson, An Archaeology of Capitalism, p.188. A. Clifton-Taylor, The Pattern of English Building (1962; London, 1987), pp.210-219. ‘Although the fifteenth century saw a substantial increase in the employment of brick in England it was, except in Hull, almost wholly confined to buildings of importance such as churches, schools and colleges and a few large houses’. p.213. 55 L. Cave, The Smaller English House (London, 1981), p.55. 56 For instance by authors including R. Machin, ‘The Great Rebuilding: a reassessment’, Past and Present, 77 (1977), pp.33-56; and Johnson, Housing Culture, p.89. 57 X. Johnson, English Houses, 1300-1800, pp.109-112. This is evidenced by the date range and description of domestic properties in the English Heritage list descriptions from Devon to Durham. See http:// www.english-heritage.org.uk 58 X. Johnson, English Houses 1300-1800, pp.109, 110. 53

I. Mortimer, Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England (BBC2, June 14, 2013). 48 Johnson, Housing Culture, pp.53, 54. 49 R. Goodman, Tudor Monastery Farm (BBC2, November 14, 2013); Beyond our spatial and temporal constraints, ‘the social benefits of open hearths far outweighed the dis-benefits of a sooty atmosphere’ in the nineteenth-century Hebrides. C. Mackie ‘Sorely against the will of the people: tenant resistance to housing reform in nineteenthcentury Lewis’, in ‘Buildings in society international’ conference (Belfast, June 19-21, 2014). 50 Edelen, The Description of England, pp.200-201. 51 Johnson, Housing Culture, p.54. 52 L. Hall, ‘Fixtures and fittings’, in E. Roberts, J. Crook, L. Hall and D. Miles, Hampshire Houses, 1250-1700 (Winchester, 2003), p.97. 47

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Jonathan Duck: The Domestic, Ritual Use of ‘Salt Niches’ The period of their initial construction was also broadly coincident with the dawning requirement of individuals to seek spiritual and familial privacy, and it is therefore appropriate to reflect on the relevant aspects of the Reformation which influenced this. The concomitant opportunity brought about by the fundamental change in religious life which compelled individuals to protect, exhibit and venerate a range of religious accoutrements, in a domestic expression of Catholic orthodoxy, appears to have occurred with Heaven sent timing.

by Malcolm Gaskill as ‘fragments of Heaven on Earth’,64 were confiscated and then, in the course of changes in the law, sold off, and the money used to purchase the newly adopted Book of Common Prayer. Such sales were frequent and comprehensive.65 T h e parishioners bought the spoils of these sales, as well as middle men intent on turning a profit.66 Whilst Catholic Church rituals had continued to enjoy official approval in the early sixteenth century, when Henry VIII had been made Defender of the Faith by the Pope,67 the same authorities who had orchestrated a sea change in the lives of so many a few years later had to accept the fact that the vestiges of ritual and their accoutrements would go underground, only to surface in the homes of continuingly devout Catholics. It is interesting to note that observations made in regard to the iconoclasm of the following century resonated with the activities of the Reformation. Charles Ford stated that ‘Some people would have taken….objects and secreted them….[or] retrieved [them] as heirlooms, or objects of art, refetishized…. within another ordering of knowledge, as commodities in a newly emergent sacred order of art’.68 A fine example of this re-fetishization relates to Peter Bright, the Cambridge resident we encountered previously who, in 1545 possessed not only five scochyns, ‘two tables with images’ and 12 candlesticks, but he also kept a court cupboard with ‘certain images’, a cloth, two tapestries and a superaltar in his chamber over the parlour.69 This was a man insistent upon keeping the old religion alive irrespective of, or perhaps as a direct result of, the cultural tide flowing against him.

Sale of the Century Coeval with the gradual development of the brick industry was the rapid and seemingly continuous diminution of the fabric of Catholic religious society.59 Spiritual chaos pervaded many aspects of life and in the loss of one facet, for one group, so another facet, and another group, benefitted. Officially sanctioned assaults upon religious houses began under Henry VIII in the 1530s. In picking up the wrecking ball Edward VI ordered the confiscation of plate, vestments and other treasures from parish churches, though such directives swiftly reversed, albeit briefly, under Mary who reconciled England with the Roman Church.60 At this point the treasures were duly returned to their churches.61 However, under Elizabeth, the situation finally reversed. The despoliation of religious buildings allowed for the employment of cheap and sometimes decorated stone in the construction and repair of dwellings, perhaps otherwise insignificant in their demeanour. This may have been considered an extended form of desacralizing, insisted upon by the authorities as part of the requirement to deface and to put to ungodly use the sacred things of the Church.62 There is also evidence of the desacralisation of objects through their utilitarian re-use, such as in the conversion of a font to a pig trough.63 The accoutrements associated with the liturgy, including the plate and candles, described

Domestic Veneration Between the sales of the sixteenth century and the iconoclasm of the seventeenth century, English Catholicism had become a principally rural experience.70 Recent analyses of household inventories, however, support a theory of cultural unity throughout the reign of Edward VI. Pictures of the Passion, the Virgin and the saints remained perfectly acceptable in private houses throughout the period. Whilst there was an increasing restriction on religious images from

As explored in C. Haigh, ‘From monopoly to minority: Catholicism in early modern England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 31 (1981), pp.129-141; R. Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People (Cambridge, 1989); A. McLaren, ‘Gender, religion and early modern nationalism: Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots and the genesis of English anti-Catholicism’, The American Historical Review, 107:3 (2002), pp.339-367; The reduction in Catholics is arguable because historians such as Jeffery Hankins and Martin Ingram considered their number to have risen, from 40,000 during Elizabeth’s reign, to 60,000 at the start of the Civil War. J.R. Hankins, ‘Papists, power and puritans: Catholic officeholding and the rise of the ‘’Puritan faction’’ in early seventeenth century Essex’, The Catholic Historical Review, 95:4 (October, 2009), pp.689-717. 60 K. Wrightson, Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain, 1470-1750 (London, 2000), p.142. 61 X. Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People, p.2. 62 X. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, p.586. 63 J. Stevens, Old Jersey Houses and Those Who Lived in Them, I. 1500-1700 (1965; Chichester, 1980), p.100. 59

A phrase used by Malcolm Gaskill in regard to the accoutrements of the seventeenth century, but equally well suited to the sixteenth century. M. Gaskill, Witchfinders - A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy (London, 2005), p.24. 65 X. Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People, p.78; Duffy, Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition, p.122. 66 X. Duffy, Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition, pp.122, 123. 67 X. Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People, p.1. 68 C. Ford, ‘Iconoclasm, the commodity and the art of painting’, in S. Boldrick and R. Clay (eds), Iconoclasm. Contested Objects, Contested Terms (Aldershot, 2007), pp.75-91. 69 X. Gray and X. Palmer (eds), Abstracts from the Wills, p.8; A superaltar is a ‘portable slab of stone consecrated for use on an unconsecrated altar’. J. Pearsall and W. Trumball (eds), The Oxford English Reference Dictionary (Oxford, 1995), p.1447. 70 P. Clark and P. Slack, English Towns in Transition (Oxford, 1976), p.150. 64

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Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era the middle of Elizabeth’s reign,71 she nevertheless vetoed efforts by her bishops and parliaments in 1571, 1576 and 1581 to look too closely into the practices of individuals, and in the Anti-Recusancy Act of 1593 this concern was reiterated by a similar clause, inserted to ensure individual consciences were not molested.72 Later, under James I there was an anti-Calvinist ‘contrary cultural tide’, and instead of a clean break with Catholicism there was a process of continuingly replacing less acceptable images with more acceptable, though with increasingly restrictive boundaries.73

persuasive list was added the perhaps more pressing individual concern of social isolation, particularly in light of the failure of the Northern Rebellion of 1569, which resulted in the Papal Bull of 1570 that sanctioned the assassination of Queen Elizabeth.77 The subsequent repudiation of Catholics, the threat of excommunication and the possibility of physical punishment, helped to persuade many of the benefits of a change of affiliation.78 Despite the hiatus caused by Mary in 1553, popular Catholicism reduced quite rapidly between the 1530s and 1570s.79 Following the Injunctions of 1536 and 1538, which saw the despoliation of relics in cathedrals, churches and chapels, the destruction of images culminated in total elimination, under Edward VI. The redundant apparatus of image veneration was either sold, or relegated to long term storage, while some images probably survived.80

The small, sometimes expensive and significant accoutrements obtained by the middling sorts have an obviously more extravagant parallel in the objects purchased, and the rooms employed for their display, in the homes of the better sorts. In describing particular functions in country houses, Mark Girouard stated that the closet tended to be richly decorated and often contained its owners’ most prized medals and curiosities. ‘They were like little shrines at the end of a series of initiatory vestibules’.74 I argue that the clear parallel in less substantial homes was the small semi-private hall or parlour, containing the fireplace and niche in which religious relics and sacramentals were housed. Sacramentals themselves were a group of blessed objects whose effectiveness was not assured, like that of the sacraments, but depended upon the character of the user, and on the blessing of a priest to give them spiritual power.75

After Mary’s five years as sovereign, during which time some of the accoutrements were returned, Elizabeth recommenced the dismantling, and issued a fresh set of Injunctions for the clampdown on superstition in order to promote what she considered was the true religion.81 Again, there were some positive outcomes, including a benefit to the market economy. The deposition of a monarch was occasionally followed by the sale of church goods,82 though this was but one aspect of a lucrative business which included the sale of church lands, the auction of property and the removal of goods to the royal treasury.83 It can be seen therefore that out of this turbulence came a significant economic and practical benefit for some, attracting sufficient buyers to assist the nascent Protestant Church in its development - and possibly helping to limit the spiritual impact of so great a level of destruction in the minds of those souls who purchased accoutrements and remained devoted to the traditions of the old religion.

The Decline in Catholicism By the second half of the sixteenth century popular Catholicism was in decline, partly due to the desire of a percentage of the population to find a more rigorous religious authority, and partly due to the more pragmatic aspects of life, including a commitment to authority.76 Human salvation was of paramount importance, and as far as Protestants were concerned it lay in the Bible, rather than in the institution of the Church. In support of this argument, but motivated by practical concerns, obligation to the monarch was fundamental. An important component of many individuals’ psyche was a hatred of foreigners. The marriage of Queen Mary to the Spanish King Philip ensured that emotions would be directed more forcefully against him than against another Englishman’s form of worship. To this

The psychological result of purchasing such significant items must have been remarkable, as must their impact upon domestic space. According to Johnson, the transition from status to class was evidenced in the purchase and employment of moveable items rather than in the architecture of the property. Therefore, the structure of a dwelling began to lose some of its meaning as the new objects to be found within it

Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, p.134. A. Walsham, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 1993), p.12. 73 P. Collinson, ‘From iconoclasm to iconophobia: the cultural impact of the second English reformation, in P. Marshall (ed.), The Impact of the English Reformation, 1500-1640 (London, 1997), pp.278-307; Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, p.135. 74 X. Girouard, Life in the English Country House, p.128. 75 R. Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London, 1987), p.5. 76 X. Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People, p.172.

W. MacCaffrey, The Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime (London, 1969), pp.221-246. 78 X. Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People, p.184. 79 Ibid., p.151. 80 Ibid., pp.76, 78. 81 X. Duffy, The Voices of Morebath, p.170. 82 X. Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People, p.80 83 M. Hunter, ‘Iconoclasm and consumption; or, household management according to Thomas Cromwell’, in S. Boldrick and R. Clay (eds), Iconoclasm: Contested Objects, Contested Terms (Aldershot, 2007), pp.51-74.

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Jonathan Duck: The Domestic, Ritual Use of ‘Salt Niches’ gained in significance.84 This chronological coincidence reinforces my hypothesis that ritual was a catalyst for change and the private confines of the home a vehicle for its expression.

or torches, but only one bequest for a candlestick.88 It is theorised that this later inversion in the number of candles and tapers was the result of the decline of Catholicism and its attempted small-scale propping by devout individuals. The inclusion of latten in a domestic inventory in the mid sixteenth century points to the ownership and subsequent gifting of something special, something originally employed in church and thus imbued with spiritual meaning. In summarising the St Albans wills and inventories, it is found that the proportion of latten in the ownership of the parishioners, and its gradual disappearance from the records, reflected either a general reduction in a scribe’s inclination to record it, or the steady decline in the population of Catholics over the period, allied to the concomitant rise in Protestant orthodoxy.89 Certainly, the Protestant Church sought to abolish the impression that particular objects were imbued with mystical qualities through the application of ritual formulae.90 Nevertheless, and irrespective of the various options available to the early modern individual, the evidence serves to reinforce my fundamental theory that the spiritual and the domestic were ever conjoined.

Given the coincident trinity of the demolition of the Catholic Church, the sale of its vestments and the coterminous construction of domestic brick fireplaces, it is feasible that owners sought to include in their new chimney a recess – or niche – to exhibit something of significant spiritual value. The domestic altar was the obvious location. Sacred and Secular Inventories - in Light of Candlesticks Many inventories describe rooms in a particular, hierarchical format, beginning with the hall. In some wills gifting latten or silver candlesticks to family members implied the significance attached to them. Latten candlesticks are mentioned in wills from the period, though never commonly, and they steadily disappear from the record. During medieval times and into the middle of the sixteenth century latten was essentially reserved for high-quality church goods. It was expensive and was employed for candlesticks, effigies ‘and various other objects....Effigies of Edward II and Richard II were apparently of copper and laton’. By 1838 the term ‘latten’ signified thin, tin coated sheets of iron, used to manufacture common domestic utensils.85 In an obvious parallel is evidence of the reduction in the status of salt, when it was used widely, and stored in simple cellars.

Jane Lawson’s inventory from 1557 listed six candlesticks, two latten basins, three latten lavers, one with a cover, two candlesticks and a holy water vat.91 Many of these items were used in Catholic Church ceremony but in Lawson’s case they resided in her hall.92 She was sufficiently wealthy and pious enough to have owned not only eight candlesticks and a holy water vat, perhaps purchased at one of the sales of the century, but no doubt various impressive pieces of furniture on which they may suitably have been accommodated had some of them not resided in niches.

Latten made up a significant proportion of the candlesticks in the inventory of the goods of St. Mary’s guild in Boston, dated 1534,86 though what is equally notable is the number and variety of candlesticks surrounding the altar.‘’. A clear indication of the significance of fire and candlesticks in Catholic ritual is the mention of ‘two great candlesticks, two secondary candlesticks….and two lesser candlesticks, two little candlesticks and another standing in front of Mary’.87

Whilst direct primary evidence for the spiritual use of candlesticks in the domestic arena continues to evade X. Parker, All My Worldly Goods, II. Intriguingly, reference to latten candlesticks increases towards the last date of 1611, indicative of the point that the last of the (possibly Catholic) owners died out and with them the ownership of such candlesticks. There is no mention of the material between 1611 and 1700. The inventory dates are: 1553, 1578, 1595, 1603, 1609, 1611; Hamling, Decorating the Godly Household, p.42. Hamling pointed out that Laudian reforms of the 1630s involved the reintroduction of ‘some of the abandoned Catholic ceremonial and church adornments’, and while coincidence cannot be ruled out, it is relevant to note that such adornments ceased to be gifted in wills after the Reformation but before the later reforms. 89 Britton and Le Keux, A Dictionary of the Architecture and Archaeology, pp. 149, 150. It is interesting to note that, while Britton and Le Keux assert that by the mid nineteenth century only ‘the commonest domestic utensils are formed’ from latten, the wills and inventories of St. Steven’s parish describe no items of latten between 1611 and 1700. 90 X. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p.87. 91 X. Wilson (ed.), Wymondham Inventories, p.26; J. Raine, W. Greenwell and J.C. Hodgson, Wills and Inventories, Illustrative of the History of Manners, Language, Statistics, etc. of the Northern Counties of England, 1 (London, 1834), p.158. 92 Ibid., p.158. Alongside the holy water vat and candlesticks stood two Flanders counters with carpets, two chairs, three long formes, a long side table, three pewter basins and a laver. 88

In the parish of St. Stevens in St. Albans in Hertfordshire, between the years of 1545 and 1700 there were only six domestic inventories of a total of 143 which mentioned latten candlesticks, though a slightly greater number described latten ‘basons’. It is striking that of the 51 wills preceding this, dated from 1418 to 1545, there were 21 bequests for the maintenance of lights, tapers X. Johnson, Housing Culture, p.107. J. Britton and J. Le Keux, A Dictionary of the Architecture and Archaeology of the Middle Ages (no place, 1838), pp.149, 150. 86 X. Peacock, English Church Furniture, Ornaments and Decorations, pp.70, 90, 127, 151, 157, 168, 171. 87 Ibid., pp. 200, 211. 84 85

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Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era discovery, the circumstantial evidence is compelling. Recent investigation into the meaning of candlesticks considers them ‘intended as a rich display piece to evoke meditation on morality and judgement, but it is also worth considering its practical function might contribute to its role as a prompt to pious thought’.93

it was employed for washing one’s hands, in reflection of ritual practice. Several properties in the Channel Isles contain ‘lavabos’. In several there is a distinctly religious architectural lineage, reminiscent both of the niche in Sodbury and of simple church windows or piscine, appearing as if they had been removed and reconstructed wholesale from a local church. Their location in cross passages or reception areas appears to suggest an intention that all who entered the property acknowledge the lavabo, and whichever object it might have contained.

In a reversal of the current flow of information reinforcing the domestic and ritual use of recesses and candlesticks alike, is Judith Middleton-Stewart’s observation of Margaret Rowlond’s bequest to St. Peter’s Church in Dunwich, which included ‘one candlestick of latten, with a pricket, perhaps to hold the Paschal candle’.94 At the end of her life it would appear that Margaret Rowlond gave (and possibly even returned) an undoubtedly significant item to the church which she may well have used ritually during her lifetime, within the privacy of her own home.

The link between the church niche and the domestic niche is still contested. McCormack dismissed the connection of domestic niches in the Channel Isles with Christian ritual. He did, however, consider they were taken from the church and built into the house, simply to ‘dispose of small quantities of water, just as a piscina in a church’. Whilst drain holes are evidence of their initial use for washing, McCormack does not fully explain why he precludes their later ritual use as a niche for a chalice or statue, as did his assertion of the apparently post-Reformation date of several of them,.97 Firstly, I contenct that the existence of drain holes would hardly have precluded an alternative use. Indeed, such a detail may have served to amplify the spiritual provenance and thus, its significance as a ritual object. Secondly, as McCormack notes, recesses were probably situated in the cross passage because that was the location where visitors were greeted and offered water to wash their hands 98 - an obvious religious parallel with washing one’s hands in the stoup located in the south porch in many churches.

Despite the possible mistakes made by scribes in writing inventories, the volume of documentary evidence and the dates of the wills indicate that such items were rarely used in domestic property on any significant scale prior to the official despoliation and sale of religious apparatus in the mid sixteenth century, while the apparent cessation of reference to latten candlesticks in the seventeenth century coincided with the gradual reduction in religious turmoil and the erosion of Catholicism within the population. Candlesticks continued to be used in domestic ritual for many years, though fewer and fewer were purchased from church. In a parallel observation, Whiting proposed that, whilst lay prayer for the dead by religious guilds ended peremptorily, the reliance on rosaries, particularly within the home, was probably slower to disappear.95

This anti-ritual view actually reinforces my theory that the use of something so vital to religious behaviour in the domestic sphere is an expression of an attitude towards belief, whether negatively or positively spiritual. Its adoption was either a form of de-sacralisation or of refetishization.

Ritual use of niches There is more circumstantial evidence of the ritual use of niches. A recently recorded fourteenth-century property in Chipping Sodbury, in South Gloucestershire contained a small recess with a hook at its apex that may have been used as ritualistic washing.96 It is located in the hall which originally featured a large fireplace. This is a very rare observation and an equally rare example, and while not considered a niche for the exhibition of a spiritual object per se, it is nevertheless probable that

Prior to McCormack’s observations, but in a similar vein, Joan Stevens also dismissed the ritual-use theory. She considered that benitiers, as she termed them, were actually piscinas, misnamed and misunderstood.99 Of 30 that she listed in the Channel Isles, all but two were situated on ground floors and most faced south, though never north. This can also be interpreted as reminiscent of the stoup in the south porch of many churches. Stevens does not mention this connection; instead sheproposes that the storage of lanterns or

T. Hamling, ‘Old Robert’s girdle; visual and material props for Protestant piety in post-Reformation England’ in J. Martin and A. Ryrie (eds), Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain (Farnham, 2012), pp.135-165. 94 J. Middleton-Stewart, Inward Purity and Outward Splendour: Death and Remembrance in the Deanery of Dunwich, Suffolk, 1370-1547 (Woodbridge, 2001), p.191. 95 X. Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People, p.70. 96 L. Hall, ‘15 Horse Street, Chipping Sodbury, South Gloucestershire’ (unpublished report, 2009). 93

J. McCormack, The Guernsey House (London, 1980), p.214. Ibid., p.215. In correspondence, John McCormack clarified that the term ‘benitier’ was actually created in the nineteenth or twentieth century, and so he chose to use the traditional French term ‘lavabo’, instead. December 17, 2013. 97 98 99

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Jonathan Duck: The Domestic, Ritual Use of ‘Salt Niches’ Conclusion

candles were used to assist people moving about in the dark.100 Edward Pinto’s observation that recesses located in a wall at the bottom of stairs were designed for candlesticks does not provide any evidence to substantiate Stevens’ claim, e ither.101

I have shown how, in designing and building an early modern home, an individual’s spiritual values, and their consequent physical manifestations, came to be expressed within its fabric.106 Whether their rituals were compelled to be enacted within the home or not, such display represented an individual’s belief, and God was revered through the objects within the niche, without the attendant interest of those beyond the front door.

Given the eminently portable nature of candlesticks, I suggest such an elaborate form of construction simply for their storage appears excessive, particularly given that many households contained more than a single candlestick - but only one recess. Thus it would seem that neither functional use theory has shed much light on the subject, though as a final observation Stevens did acknowledge the potential for de-sacralization. She stated that ‘Deliberate debasement to the lowly domestic use is one possible explanation and it was in keeping with the anger of the reformers’.102 In proposing this theory she has, in a similar way to McCormack, furthered my theory that niches were used, in one way or another, to express the beliefs of individuals, through ritual.

Whilst much of the evidence has been gathered from the sixteenth century, when religious turmoil was at its peak, and when brick chimneys began to be constructed in some quantity, evidence from the following century substantiates the argument for ownership of religious objects, and even suggests continued possession from the previous turbulence. During the Civil War in 1642 soldiers confiscated and burnt Catholic artefacts found within the home, including books, images and crucifixes, illustrative of a Catholic rump and the undeniable spiritualisation of the household.107

Back on the mainland, in a dwelling in Hampshire, Hall and her colleague Edward Roberts discovered a niche immediately adjacent to a large mid fifteenth-century stone fire surround which featured a neatly carved vertical slot in the jamb to provide either heat or light to the item within. Hall considered that ‘Storage [was] unlikely as the construction implies it never had a door. One suggestion is that, in view of the building’s original status as a rectory, the recess may have housed a religious statue, with the squint providing illumination’.103

In the analogy of the voice, this projection of expression was conscious, confident and unconcerned about the occasional dissenting comment, because while the country slowly moved to a Protestant State, during the early stages these patrons remained in the majority. But as time passed and religious turmoil faded, so niches became the storage facilities for people of varied (and no) religious backgrounds, in days less turbulent. Final notes In re-reading this paper I realized how confusing it is to jump from one period to another, and from one use type to another. Most of the direct quotes could have been rephrased and tied to the text. It is still unclear from this narrative the dataset and processes through which a ritual component was added to utilitarian purposes of recesses, something I would expect to see in the conclusions, as a summary of sorts that addresses both the spatial and temporal component of this transition (or concurrent use). McCormack’s book has already been published, and in the footnotes I noted that the first initial of the first name was occasionally missing.

The early date of the fireplace, and its provenance as a former rectory, help to reinforce the contention that such niches existed during the influential days of the Catholic Church, when iconolatry was essential to its orthodoxy and when many early, high-status buildings were being erected in stone and brick. Hall considered the side-lit niche ‘a unique feature’.104 Trudy West described a fireplace which had been removed from a house in Essex in 1906 and contained a recess in the jamb which featured a squint on its back wall with a sliding shutter. She believed that the property was originally in the ownership of the Fraternity of Jesus, which had begun in 1468, though was altered to its existing state shortly after the Dissolution. She felt that the squint may have been ‘directed to an altar’.105

Circumstantial evidence in this chapter is exclusive of contemporary paintings, which proved to be of little assistance. In the later sixteenth century candlesticks were less frequently painted ‘as art had freed itself from religious conventions’ and paintings of domestic interiors had yet to become fashionable. Curle, ‘Domestic candlesticks’, p.197. 107 J. Spraggon, Puritan Iconoclasm During the Civil War (Woodbridge, 2003), p.119. 106

X. Stevens, Old Jersey Houses, pp.98, 99. 101 E. Pinto, Treen and Other Wooden Bygones (London, 1969), p.115. 102 X. Stevens, Old Jersey Houses, p.100. 103 X Hall, ‘Fixtures and fittings’, p.89. 104 Ibid., p.89 105 T. West, The Fireplace in the Home (London, 1976), p.27. 100

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Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era Bibliography

Johnson, M. (2010). English Houses, 1300-1800: Vernacular Architecture, Social Life. Harlow. Joy, E.T. English Furniture, AD.43-1950 (1962). London. Knell, D. (1992). English Country Furniture: The National and Regional Vernacular, 1500-1900. London. MacCaffrey, W. (1969).The Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime. London. MacFarlane, A. (ed.) (1976; 1991). The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616-1683. Oxford. McCormack, J. (1980). The Guernsey House. London. Merrifield, R. (1987). The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic. London. Middleton-Stewart, J. (2001). Inward Purity and Outward Splendour: Death and Remembrance in the Deanery of Dunwich, Suffolk, 1370-1547. Woodbridge. Orlin, L.C. (1994). Private Matters and Public Culture in Post-Reformation England. London. Parker, M. (2004). All My Worldly Goods, II. St. Albans. Patterson, M. H. (2007). Domesticating the Reformation – Protestant Best Sellers, Private Devotion and the Revolution of English Piety. Madison. Peacock, E. (1866; 2011). English Church Furniture, Ornaments and Decorations at the Period of the Reformation, as Exhibited in a List of Goods Destroyed in Certain Lincolnshire Churches, AD.1566. London. Pearsall, J. and W. Trumball (eds) (1995). The Oxford English Reference Dictionary. Oxford. Pinto, E. (1969). Treen and Other Wooden Bygones. London. Raine, J., W. Greenwell and J.C. Hodgson (1834). Wills and Inventories, Illustrative of the History of Manners, Language, Statistics, etc. of the Northern Counties of England, 1. London. Rapoport, A. 1982; 1990). The Meaning of the Built Environment. Tucson. Richardson, C. (2011). Shakespeare and Material Culture. Oxford. Scribner, R. (1987).Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany. London. Spittle, S.D.T. (ed) (1972). An Inventory by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments in the County of Cambridge 2 North-East Cambridgeshire. London. Steer, F.W. (ed.) (1950). Farm and Cottage Inventories of Mid-Essex, 1635-1749. Colchester. Thomas, K. (1971; 1991). Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and SeventeenthCentury England. London. Stevens, J. (1965; 1980). Old Jersey Houses and Those Who Lived in Them, I. 1500-1700. Chichester. Van Dijk, S.J.P. and J.H. Walker (1957). The Myth of the Aumbry. Notes on Medieval Reservation Practice and Eucharistic Devotion. London. Wilson, M.I. (1977). The English Country House and its Furnishings. London. Wilson, J.H. (ed.) (1983). Wymondham Inventories, 15901641. Norwich. Walsham, A. (1993). Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England. Woodbridge.

Secondary Works - Books Aston, M. (1995). ‘Gods, saints and reformers: portraiture and Protestant England’, in L. Gent (ed.), Albion’s Classicism. The Visual Arts in Britain, 1550-1660: 181-220. London. Ayres, J. (1981). The Shell Book of the Home in Britain London. Britton, J. and J. Le Keux (1838). A Dictionary of the Architecture and Archaeology of the Middle Ages (no place). Brunskill, R.W. (1981; 1997). Traditional Buildings of Britain. London. Cave, L. (1981). The Smaller English House. London. Clark, P. and P. Slack (1976). English Towns in Transition. Oxford, Clifton-Taylor (1962; 1987). A. The Pattern of English Building. London. Collinson, P. (1997). ‘From iconoclasm to iconophobia: the cultural impact of the second English reformation, in P. Marshall (ed.), The Impact of the English Reformation, 1500-1640: 278-307. London. Duffy, E. (1992; 2005). The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400-c.1580. London. Duffy, E. (2001). The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village. London. Duffy, E. Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition; Aston, ‘Gods, saints and reformers’. Ford, C. (2007). ‘Iconoclasm, the commodity and the art of painting’, in S. Boldrick and R. Clay (eds), Iconoclasm. Contested Objects, Contested Terms: 75-91. Aldershot. Gaskill, M. (2005). Witchfinders - A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy. London. Glassie, H. (1986). ‘Eighteenth-century cultural process in Delaware Valley folk building’, in Upton and Vlach (eds), Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture: 394-425. Athens. Hall, L. (2003). ‘Fixtures and fittings’, in E. Roberts, J. Crook, L. Hall and D. Miles, Hampshire Houses, 12501700: 97. Winchester. Hamling, T. (2012). ‘Old Robert’s girdle; visual and material props for Protestant piety in postReformation England’ in J. Martin and A. Ryrie (eds), Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain : 135-165. Farnham. Hastings, J. (ed.) (1913). Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics VI: 563, 560. Edinburgh. Henderson, W.G. (ed.) 1875). Manuale et Processionale ad Usum Insignis Ecclesiae Eboracensis. Durham. Hunter, M. (2007). ‘Iconoclasm and consumption; or, household management according to Thomas Cromwell’, in S. Boldrick and R. Clay (eds), Iconoclasm: Contested Objects, Contested Terms: 51-74. Aldershot. Johnson, M. (1996). An Archaeology of Capitalism. Oxford. 20

Jonathan Duck: The Domestic, Ritual Use of ‘Salt Niches’ Unpublished books / dissertations / papers

Whiting, R. (1989). The Blind Devotion of the People. Cambridge. Wrightson, K. (2000). Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain, 1470-1750. London.

Hall, L. ‘15 Horse Street, Chipping Sodbury, South Gloucestershire’ (unpublished report, 2009). Mackie, C. ‘Sorely against the will of the people: tenant resistance to housing reform in nineteenth-century Lewis’, in ‘Buildings in society international’ conference (Belfast, June 19-21, 2014). McCormack,J. ‘Channel Island Houses’ (unpublished, 2014). Takahashi, M. ‘Village inheritance in early modern England: kinship structure, inheritance customs and generation continuity’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Ehemi, 1998).

Secondary Works – Journals Cooper, N. (2002). ‘Display, status and the vernacular tradition’, Vernacular Architecture 33: 28-33. Curle, A.O. (1926). ‘Domestic candlesticks from the fourteenth to the end of the eighteenth century’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 5 ser. 12: 183-214. Haigh, C. (1981). ‘From monopoly to minority: Catholicism in early modern England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th ser. 31: 129-141. Hankins, J.R. (October 2009) ‘Papists, power and puritans: Catholic officeholding and the rise of the ‘’Puritan faction’’ in early seventeenth century Essex’, The Catholic Historical Review 95:4: 689-717. Leech, R.H. (2000) ‘The symbolic hall: historical context, and merchant culture in the early modern city’, Vernacular Architecture 31: 1-10. Machin, R. (1977). ‘The Great Rebuilding: a reassessment’, Past and Present 77: 33-56. McLaren, A. (2002). ‘Gender, religion and early modern nationalism: Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots and the genesis of English anti-Catholicism’, The American Historical Review 107.3: 339-367. Richardson, R.C. (1972). ‘Wills and will makers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – some Lancashire evidence’, Local Population Studies 9: 3342.

Internet http://www.leics.gov.uk/index/leisure_tourism/ museums/donington/doningtonmuseumabout. htm http://www.english-heritage.org.uk Radio and Television Goodman, R. Tudor Monastery Farm (BBC2, November 14, 2013). Mortimer, I. Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England (BBC2, June 14, 2013).

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22

Architecture and Community at Hummingbird Pueblo, New Mexico Evangelia Tsesmeli

Darwood Technology, LLC., Los Alamos, NM email: [email protected] Abstract: This paper utilizes the concepts of technological style, practice and enculturation to investigate the cultural and built environment at Hummingbird Pueblo, a pre-contact Pueblo settlement near Albuquerque, New Mexico. The foundation and growth of Hummingbird Pueblo corresponds with a tumultuous transitional period of relocation, reorganization and reconfiguration of settlement, social organization and belief systems in the American Southwest during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. By focusing on low-visibility individual elements of construction and their architectural details, we can identify how various groups, local and migrant, integrated themselves at the settlement and created and altered specific architectural forms. Keywords: Adobe architecture, Hummingbird Pueblo, low-visibility, social identity

available. The Chaves Hummingbird Archaeological Project (CHAP) conducted excavations at the site in 1996-2004, documenting the site’s configuration and architectural remains and exploring possible relations with neighboring areas amidst the tumultuous 13th and 14th centuries A.D. (Figure 1). Fifty-six excavated areas, including twenty-five partially or completely excavated rooms and trenches in open areas and communal contexts have provided the data for this study (Figure 2).

Introduction The architectural remains at Hummingbird Pueblo in New Mexico present an opportunity to explore the processes that created the exposed variability in building materials and architectural forms, and the ways they inform on the social identity of the diverse communities that lived at this small ancestral pueblo. Hummingbird Pueblo as shown by excavation and architectural analyses was not built in one swift construction episode, nor were its constituent occupational and communal areas homogenous in form, construction fabric and features. Its proximity to Rio Puerco River, a primary travel route in a period of population relocation, interaction and aggregation into large settlements near permanent water sources, facilitated communication and exchange with social groups from other settlements to the west, north, and east (Ferguson and Hart 1985: 55, Map 20; Snead et al. 2009; Wozniac 1981). In this paper, I argue that we can utilize the temporal and spatial diversity of architectural form, construction methods and internal organization of built space to relate the architectural life histories at the settlement with different social groups that formed the community of this settlement.

The pueblo consists of five roomblocks and three formal plazas. It occupies a 6m high rubble mound and the surrounding area to a total of 6450m2. A single bulldozer cut, placed through the middle of the mound by a former landowner, disturbed the archaeological context at the site. Roomblock 1 is two to four rooms deep facing Plaza 1, the direct result of two initial Roomblocks 1A and 1B joining together to an estimated total of 67 rooms. It is mostly built with coursed adobe through a ‘ladder-like’ system of construction. In the ‘ladder’ type of construction two parallel walls are built first and then the traverse walls are incorporated in the built design, dividing the existing space into smaller rooms and giving a consistent floor area throughout. Roomblock 2 is a small, 210 m2 concentration area of 28 rooms whose walls were built with coursed adobe. Roomblock 3, with an estimated number of 128 rooms, is arranged into a C shape configuration, mostly built accretionally with coursed adobe. Roomblock 4 is located atop the mound and was built mainly with local stone, and in later times with coursed adobe. The top area of the mound covers a total of 3000m2 including Plaza 3 that accounts for about 550m2. The considerable size of the area alludes to an equally considerable size of habitation rooms, even distinct roomblocks within the mound perimeter. Over three hundred rooms are estimated to have occupied the

Hummingbird Pueblo lies within a large private ranch owned by the Chaves family, 36 km west of Albuquerque in west central New Mexico. Scholars visited the site and inspected the ruins as part of the greater surveys conducted in the Rio Grande and Rio Puerco area in the late 19th-early 20th century and identified it as Pueblo III-IV (A.D. 1200-1450) settlement due to its Glaze A ware pottery (Bandelier 1892; Luhrs 1937; Mera 1940). The site was first excavated in 1988-1989 by Dr. Frank Hibben (UNM), who dug several rooms at various locations identified now as Roomblocks 1, 3 and 4; however, field notes from these excavations are not 23

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era

Figure 1 Hummingbird Layout

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Evangelia Tsesmeli: Architecture and Community at Hummingbird Pueblo, New Mexico

Figure 2 Hummingbird ExcUnits

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Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era mound (Kolb 1985; Naroll 1962), not including the possible existence of two-storey residential units within Roomblock 4. Roomblock 5 lies at the southern end of the settlement, in an area previously thought as midden (Eckert 2008). The masonry walls coming out of the arroyo cut running southeast infer the presence of at least two rooms by Roomblock 5; however, their estimated size is uncertain. Because of the arroyo cuts, the constant erosion and the bulldozer cut, the extent of settlement in the main mound and the southern part remains unknown.

involved in the production of domestic architectural elements. Communities of practice inferred from contexts of daily ‘domestic’ behavior, and low visibility architectural features, among others, can be used to explain the end product of enculturation processes in prehistoric communities and address movement of people and social interaction (Eckert 2007; Frankel 2005; Spanou 2008; Van Dyke 1999). There is considerable research in the American Southwest in identifying basic social strategies by comparing room size and configuration in domestic residencies. James (1994) demonstrated that there is a correlation between the social organizational strategies of a group and the average floor area in domestic settings. James noted the differences between the room size of matrilocal Western Pueblos and those residencies at Taos Pueblo in northern New Mexico and the Pima-Maricopa tribes in the Sonora Desert in southern Arizona that were patrilocal. Patrilocal groups seemed to correlate with rooms whose size was usually above 10m2 while matrilocal groups were associated with an average room size below 10m2. Cameron (1999) used data from houses, rooms and households of the Hopi Pueblo at Orayvi, and linked room size to two different construction techniques that resulted in either consistent floor area (the ‘ladder’ technique) or in a range of floor area sizes (accretional construction). Cameron (1999:233-234) in her analysis took into consideration that the availability of wood for roofing might have influenced the size choice of corresponding floor area but also pointed to the usefulness of using construction techniques and their link to room size to detect the existence of different social groups within the same settlement. Redman’s (1993) study of the architectural units at Shoofly Village ruins, a site 5 miles northeast of Payson, Arizona near the Mogollon Rim, showed that the rooms were divided into seven units with distinct layout and construction configurations and of varying room size. Although the units were spatially segregated within the site, and sometimes separated from other units by low walls, they were joined together by a compound wall surrounding the entire village. Redman (1993: 58) concluded that ‘the village grew by incorporating formerly separate independent groups from different geographic locations and/ or from different ethnic or cultural traditions.’ At Homol’ovi sites construction ranged from dressed sandstone masonry to coursed adobe. In three instances in the Homol’ovi region masonry and coursed adobe architecture were found on different parts of the same site (at Homol’ovi I, Homol’ovi III, and Chevelon). At Homol’ovi I, at the north part of the village, rooms were constructed by using stone masonry. The rooms surrounding the southern plaza were constructed with form-molded adobe bricks. At Homol’ovi III, coursed adobe rooms were added to an

With an estimated 517 rooms at its apex, Hummingbird Pueblo became one of the two largest settlements in the Lower Rio Puerco basin, the other one being Pottery Mound (Adler 2007, Sfaasma 2007). Its architectural growth and extent can be attributed to a constant and dynamic exchange of people moving in and out of the settlement, indicating some familiarity and social ties, between the point of origin and the host settlement (Bernardini 2005). The objective of the architectural analysis at Hummingbird is to examine the archaeological correlates of group identity, and benefits from a variety of scales when the appropriate data are available. As the excavated room sample represent less than 1% of the total, compared to Arroyo Hondo’s 32% (Creamer 1993), Turkey Creek Pueblo’s 98% (Lowell 1988) and Grasshopper Pueblo’s 45% architectural sample (Riggs 2001), a two-prong approach was considered appropriate. Data range from the smallest unit of investigation, the room, to the largest unit of intrasite investigation, the roomblock. These two different scales of inquiry provide the foundation for addressing issues of relocation, rebuilding, and spatial reorganization at the site, with inferences about the size and social makeup of communities that created the built environment at Hummingbird. Concepts, Definitions and Expectations Implicit in the analysis of architecture is that built environment is created to support desired behavior. Human activities and social perceptions shape and are shaped by architectural layout and form (Bourdieu 1971; Giddens 1984:143-158). Behavior, therefore, shapes architecture, and architecture encloses behavior. Architectural variability within a settlement has the potential to provide information about aspects of social interactions and identities among different groups. The actions of the builders are not passive reminders of past social actions, but they are an active, continuous production of society, through multiple practices that enact at different levels and in varying contexts, such as domestic or monumental architecture, pottery and lithics, to name a few. When it comes to vernacular architecture, its social and ritual aspects can be explored by using corresponding technological styles 26

Evangelia Tsesmeli: Architecture and Community at Hummingbird Pueblo, New Mexico earlier compound of masonry rooms. At Chevelon there was a mix of stone and adobe construction but no definite dating on which building method was used earlier than the other (Bernardini 2005: 89-90).

were the processes involved that helped the craftsmen finalize the form and style of the artifact (Carr 1995). The introduction or persistence of a certain style may indicate the intention of the craftsman to demonstrate through the artifact that the target audience belonged to a certain category or group. Wiessner (1990) called such stylistic choices emblemic and argued that the emblemic style can serve as demarcation of social characteristics among groups. Artifacts may appear local in production, but may have a different order of production stages that could possibly point to nonlocal techniques and processes, and can ultimately be used as a factor to differentiate adequately the group identity of the craftspeople.

Hummingbird Pueblo was built utilizing both the ‘ladder’ and the accretional techniques, in spatially distinct areas, and utilizing different building materials. Establishing building sequences is important in order to assess the contemporaneity of construction variability within a settlement. Utilizing wall bonding and abutting episodes to establish a chronological framework of building activity has a long history in the Southwest (Crown 1991; Graves 1982; Haury 1934; Riggs 2001; Rohn 1965, 1971; Wilcox 1975), and has proven a reliable relative dating method when absolute dating data are lacking. The concept of a building unit is a heuristic tool to analyze processes of building and growth. A building unit comprises of one or more rooms bounded by a bonded wall, and attached to previous construction by abutting to existing walls. Bonding and abutting wall connections permit comparison of construction sequences within each roomblock at Hummingbird. Bonded corners are built seamlessly while abutted corners have seams. The construction of bonded walls is assumed to have occurred during a single construction episode. An abutting wall is assumed to have been built at some point after the wall that it abuts, though this interval may be quite brief. Wall abutment relations thus provide the basis for a relative sequence of wall construction at the site. If there is an absolute date associated with any room of a building unit, all rooms within the same building unit can be considered of the same date. A building unit whose founding date is unknown can be assumed to have been built either at the same time or before adjacent building units. Bonding and abutting walls can also dependably indicate the outlines and floor space of individual rooms and room divisions between larger room units. The occupational history at the site is the result of building units arranged in chronological order.

Along with the introduction of the technological style, enculturation has been defined as the process where the craftspeople create their products with the knowledge passed from one generation to the next and the end result reflects their conscious and unconscious technical choices because of their background (Clark 2001; Gosselain 1992, 1998; Lemonnier 1992; van der Leeuw 1993). Subtle changes of cultural traits and artifact styles are difficult to recognize and identify. Bernardini (2005: 42) used the Hopi narratives and oral histories to devise a model of spiral movement, involving independent actions of many small but socially distinct groups making frequent and complex movements across the landscape. Incoming groups often blended with the host population by assimilating overt aspects of their material culture (Bernardini 2005: 86-87). Carr (1995) proposed the unified middle range theory of artifact design, through which he provided a strategy to isolate artifact attributes that likely reflect differences in enculturated background, focusing on low visibility features in domestic contexts. Features, such as raw materials for foundations, room size and room orientation are likely to be an expression of enculturated techniques, because they are not usually intended for use or viewing outside the occupying residential unit. Preparing the ground and setting the plan for room construction are processes where the embedded, learned techniques of the builders influence the choices they make regarding building orientation and layout. The builders may choose raw materials that resemble those they were accustomed to, or local materials that provide the same functionality or workability as materials with which they used to work.

The shift from the architectural typology, form and materials to the design sequence and the technological knowledge of the builders brought up the introduction of ‘technological style’ (Dietler and Herbich 1989; Hegmon 1998; Lechtman 1977; Lemonnier 1986; Stark et al. 1998). Social information is expressed unconsciously though this technological utterance of style and typology (Cameron 1999; Childs 1991; Sackett 1990). The attributes of an artifact are not anymore considered isolated from each other; instead the actions taken to design and implement the artifact production, and the order in which the artifact’s attributes were produced are used to infer for whom the artifact was designed and produced (target audience) and which

Clark (2001) used the concept of enculturation in domestic settings to evaluate the influx of incoming groups into the Tonto Basin of east-central Arizona during the early Classic period (A.D. 1200-1325), a period associated with the appearance of the Salado horizon in the Tonto Basin. Clark interpreted differences in the organization of domestic space (11 of 14 case studies), wall construction techniques (4 out of 5 case studies), 27

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era Table 1. Roomblock Area and Room Count. Rooms

Area (m2)

Estimated Rooms

Excavated Area (m2)

Percentage of Excavated/Total Area

67

600

600/8=75

30

5.00

2

28

210

210/8=26

15

7.14

3

128

940

940/8=118

20

2.14

4

33?

2450

2450/8=306

22

0.89

5

6?

UNK

UNK

Roomblocks 1

9

UNK

19

1.27

190

7

3.68

550

9.4

1.70

131.4

2.03

Plaza 1

1500

Plaza 2 Plaza 3 Total

262?

6450?

517?

and in utilitarian ceramic manufacture, as indicators of groups with different learned frameworks and settlement background. Clark (2001, 2004) argued that low-visibility attributes are appropriate data sets to examine in order to identify the presence of different social groups. This approach enabled Clark to conclude that in the Salado habitation of the Tonto basin, the original founding groups came in small size households and that the incoming groups co-existed and formed one co-residential community with the indigenous groups. Clark (2004:63) cautioned that this method of inquiry is useful when material distinctions are visible and evident in the archaeological record; however, close contact and long-term exchange between different social groups render enculturative differences inconspicuous in the archaeological record.

room shape and orientation. Room floor areas vary greatly among roomblocks at Hummingbird (Table 1). Roomblock 1 has the largest average floor area of 7.13m2, 22% more than the other roomblocks. Roomblocks 2, 3, and 4 have similar average floor areas of 5.69 m2, 5.56 m2, and 5.53 m2 respectively. Incomplete bonded masonry walls in the southern end of the pueblo that Roomblock 5 occupies only allow for a suggestive floor area of 2.40m2. When room shape is considered, there are very few square rooms at Hummingbird (10%). The rest of the rooms are rectangular. Roomblock 3 has the most square rooms within the 10% sample. Regarding the orientation of the rooms, most rooms are oriented towards the North (62%). There are two distinct types of construction material at Hummingbird, coursed adobe and local masonry (sandstone). Coursed adobe was used in the majority of construction at Roomblocks 1 (67 rooms), 2 and 3 while sandstone masonry was mainly used at Roomblocks 4 and 5. Mixed construction was found in Roomblocks 1, 3 and 4 in later occupations. Plastered floors were the norm for Roomblock 1 and Rooms 4-26 (Kiva1) and 4-701. Walls were set directly on sterile soil in Roomblock 1, or had adobe footings or on top of trash or older rooms in Roomblock 3. In Roomblocks 4 and 5 stone footings supported the walls, either on sterile soil or more often upon trash or older walls. Remodeling was mostly achieved by razing down old walls and building on top of them.

Features, therefore, of domestic architecture, such as room floor area, shape and orientation, and the choice of raw materials for foundations, wall construction and floor treatments, can be considered an expression of enculturated techniques of their builders, because they are not usually intended for use or viewing outside the occupying residential unit. It is under the above theoretical concepts, methodologies and considerations that the architectural variability at Hummingbird has been examined. A Diverse Built Environment There is significant diversity in the layout, size, features, and construction material of the roomblocks and the configuration of open, communal spaces at Hummingbird. This discussion has two objectives: firstly, to describe the exposed architectural variability, and secondly, to assign within a temporal framework the diverse construction elements and remodeling efforts at the site.

The recovered deposits that provided the spatially distinct low visibility architectural features at Hummingbird Pueblo can be temporally assigned to a chronological framework of subsequent and previous building units, thus creating the occupation sequence of the site. Absolute and relative temporal (radiocarbon, tree-ring and ceramic dates) and spatial markers (building units) define a broad chronological order of construction activity that transcribed in Hummingbird. Roomblocks 1, 2 and 3 provided sufficient data on wall

Architectural variables for which there is sufficient data for statistical analysis are the room floor area, 28

Evangelia Tsesmeli: Architecture and Community at Hummingbird Pueblo, New Mexico bond-abutt relationships to define the occupational history of the site. Roomblocks 4 and 5 consist of more inferred walls than actual measured ones (less than 1% of the estimated number) and estimates on dimensions and form are tentative. The utilization of dated room deposits within certain building units and the corresponding assignment of dates to their bounded rooms resulted in the temporal assignment of 148 rooms. The temporal assignment of the remaining rooms remains indeterminate. Fifty radiocarbon dates from 26 excavated loci (Table 2) and thirteen tree ring dates from 5 loci (Table 3) and provided absolute dates for Hummingbird Pueblo (Figure 3).

indication of human activity was in the early 13th century AD at the area that became Plaza 1, in Roomblock 4 in the vicinity of Rooms 4-26 (Kiva 1), 4-29 and 4-24 (901). The temporal arrangement revealed that growth occurred at Hummingbird by aggregating, most probably within a relatively short period of time, large blocks of rooms next to equally large suites of many rooms, especially in the case of Roomblock 1. By the end of the 13th century AD, Roomblock 1 was built nearly in its entirety, while Roomblock 3 was slowly built up in its northern sector. None of the initial core units at Roomblocks 1B and 3 have datable deposits, their time range, therefore, can be defined as ‘On or Before’ compared to the later added building units that yielded radiocarbon dates. The suite of rooms at 1B, therefore, can be assigned to mid-to late 13th c. AD.

Hummingbird Pueblo was occupied from early 13th century AD until mid-15th century AD. The earliest

Table 2. List of Samples from Hummingbird Pueblo Used for Radiocarbon Dating. Level

Conventional 13C/12C Material Radiocarbon Ratio Age (BP)

Area

Analyzed By/Date

Intercept 1sED 1sLD Calendar Dates

Plaza 205316 1-Trench A E. Ext

2

wood

530±40 BP

-10.4 o/oo

Plaza 1

Beta 2005

1329

1436

1420

Plaza 205308 1-Trench A Feat.8

6

wood

380±60 BP

-26.2 o/oo

Plaza 1

Beta 2005

1448

1627

1480

Plaza 205310 1-Trench A Feat.8

6

wood log 530±60 BP

-20.0 o/oo

Plaza 1

Beta 2005

1321

1441

1420

Plaza 205317 1-Trench A Feat.8

6

corn

840±50 BP

-9.6 o/oo

Plaza 1

Beta 2005

1059

1265

1210

Plaza 167563 1-Trench A S. Ext

2

wood

620±40 BP

-20.8 o/oo

Plaza 1

Beta 2002

1298

1394

1310, 1360, 1390

Lab #

Cultural Context

205313

Plaza 7 1-Trench J

Charcoal 500±70 BP

-23.0 o/oo

Plaza 1

Beta 2005

1319

1456

1420

205309

Plaza 8 1-Trench J

Charred material

850±60 BP

-11.3 o/oo

Plaza 1

Beta 2005

1056

1259

1200

205330 Trench V

11/12

Charcoal 710±90 BP

-22.2 o/oo

Plaza 2

Beta 2005

1250

1310

1290

205332 Trench V

Feature 1 Charcoal 610±60 BP

-21.3 o/oo

Plaza 2

Beta 2005

1300

1400

1320, 1350, 1390

6

corn

730±50 BP

-10.0 o/oo

Refuse

Beta 2002

1226

1296

1280

167564 1-38

fill

wood

800±80 BP

-22.0 o/oo

Roomblock 1 Beta 2002

1156

1286

1250

167566 1-74

2

wood

1040±70 BP

-11.6 o/oo

Roomblock 1 Beta 2002

895

1117

1000

205320 1-74

2

wood

790±60 BP

-12.4 o/oo

Roomblock 1 Beta 2005

1186

1280

1260

2

1-6

4

Corn

760±40 BP

-10 o/oo

Roomblock 1 USGS 1999 1226

1279

1260

253203 1-6

5

charred corn

620±40 BP

-11.4 o/oo

Roomblock 1 Beta 2009

1298

1394

1310, 1360, 1390

167578

RefuseTrench C

5

2-Feature A_North

2

Charcoal 310±50 BP

-25.0 o/oo

Roomblock 2 USGS 1999 1513

1646

1520, 1650

6

2-Feature A_South

2

Charcoal 410±50 BP

-25.0 o/oo

Roomblock 2 USGS 1999 1436

1618

1460

29

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era

Lab #

Cultural Context

Level

Conventional 13C/12C Material Radiocarbon Ratio Age (BP)

Area

4

2-Feature B

surface

Charcoal 350±40 BP

-25.0 o/oo

Roomblock 2 USGS 1999 1476

1631

1510, 1600, 1630

3

2-Feature C

surface

Charcoal 400±40 BP

-25.0 o/oo

Roomblock 2 USGS 1999 1442

1512

1490

205329 3-43

5

wood

730±40 BP

-21.3 o/oo

Roomblock 3 Beta 2005

1252

1295

1280

167573 3-43

7/8

wood

710±40 BP

22.4 o/oo

Roomblock 3 Beta 2002

1263

1381

1290

205323 3-94

7

Corn

420±50 BP

-10.9 o/oo

Roomblock 3 Beta 2005

1430

1490

1450

205324 3-94

7

Charcoal 710±50 BP

-19.6 o/oo

Roomblock 3 Beta 2005

1270

1300

1290

167576 3-5

2

corn

430±50 BP

-9.5 o/oo

Roomblock 3 Beta 2002

1430

1480

1450

167577 3-5

2

wood

740±50 BP

-22.5 o/oo

Roomblock 3 Beta 2002

1226

1290

1280

253202 3-5

2/3

charred corn

530±60 BP

-9.1 o/oo

Roomblock 3 Beta 2009

1400

1440

1420

167568 3-27

6

wood

680±60 BP

-25.4 o/oo

Roomblock 3 Beta 2002

1271

1390

1290

167571 3-27

6

small wood

720±70 BP

-22.9 o/oo

Roomblock 3 Beta 2002

1223

1385

1280

205307 3-27

6

small wood

520±50 BP

-25.0 o/oo

Roomblock 3 Beta 2005

1329

1441

1420

205315 4-1

9

Wooden Beams

670±40 BP

-22.4 o/oo

Roomblock 4 Beta 2005

1280

1387

1300

205312 4-8

2

charcoal 630±60 BP

-18.4 o/oo

Roomblock 4 Beta 2005

1291

1395

1310, 1370, 1380

205319 4-8

4

burnt wood

770±60 BP

-19.8 o/oo

Roomblock 4 Beta 2005

1211

1287

1270

253205 4-8

5

burnt wood

580±50 BP

-19.0 o/oo

Roomblock 4 Beta 2009

1311

1412

1400

253207 4-8

6

burnt wood

610±60 BP

-20.7 o/oo

Roomblock 4 Beta 2009

1300

1400

1320, 1350, 1390

2319

4-21(R03)

7

corn

520±40 BP

-10 o/oo

Roomblock 4 USGS 1999 1325

1431

1410

167569 4-22(R01)

3

wood

630±40 BP

-21.6 o/oo

Roomblock 4 Beta 2002

1295

1391

1310, 1370, 1380

charred corn

450±50 BP

-10 o/oo

Roomblock 4 USGS 1999 1414

1481

1450

205303 4-24 (901) 3

wood

350±60 BP

-15.7 o/oo

Roomblock 4 Beta 2005

1470

1633

1510, 1600, 1620

167572 4-24 (901) 9

wood

380±70 BP

-23.1 o/oo

Roomblock 4 Beta 2002

1447

1631

1480

205304 4-24 (901) 19

wood

510±50 BP

-21.8 o/oo

Roomblock 4 Beta 2005

1330

1445

1420

167570 4-24 (901) 24

wood

810±40 BP

-15.8 o/oo

Roomblock 4 Beta 2002

1208

1267

1240

2184

4-24 (901) 2

Analyzed By/Date

Intercept 1sED 1sLD Calendar Dates

2185

4-24(Kiva 1)

1

charred corn

870±50 BP

-10 o/oo

Roomblock 4 USGS 1999 1050

1222

1170, 1200, 1210

2186

4-24(Kiva 1)

2

corn

770±60 BP

-10 o/oo

Roomblock 4 USGS 1999 1211

1286

1270

2318

4-29(R10)

1

charred corn

800±50 BP

-10 o/oo

Roomblock 4 USGS 1999 1190

1274

1220, 1250

2320

4-701

11 to floor

charred corn

640±50 BP

-10 o/oo

Roomblock 4 USGS 1999 1289

1391

1300, 1370

205326 Kiva 1

fill

wood

670±60 BP

-20.7 o/oo

Roomblock 4 Beta 2005

1276

1391

1300

167575 Trench B

5

Burned wood

740±60 BP

-20.8 o/oo

Roomblock 4 Beta 2002

1219

1296

1280

167574 Trench B

25

corn

730±40 BP

-10.1 o/oo

Roomblock 4 Beta 2002

1252

1295

1280

205322 Trench E

12

Corn

740±50 BP

-19.2 o/oo

Roomblock 4 Beta 2005

1226

1290

1280

205325 Trench N

6

Charcoal 700±60 BP

-22.5 o/oo

Roomblock 5 Beta 2005

1259

1389

1290

30

Evangelia Tsesmeli: Architecture and Community at Hummingbird Pueblo, New Mexico Table 3. Tree Ring Dates from-Hummingbird Pueblo (LA 578) Provenience

TRL #

Species

Inner

Outer

Symbol

Comment

E Trench 1 room 2

HBR-14

PNN

1379

E Trench 2

HBR-27

PNN

1331

1418

+v

Inc.

1386

vv

E Trench 2

HBR-26

PNN

E Trench 2

HBR-31

PNN

1330

1391

v

Inc.

1327

1391

v

Comp.

E Trench 2

HBR-29

PNN

1362

1417

vv

E Trench 2 N-S Trench

HBR-28

PNN

1380

1418

+v

HBR-15

PNN

1317

1385

vv

W Kiva TT 1

HBR 25

PNN

1330

1404

v

Inc

W Kiva TT 1

HBR-34

PNN

1333

1404

v

Inc.

North End of Pueblo

RG-61-3

PNN

1337

1405

v

Inc.

North End of Pueblo

RG-61-2

PNN

1344

1433

vv

North End of Pueblo

RG-61-9

PNN

1378

1454

vv

North End of Pueblo

RG-61-1

PNN

1360

1465

+v

Explanation: PNN=piñon v

It is probable that the preserved ring is not far from the terminal ring which grew before the tree was cut down

vv

We cannot prove how many exterior rings are missing

+ or ++’

The last ring or rings were countable but not measurable

Figure 3 Spatial 14C and Tree Ring Dates

31

Inc.

Inc.

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era During the early 14th century AD Roomblock 3 was formed by the addition of small suites of rooms accretionally constructed next to each other to the west and south. At this time a suite of rooms was being built at the top of the Roomblock 4. By mid-14th century AD, Roomblock 3 was being built up at the west and south side, and rooms were added in between Roomblocks 1 and 3 forming Roomblock 2 with a very modest suite of four rooms. During this period Room 4-8A’s masonry walls were divided by an adobe wall into two rooms, 4-8B and 2. Roomblock 3 continued to grow accretionally until the late 14th century AD by adding small room suites to the west and south. By early 15th century AD, Roomblock 3’s build up created Plaza 2 with the construction of a building unit of 12 rooms in a ladder construction manner. The site was abandoned by mid-15th century AD and there is evidence of post abandonment presence in the form of three hearths within trash fill and earlier floors at Roomblock 2.

with hard packed adobe with the exception of 4-26 (Kiva 1) that had plastered floor. Roughly contemporaneous with the occupation at Roomblock 1, the construction techniques at Roomblock 4 differ considerably from the coursed adobe walls without footings, plastered walls and floors and larger floor area at Roomblock 1, not only in the earliest deposits but also in the later occupied periods. There is, therefore, a consistent, marked, roughly contemporaneous architectural variability within the two spatially distinct Roomblocks 1 and 4. Remodeling provides insights as to how the communities at Hummingbird used existing spatial configurations to modify them and create new ones. The exposed architectural features in Roomblock 1 at Rooms 1-38, 1-39 and 1-74 point to several different configurations of layout, form, and construction fabric. The initial construction dated to mid-late 13th c. AD, the room suite of 1-39B and 1-38B had a configuration of a slab-lined hearth located at roughly the central eastern side of the room (Feat. 2), a storage bin on the southeast corner (Feat. 3), and the overall layout of one room facing Plaza 1 (1-39B) while the other faces outwards (Figure 4).

The earliest excavated rooms in Roomblock 4 were built with stone footings on sterile soil, or on top of trash fill or earlier wall fall, evidence that there was earlier or roughly contemporary occupation under the excavated structural remains. Floor surfaces were constructed

Figure 4 Remodeling1

32

Evangelia Tsesmeli: Architecture and Community at Hummingbird Pueblo, New Mexico By the late 13th c. AD to Early 14th c. AD, the addition of a new room 1-74 did not alter the overall room design. Features continued in Room 1-74 with the same configuration of features as the earlier room 1-39B, an eastward central hearth (Feat. 5) and a southeast bin location (Feat. 11). The household units responsible for this modification kept the roles of front-back rooms in their design. Room 1-38B was abandoned and was probably an open area with Room 1-39A assuming its function as the ‘outer’ room, while the introduction of Room 1-74 with the same features and plan as 1-39B assumed the front, facing Plaza 1 room. These spatially consistent modifications contrast the later modifications that changed the construction practices and the overall feature arrangement (Figure 5).

construction fabric changed from coursed adobe to masonry utilizing local sandstone. A hearth was included in the outer room 1-38A (Feat. 1) that was not present in the earlier construction. The hearth was smaller and adobe lined, in contrast to the previously constructed slab-lined hearth (Feat. 2). A probable corner bin with elaborate selenite lining (Feat. 10) was installed in the southwest corner of the plaza facing room rather than in the southeast corner as had been the style in earlier construction. By the late 14th c. AD, the southeastern portion of Room 1-74 revealed the patio surface of packed adobe with a dense distribution of artifacts extended over the truncated east wall and into the area of Room 1-75 to the east. This indicates that the raised patio probably extended over at least two more rooms (Figure 6).

By the mid-14th c. AD, the walls of Room 1-74 were still standing to some extent when the builders decided to truncate to a uniform height all but its northern wall, and utilize a portion of the walls as the boundaries of a raised patio extending into the Plaza 1 area. This was a new architectural element introduced in the spatial configuration of that portion of the site. The

Modifications were also exposed in Roomblock 4. Initially, around mid-13th century A.D., Room 4-8 was built as a large habitation area of more than 10m2, compared to the nearly 6m2 average for the whole site. In later modifications dated to late 13th-early 14th c. AD, an adobe wall was built on top of the continuous

Figure 5 Remodeling2

33

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era

Figure 6 Remodeling3

floor surface to divide the room into two, thus creating Room 4-2. By mid-to late 14th century A.D., the builders modified Rooms 4-21 and 4-22 introducing a new smaller floor area and mixed adobe/sandstone masonry walls. This is a consistent pattern of the use of different construction fabric in later periods in distinct spatial areas.

natural resources, possible size and origin of incoming and local groups that founded and contributed to the settlement’s growth. This section discusses which archaeological indicators of architectural variability are significant and how they relate to the use life of the buildings and the social life of Hummingbird’s residents. Continuities and transformations in the architectural attributes will conclude this account on the dynamic nature of the communities at Hummingbird with population estimates for the pueblo, and incorporation of ritual/religious aspects based on accounts from Hopi, Zuni and Ácoma elders who visited the site and contributed their knowledge and insight in explaining the meaning of certain landscape features and artifacts.

The later construction episodes at Roomblocks 1 and 4 demonstrate substantial differences from the initial configurations. New room plans smaller than the earlier versions, different location for the architectural features within the room, different construction materials, and the introduction of new architectural features, such as the raised patio, are all indicators of diverse culturally driven elements of construction introduced to the Hummingbird community.

I hypothesize that if the groups that inhabited the pueblo were diverse, coming from different areas, there will be homogeneity within building units from the same group, and variability between building units from different social groups. A central assumption in this study is that the groups that founded Hummingbird were small kin-based bands that built rooms one next to each other, creating contiguous

Communities of Practice The observable variability in architectural elements during distinct periods of occupation at Hummingbird can inform on the organization of labor, access to 34

Evangelia Tsesmeli: Architecture and Community at Hummingbird Pueblo, New Mexico Table 4. Analytical Data for Comparison Architectural Surficial Elements

Excavated Elements Other Indicators

Room Form

Shape Orientation floor area

Construction materials

presence/absence of a certain type of construction material.

Interior Technological Style and Arrangement

wall footings interior wall and floor features remodeled features

distribution of non-local ceramic wares ritual landscape

room suites of several rooms at a time. Recent research in northwest Mexico (Bagwell 2006) concurs with such assumption. Ethnographic accounts (Mindeleff 1891 in reprint 1989:100) at Tusayan and Cibola speak of kinbased groups building together rooms to live in, and expanding in space when social events like marriage demanded it. If that is the case for Hummingbird, then building units may represent the efforts of broadly defined households to provide shelter to its members while keeping them close to each other. One or two room size building units added to the core building unit through abutting walls may constitute the equivalent of a small household, while building units of three or more rooms may belong to extended households or groups of people establishing themselves into their new community which most probably held either kin ties or alliances of sorts. This postulation can be tested archaeologically by comparing architectural attributes and examine how they vary within the same core building unit, and what the variance is between different building units. Archaeological indicators that can be tested include room form (size, shape and orientation) and material of construction, interior wall and floor features, such as placement of hearths, bins, and doorways within a building unit in a roomblock, as well as presence of non-local ceramic wares at the earliest levels of occupation.

roomblocks and between roomblocks, as well as the layout, shape and size of communal areas. Room form, and material of construction were the only architectural attributes that provided adequate sample size for statistical investigation in Roomblocks 1, 2 and 3. Surficial characteristics form only part of the life history of a structure. Room form is complemented, therefore, with excavated data on interior wall and floor features, non-visible architectural details such wall footings, and plastering, as well as the distribution of non-local ceramic wares, and ritual activities (Table 4). The analysis on the architectural features showed that floor area was the most statistically significant variable. The internal variability within each roomblock was explored by using spatial autocorrelation analysis. ArcGIS 9.2 was used to run the spatial autocorrelation (Moran’s I) module on data that contained information on all three room form variables. Spatial autocorrelation was chosen because it relates similar points or polygons together. If significant spatial autocorrelation exists in a distribution, then the samples in this distribution tend to be near each other, or samples with similar properties tend to cluster near each other. Similarly in the samples of room size, floor areas that have great values will be near equally great value areas.

If there were groups occupying the pueblo at the same time coming from different homelands with varying building traditions, their rooms will be homogenous in features within a suite of contiguous rooms built by the same social group, but there will be marked differences and variability among different room suites built by distinct social groups, including the selected location of the dwellings. This hypothesis shifts the variability from the scale of a building unit to include comparisons at the scale of a roomblock. Growth at variable rates at the pueblo shapes not only the residential areas, but also areas where residents interact in social, religious or ritual contexts. Archaeological indicators to test this hypothesis include comparison of room form and consideration of construction material within

Small groups of rooms within Roomblock 1 and 3 differ significantly from the larger, ladder-like constructed ones that are more uniform in size. Rooms that are close to each other within each building unit, are consistently homogenous. Construction, therefore, with a certain floor plan, occurs in specific clusters of contiguous rooms. This is significant because it indicates that there is consistency in room size and orientation in contiguous rooms, denoting that the floor plan was most probably not a product of random activity. Results for room shape and orientation followed a random distribution for Roomblock 2. Shape was also randomly distributed in Roomblock 1.

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Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era

Figure 7 Paleoclimate and 14C

The building activity did not happen in a cultural vacuum. By the end of 13th century to the beginning of 14th century AD, the Puebloan world was undergoing substantial changes demographically and spatially. Archaeological research has documented abandonment of previous settlements with a substantial increase in nucleated sites of considerable size along the Rio Grande during that period (Crown et al. 1996; Stuart and Gauthier 1986). The sharp increase in population is generally attributed to large-scale immigration from areas outside the Rio Grande valley, particularly the Four Corners and Kayenta regions to the west.

from an outsider walking into the site area. The site would have been concealed from nearly the entire approach from the Rio Puerco, along the Cañada de los Apaches, providing an important defensive mechanism to the residents of Hummingbird Pueblo. While this could explain the initial settlement of small groups, the substantial extent of construction and settlement cannot be accounted for by such small population groups. A closer look at the radiocarbon date intercepts in relation to the spurts of wet and dry seasons indicates that up to A.D. 1400, construction at the site occurred in both wet and dry cycles. After A.D. 1400 all settlement occurs during drought periods, and it is within this time that we have major reconstructions and remodeling. Distinct architectural features begin to appear, blended with the existing ones at the same locales (Figure 7).

Climatic conditions may have favored the establishment of Hummingbird. Drought and wet conditions that alternated from AD 1220-1240 and AD 1260-1270 followed by a severe drought period of about twenty years from A.D. 1276-1299 could have been one of the driving factors to abandon the already sparse settlements around Hummingbird and could have resulted in the initial establishment of local populace at the pueblo (Grissino-Mayer (1996), Stahle et al (2007) and Woodhouse et al (2010)). The location of the settlement by the Cañada de los Apaches is also advantageous in that one can travel to and from the site by utilizing the banks of this drainage and other nearby drainages to reach the Puerco and Rio Grande Rivers. The site’s location could have provided its residents with a view of the Cañada de los Apaches, while the view of the architectural center would have been restricted

A twenty year life span for residential spaces is both archaeologically and ethnographically supported (Adler 1992: 13; Crown 1991: 305). For structures built with adobe, maintenance is vital for livable habitations and requires consistent and constant care. Structural wood open to the weather elements demands equal maintenance and attendance (Dick et al. 1999 for Picuris Pueblo). Structures, therefore, unless they are continuously maintained, fall in disrepair and are abandoned after some years. Another consideration is how many of the structures were occupied at one time. 36

Evangelia Tsesmeli: Architecture and Community at Hummingbird Pueblo, New Mexico It is safe to assume that not all rooms at Hummingbird were occupied at the same time. An ethnographic average of 78% occupancy of the total number of rooms (Hill 1970:75; Plog 1975:98) and a 20 year life span give us a population count at Hummingbird between 200250 people at best.

remodeled floor were in their majority glaze-painted bowls and jars with ‘kill holes.’ Among the vessels were bowls depicting ancestral Puebloan spirits in the form of a Kachina figure (Adams 1991), and parrots perched at the apex of a triangular design panel in an extremely lustrous paint, along with an ‘Eagle Feather’ jar. The jars were richly glazed with copper and magnesium finish. The location and distribution of the broken ceramics and the consequent abandonment deposits above them argues for an intentional action that could be explained by the proposition of a termination ritual. Another instance of terminating use of an area can be found at the closed pits at Plaza 1 that contained articulated remains of a cottontail.

The architecture of ritual places that communities at Hummingbird may have used is difficult to discern. It is within the symbolic, ritual and religious contexts that group identity may be preserved and holds the potential to provide us with clues about the migrant group’s homeland (Adams and Duff 2004; Dongoske et al. 1997). It has been posited that new ritual settings appeared to unify the diverse aggregated populations (Eckert 2007; Theuer 2013). Those new rituals could have helped in the integration between the already established groups and the newcomers. Hummingbird Pueblo contains one surface kiva 4-26, and most probably at least a subterranean one (4-9), integrated within the Roomblock 4’s central rooms. Room 4-26 (901) with ritual significance for Medicine society members as narrated by Acoma consultants from the Cultural Resource Advisory Team (CRAT) was excavated in Roomblock 4, overlooking the other roomblocks. It seems that location was chosen for such a significant ritual role and construction was fashioned not only by environmental factors or the technological choices of its builders, but also because of the needs of the diverse groups to interact and possibly integrate into the Hummingbird community. In addition to being a residential complex, and despite having one of the least adequately defined layouts, Roomblock 4 holds the potential to have been a religious and ritual focal point, not only due the presence of kivas, but also of petroglyphs and contexts that point to termination rituals. A petroglyph found by the floor of 4-24 (901) on a sandstone block is an abstract design, 20 by 15cm in size, that consists of two panels with stepped half pyramids and inverted similar shapes with a dot in the middle on the left panel and a circle in the middle of the bottom half-pyramid. This type of stepped abstract design points to a cloud but the petroglyph has not been interpreted by the modern local pueblo community members and its role within a domestic context remains unknown.

The variety of pottery glaze excavated at Hummingbird points to influences and incoming groups from Western Pueblo villages and the Rio Grande communities. Theuer (2013) discusses extensively the distribution of glaze paints and the significance of interactions with the Rio Grande communities and the shift to more southern influences later in time. Certain glaze paints were introduced early in the settlement history (Theuer 2013:201 for Rollins glaze distribution), and may have facilitated population relocations from the Zuni and Acoma regions. Sharing production technologies such as glaze paint recipes not only integrated a new group in an established community, but also helped the incoming groups maintain ties with their homeland so that exchanges would occur between them. Based on the quantity and origin of lead ores within the glaze paint, he concludes that there was regular interaction between Hummingbird and Western Pueblo villages in the Acoma and Zuni areas throughout the site’s occupation. The presence of non-local Zuni glaze ware types and Acoma glaze ware types in both select early contexts and nearly universally in later contexts evidences regular social interactions with Western Pueblo communities (Theuer 2013:227-231). Ácoma and Zuni consultants related that specific sub-clans in each community possess historical knowledge of Hummingbird Pueblo and may even name it in certain migration songs and oral histories (Theuer 2013: 230), despite the fact that none of the surrounding pueblos (Navajo, Laguna, Ácoma, Isleta, and Zuni) has ever claimed affiliation with the area Hummingbird was built on. In 1997, the pedestrian survey around Hummingbird located and recorded petroglyphs on the façade of a sandstone rock outcrop to the southeast of the pueblo. Ácoma consultants interpreted the raised–T shaped outline as representation of a house with a doorway viewed as if looking at the front of the house. A square with ‘x’ inside indicated a hunting camp. There has not been a temporal identification of which petroglyphs came first and which came later. On another outcrops other petroglyphs were recorded, including a circle with a smaller circular head and

A ritual termination deposit was uncovered at Room 4-8 with pottery that resembled western pueblo pottery but was locally produced. In an effort to identify links of such deposits with surrounding pueblos, Hopi, Zuni and Ácoma consultants visited the site and inspected its features and artifacts. Hopi consultants stated that the wives of medicine society heads produced pottery particularly for termination rituals, for closing formally a room and leaving to occupy another place. The smashed pottery vessels on the surface of the 37

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era an inverted triangle off the bottom of the head, and especially one of a face that looks like a kachina mask, incised at a height of 12ft above ground. This kachina face may have had two horns sprouted from its head. It is not clear whether they existed or not because the surface was quite eroded and weathered. Such kachina faces can be seen at the petroglyphs in the Hopi mesas, in Arizona (Fewkes 1892). The Ácoma consultants indicated that on the Ácoma map such kachina face petroglyphs mark the interior boundary for grazing, while the circular head design may have represented a Mudhead, a figure that the Ácoma hold sacred.

The spatial variability in room size, shape and orientation in between roomblocks suggests that roomblocks were initially built, and continued to be built by people with differing construction preferences/knowledge. Temporally, the room size also differs between certain building units. As architectural features represent the technological choices of their builders, the observed variability allows for inferences about the intended use of certain patterns in room form within the roomblocks. Contiguous rooms of certain size were built next to similar sized rooms with certain orientation and shape in Roomblock 3. The examination of room features indicated continuities in the construction of floors with hard packed adobe and no plastering in Roomblocks 3 and 4 while plastering was used in Roomblock 1. Coursed adobe was used in construction in Roomblocks 1, 2 and 3 in the beginning of the occupation sequence, while masonry walls were used for building or remodeling at later times in Roomblocks 1 and 3. The reverse pattern of wall fabric construction was apparent in Roomblock 4. There were rooms that walls were built with adobe in later stages, or later rooms built in their entirety with adobe.

Conclusive Remarks The movement of people across the landscape created a reconfiguration of the social landscape in the ancestral pueblo world in the 13th-14th centuries AD. The sparsely populated area around Hummingbird could not provide the scale of incoming groups that shaped the pueblo. The influx of newcomers building at distinct areas at different times with diverse room plans and construction techniques is evident in the architecture. The presence of non-local ceramics found at the site point to an ancestral homeland and shared interactions with nearby Acoma, but also to Zuni, Hopi, and the N. Rio Grande.

These spatial and temporal patterns of the built environment paint a picture of a population that evolves and adapts to the changing social conditions by using any resource available to shape their surroundings. Differences occur because the passage of time invites structural and social changes in households. The contact and continuous interaction between residents of similar or different social background may obscure subtle enculturative differences that we endeavor to trace as proxies to cultural differences. The technological choices that were distinct in the beginning of the site’s occupation and pointed to the presence of different cultural groups at Hummingbird seem to have been distributed and integrated within the diverse pueblo population at the later occupation periods, as groups shared technologies and traditions.

The architectural data analyzed in this study included a number of architectural characteristics that indicated differences in layouts and growth patterns of the roomblocks. The size and orientation of rooms, the distribution and physical characteristics of various wall features, the use of different types of building materials, and the types of various floor features constructed, all form part of the architectural record at Hummingbird. The examination of architectural variables and features, both statistically and qualitatively revealed significant spatial and temporal changes and alterations in distinct areas in Hummingbird. The combination of absolute temporal markers, ceramics and building sequence suggested that the site was built in between the end of the 13th century and continued in a cycle of rebuilding, and reuse until the late 15th century A.D. The spatial configuration at Hummingbird showed that there was intensive building activity involving most likely newcomers with extended households, but also construction of just one or two room suites that could have housed a small family household. The smaller room suites were added in a haphazard way, it seems, without much planning. The lack of more than two sets of contiguous rooms at Roomblock 4 made the estimation of building units tentative, therefore investigation focused on Roomblocks 1 to 3. Temporal affiliation for each building unit has proven elusive.

Heaton T.J., P. G. Blackwell, and C.E. Buck (2009). A Bayesian approach to the estimation of radiocarbon calibration curves: the IntCal09 methodology. Radiocarbon 51(4):1151–64 Reimer P. J., M.G.L. Baillie, E. Bard, A. Bayliss, J.W. Beck, P.G. Blackwell, C. Bronk Ramsey, C.E. Buck, G.S. Burr, R.L. Edwards, M. Friedrich, P.M. Grootes, T.P. Guilderson, I. Hajdas, T.J. Heaton, A.G. Hogg, K.A. Hughen, K.F. Kaiser, B. Kromer, F.G. McCormac, S.W. Manning, R.W. Reimer, D.A. Richards, J.R. Southon, S. Talamo, C.S.M. Turney, J. van der Plicht, C.E. Weyhenmeyer (2009). IntCal09 and Marine09 radiocarbon age calibration curves, 0–50,000 years cal BP. Radiocarbon 51(4):1111–50.

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Houses and Buildings – on Physical and Social Space in Early Modern Swedish Towns Andrine Nilsen1 and Göran Tagesson2

PhD-student at the Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg. email: [email protected] 2 PhD in Historical Archaeology, University of Lund, Sweden 2002, and project manager at Arkeologerna, the National Historical Museums, Linköping, Sweden. email: [email protected] 1

Abstract: In the last decades there have been several large scale urban excavations in Sweden and Norway and new ways of interpreting and understanding the early modern building flora is now possible. This is a study of constructions, layouts and the internal structure of the houses of some of those towns. Some elements had a traditional character and some elements were new, we aim to identify the iterated and the modern ideas in the built environment. Keywords: wood construction, stuga, morphology, social space

Introduction In the period 1600-1718, Sweden was undergoing a rapid change and different aspects of the country such as economy, military, administration and urban development were modernized. As a result, the kingdom became more centralized and the small and old-fashioned Swedish towns were the frontline of regulating efforts. An urban policy, including regulation of the old towns as well as foundation of new towns, and relocation of some of the most important towns, e.g. Jönköping and Kalmar, was intended to act as a driving force for the rest of society (Villstrand 2011). The massive campaign of modernizing and regulating towns on the Swedish mainland has recently been studied through a large body of preserved town plans (Ahlberg 2004). Also, during the last few decades, large scale archaeological excavations have been carried out in several Swedish towns, e.g. Gothenburg, Jönköping, Kalmar, Norrköping etc. On basis of both the regulating maps and the excavations, the towns of Jönköping and Kalmar have been suggested to be firmly regulated and mentally constructed spaces, indicating intentional construction of social hierarchical structures on the ground (Tagesson 2014; Tagesson in print a). The excavations and the regular plans indicate a very large scale building program during the period, in the towns as well as in the industrial centres. A very large body of buildings have recently been archaeologically documented. The physical remnants represent an important source material, with potential for discussing long term diachronical perspectives vs. synchronical analysis of building practices during the period. The housing culture seems to have been in a period of great dynamic change, where traditional

Figure 1. Map of Scandinavia (incl Jönköping, Kalmar, Gothenburg, Norrköping, Falun and Vänersborg, Oslo, Trondheim, Vadstena, Linköping, Nya Lödöse, Stockholm)

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Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era house types and societal conditions met new influences from abroad. On a general level, there are obvious changes from one- or two room house plans to more complicated plans, as well as changes from an inwardorientated plot structure to an orientation towards the street, and technical changes and improvements (For a general survey, see e.g. Rosén 2004; Tagesson in print b; Linscott and Nilsen in print). The academic knowledge of the details in these alterations as well as the local and regional differentiations, and the mechanisms in changing societal conditions is however insufficient, and need to be more thoroughly examined.

come from the Norwegian towns because of their large excavated areas of medieval settlements, the numbers of complete building remains as well as the profundity of time they represent, which makes it possible to do extended analysis from a multitude of questions. Layouts of six Swedish Early Modern urban wooden buildings were compared with medieval buildings from Sweden and Norway, starting in the early modern period and moving back in time. The study concentrates on structural ideas of grammatical transformation (Chomsky 1957; Harris 1989; Hanson 1998; Hillier and Hanson 1984; Johnson 1993; Lévi-Strauss 1970) where the house is understood as put together from individual units, e.g. modules, where each part is studied separately. The layout is studied and so are also construction techniques and social indicators of individual houses as well. By comparing them with other houses in the same location from the same time period, as well as over the whole history of the settlement, a micro-archaeological approach is reached (Cornell and Fahlander 2002). The use of this micro-archaeological method and theory on several similar locations in a wider geographical area broadens the discussion and different scales can be reviewed which in turn can provide information on large, as well as small structural and social phenomena.

This paper presents two research projects, formulating agendas to answer these challenges. The first section is an abbreviated version of the archaeological part of a joint project to investigate wood constructions above and below ground while using architecture and archaeology to identify for how long it is possible to follow certain features and layouts of the timbered buildings of the early modern period into the past. From a theoretical standpoint the remains of the houses have been studied through the use of modules and an idea of grammatical transformations (Chomsky 1957). By focusing on modules it is possible to interpret the material more freely than by using the typology of houses that traditionally have dominated the research (Linscott and Nilsen forthcoming).

Structural grammar and the tradition of building.

The second section presents an on-going project of the housing culture in towns in south-eastern Sweden. The subject of interest is the urban spatial structures and the lay-out and construction of the houses over the period ca. 1600-1800, as well as the interrelationship between buildings and human actors on a household level (Lindström and Tagesson 2015; Tagesson and Lindström in print).

The most common layout during the period investigated in both Sweden and Norway was the two-room building which was made up by the porch and the main room (Sw. stuga) (Linscott and Nilsen forthcoming). The porch was at first, presumably, an open space by the door, but some shelter from wind, rain and snow was needed. It has, over time, been altered to become an uninsulated room with at least a roof and two side walls, created from extending the logs in the walls and in some cases constructing a third wall then creating an enclosed space.

Perspectives on the urban dwelling over time and space; traditional views or innovation? What constituted modern living in Sweden during the Early Modern period for the common urbanite? By studying reports and drawings from excavations in Gothenburg, Falun and Vänersborg certain features emerge. There seems to be a recurring pattern as to construction, size and layout as well as of heating and insulation, but what do these patterns actually say about the living conditions and choices of the dwellers? Is it possible to recognize modern features as well as traditional ones?

The main room of a dwelling had a few specific features in both Norway and Sweden, e.g. insulated in one way or another; it almost always had a wooden floor and a corner fireplace. In the early medieval examples from before the 1200s the insulation was created by moss or cloth between the logs in the walls and by constructing wall benches along three of the inner walls. By this arrangement of the wall benches, only the wall towards the porch and the corner fireplace was left free. Therefore it is logical to place the entrance in that wall. In the Early Modern construction the draught free environment was instead created from insulating the floor with an underlying layer of sand/ clay, birch bark and by inserting moss between the logs in the walls. Another feature of construction that

This is a brief report on an extended archaeological paper on a comparative study of findings of just over 400 urban buildings, from the eleventh to the seventeenth century, in Sweden and Norway (Linscott and Nilsen forthcoming).The majority of examples 40

Andrine Nilsen and Göran Tagesson: Houses and Buildings – on Physical and Social Space

Figure 2a. Göteborg/Gothenburg Kv. Gamla Teatern, Phase 2, house 1, from the 1620s (Jeffery 1984). Redrawn by R. Potter.

Figure 2b. Vänersborg Kv. Häggen, A 8 (Älveby 1990). Redrawn by R. Potter.

helped against the draught as well as being ornamental was the introduction of panelling on the outside and inside walls. During the early modern period wall paint was also introduced (Christophersen and Nordeide 1994, Shia 1987, 1988). The main house structures in Gothenburg and Oslo (Fig 2) were built in a log timber technique, and extensions have been built in both cases. The second room, in the medieval example from Oslo, was added as an extension with a separate entrance and was built in post and plank technique with vertical planks. In the Early Modern example the extra room was included in the construction from the start with an internal entrance from the main room; both rooms were constructed in the same building technique using log construction.

area was not excavated. It is likely though that when the porch was constructed in a different technique then the rest of the house, there was always a room on both sides of the porch which would mean an extended house as shown in fig. 3. Another kind of Early Modern layout is the timbered three-room building (Figure 3), excavated in the Swedish town Vänersborg. Two equally sized rooms with insulated floors were placed on either side of the uninsulated entrance hall/vestibule. The room facing the street had a corner fireplace. The entrances to the rooms were placed on opposite sides of the vestibule next to the fireplace. From the soot found during excavations in the vestibule it seems as though the fireplace was fired from there. This might indicate that it had been rebuilt as a masonry oven (Älveby 1990).

In the example from Gothenburg the porch was also extended using a half-timber construction made of half-timber and bricks; it is possible that there could have been yet another room to the building but that

The integral building from the Norwegian town, Trondheim (Figure 3) in the twelfth century shows how 41

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era

Figure 3a. Oslo, K 195, Søndre felt, from the 12th century (Schia 1987). Redrawn by R. Potter.

Figure 3b. Trondheim, Folkebibliotekstomten, 113/phase 3-4 (Christophersen and Nordeide 1994). Redrawn by R. Potter.

two separate buildings in close proximity have been joined together in a secondary building phase. One room had a corner fireplace and one did not. The porch has become the vestibule in between the two buildings. The space in between the timbered buildings has been joined by using post and plank technique, with vertical planks, thus creating a third room.

strong building traditions and general structural similarities. In the next section, a research project is presented, including a close analysis of towns in Southern Sweden, highlighting both possibilities and difficulties when studying changing housing culture on a micro-level (the project is presented in Lindström and Tagesson 2015; Tagesson and Lindström in print). In this paper, some examples from Vadstena, Jönköping and Kalmar are presented (fig 1). These towns have certain similarities in common; being important towns with medieval roots, the two latter towns however moved and constructed on adjacent but virgin soils (1610s and 1640s respectively), and both intended to be fortified. Kalmar and Jönköping were also the seat of provincial governors, important trading centres and with regulated town-plans during the period. Both towns also have a rather impressive body of archaeological records in the Early Modern town; in Jönköping relying on a local archaeological tradition since the 1960s (Nordman 2009; Nordman et al 2014), in

This integral building is from a grammatical idea of structural transformation constructed of two 2-room buildings, or one 1-room building and one 2-room building depending on how you interpret it. Each of these buildings can be seen as a module. In this case, two modules are used to create one 3-room building (Christophersen and Nordeide 1994). Elusive houses – from typology to morphology In the previous section, the long-term development, as well as large-scale geographical contexts has indicated 42

Andrine Nilsen and Göran Tagesson: Houses and Buildings – on Physical and Social Space Kalmar based on large-scale excavations during the last 10 years (Tagesson and Nordström 2012; Tagesson ed. 2014; Tagesson and Carelli 2016; Tagesson in print b).

food. The etymology of the word stuga is however more complicated, it may refer to the heated room in the house, but also the house itself (=the cottage, see Atzbach 2012; Linscott and Nilsen in print for further discussions). A kitchen (Sw. kök), is a special room for preparing and cooking food, sometimes also for eating food. A chamber (Sw. kammare) is a small room for specialised functions, mainly bedroom or store-room, directly or indirectly heated. The vestibule (Sw. förstuga) was a passage, usually not heated, from exterior to interior and between inner spaces. Sometimes the main entrance was extended by a porch (Sw. veranda or förstukvist) outside the main houses. Other provisional spaces may occur, like workshops, shops, store-rooms, closets etc.

The concept morphology is used to emphasize the aim of analysing the archaeological remnants as spatial entities. As mentioned above, the variation and combinations of certain elements combined in different ways and the range of combinations are the fundaments of morphological analysis. To analyse the morphology it is also important to study patterns of access and movements in the buildings. In the project a space-syntax analysis is used (Hillier and Hanson 1984; Almevik 2012:158ff). For this task, it is crucial that the archaeologist in the field scrutinizes the archaeological remnants in order to observe thresholds and traces of entrances, e.g. cobbled or otherwise hard surfaces (Sw. ingångsyta) close to the entrances (Tagesson ed. 2014:163). There seems to be a range of variations in the observances in the record in the present study, which is important to have in mind when discussing morphology and possibilities of using a space-syntax analysis.

Houses in Vadstena, Jönköping and Kalmar Vadstena did get its charters in the year 1400 and its rapid growth and modern town-plan are highly dependent on the famous Bridgettine convent from 1384. The town was prospering in the direct vicinity of the abbey and became an important town in late medieval Swedish society. The convent was dissolved as late as 1595, but the town continued to prosper from the constructing of a renaissance fortification, the presence of the royal court and its advantageously commercial localisation (Söderström ed. 2000). In 1995-96, a largescale excavation was carried out in the residential blocks at the site of the later renaissance castle. The buildings and plots may be dated to the oldest period of the town, from 1400 up to the construction of the castle in 1545 (Hedvall et al. 2000; Hedvall ed. 2002). An additional but smaller excavation uncovered two plots in the eastern part of the town, which included houses from the period ca 1545-1600 (The Prelaten block, excavated in 2000, Hedvall 2006).

In the Kalmar record it is obvious that many of the old houses have been succeeded by new houses, with stone sills on top of the old ones, indicating the same size and form as the old house, thus indicating that the new stone sills may be considered just a renovating feature in the still standing older house. In many other cases the interior planning (the inner walls, the fireplaces etc.) have, however, been altered at the same time, indicating the construction of a new house. Documentary evidence indicates that the houses were considered old and ramshackle after only 80 years during the 18th century (Tagesson in Tagesson and Carelli 2016). A question that calls for further investigation is what actually was considered ramshackle after a couple of generations: the sills, the interior settings, the roofs, or what?

The medieval town of Jönköping was situated along the southern coast of the big lake Vättern, and known from the end of the 13th century. During the Kalmar war, the town was burnt down in 1612, and rebuilt in an adjacent area as it was an important land route, at the narrow isthmus between the big lake Vättern and the small lake Munksjön. The new town was constructed as an urban fortification with walls and bastions, and protected by a renaissance castle. The town fortification was, however, becoming obsolete after the conquering of southern parts of present Sweden in 1658 and, as a result, the town plan changed. The town appears, to have been constructed in a hierarchical manner, with merchant plots along the main street in the north and plots for the gun smiths in the southern part along the Munksjön (Sw. Smedjegatan). In a block south of the square, houses and plots were erected for the German weavers, invited to work in the textile industry (Sw. Tyska maden). The south-eastern blocks of the town may have been

The question of the house as an entity for analysis has also to be further discussed. The house concept includes the physical appearance of the building, as well as the ongoing process of alterations; major rebuilding and changes in morphology, as well as minor refurbishing. These variations have to be integrated with the historical sources documenting the throng of people living on and owning the plots, the living agents, the builders and the households. The combination of the physical house and the owners and people living in the house may be labelled as the life biography of the houses. Some general concepts have to be defined. Stuga is an old Swedish word, indicating a multifunctional heated room, including functions for both work, rest and sleep, as well as preparing, cooking and consuming 43

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era intended for less well-off Swedish citizens (Sw. Svenska maden) (Nordman et al. 2014; Tagesson 2014).

The rather extensive body of documented houses in the three towns make it possible to discuss similarities and differences. The spatial structure of the plots seems to have changed over time, indicating profound alterations in accessibility and movement as well as display of daily life. In Vadstena, the documented residential houses have a retracted or inward orientated position on the plots, during the period from the 15th century up till the second half of the 16th century. The documented houses in Jönköping and Kalmar, established during the 1610s and 1660s, have on the contrary an outward orientated position, the residential houses orientated towards the street.

The archaeological evidence in Jönköping is fairly comprehensive, due to an outstanding archaeological record, including excavations from the 1970s up till today. Almost 25% of the town centre has been subject to excavations, however on different levels of quality. In the present study, four excavations are analysed, including houses in different social zones. The study so far has included the excavations in Jönköping at the Aspen block 1982 (Nilsson 2008; Tagesson 2014); the Ankaret block 1996 (Nordman 2011); the Apeln block 2002-03 (Haltiner Nordström and Pettersson 2014); the Dolken block 1983-84 (Stibéus et al 2009; Tagesson 2014). A more extensive presentation and analysis of the source material will be presented later (Tagesson in print c.).

These structural changes have not been subject to studies of longer temporal contexts. In the town of Linköping the changes in plot structures have however been studied in the Brevduvan excavation in the 1980s, where the change from retracted to an outward turned plot structure in two adjacent plots was dated to the 1640s (Feldt and Tagesson 1997; Tagesson 2002). Recently, two plots in the eastern outskirts of Linköping have been excavated in the Bokbindaren block. These plots seem to have been constructed around 1620, in a period of newly constructed areas in this part of the town. Interestingly, the plot structure is indicative in this case of a rather old-fashioned way of placing the residential buildings in the middle of the plot, thus indicating a retracted structure (Tagesson 2013b).

Kalmar, finally, has medieval roots back to the 12th century, but was moved and rebuilt on the adjacent island Kvarnholmen in the middle of the 17th century. The new town was constructed as an ideal plan, with rectangular blocks within an urban fortification with bastions and walls. Though a symmetrical plan with egalitarian plots, the town seems to have been constructed when a socially divided and hierarchically structured topography. In the southern part, we can still appreciate stone houses for the wealthy burghers from the 1650s and 1660s next to the harbour, and smaller plots for the less well-off artisans and lower officials to the north. During the last decade, there have been large scale excavations in the northern blocks, and c 100 houses have been recorded. The case studies from Kalmar comprise the excavation at the Mästaren block 2009 (Tagesson and Nordström 2012) and the Gesällen block (Tagesson ed. 2014).

The vast excavations in Nya Lödöse, from the 15th century to the beginning of the 17th century, tentatively seem to be interpreted as a retracted plot structure, noticeable in more than 16 plots excavated recently (Obrink 2016:113). In the 1620s the earliest houses seem to have been orientated towards the street in the newly founded Gothenburg, which is also apparent for example of houses documented in Vänersborg from the 1640s and in Falun from the period after the regulation in the 1650s (Linscott and Nilsen in print).

Towards a social understanding of the Early Modern urban houses In the study so far, the archaeological record of building remnants in the towns of Vadstena, Jönköping and Kalmar are analysed in order to interpret the houses, however this is not as easy as it looks. The paper so far advocates a set of methods in order to make better record in the field, to scrutinize the remnants on discrete traces, important for a better understanding of the constructions as house left-overs as well as traces of functions and movements; traces of entrances, as well as remnants of heating constructions and other functional aspects. The analysis of the different stages in the life biography of the houses (construction, use, rebuilding and finally destruction) is important in order to understand the buildings as a set of several different temporal processes.

This change in the general plot-structure is a wellknown issue during the Early Modern period. In the study so far, this process seems to be dated to the early 1600s, but may be due to the character of the cases. The houses in both Kalmar and Jönköping were constructed during a period of restructuring and total rebuilding of the townscape. Interestingly, the Prelaten case in Vadstena and the Bokbindaren case in Linköping may also be the result of a minor restructuring of the towns, but still the older retracted structure was implemented as late as 1620. The profound alterations of the plot structure in the Swedish towns are earliest noticeable in the newly constructed townscapes of Jönköping in the 1610s, in Gothenburg in the 1620s, in Vänersborg in the 1640s, in 44

Andrine Nilsen and Göran Tagesson: Houses and Buildings – on Physical and Social Space Falun in the 1650s and in Kalmar in the 1660s, perhaps because the plots in these towns were constructed on virgin soil. The changes in plots in continual use seem to have occurred somewhat later; in Linköping in the 1640s.

during the Middle Ages (Linscott and Nilsen in print). From the region around Kalmar, there are however examples in the written records of this kind of very humble buildings in the countryside, interpreted as representing low-class residences. In the late material from the eastern part of Kvarnholmen, Kalmar (from the 19th century) there are very few examples of oneroom buildings (Hofrén 1937; Tagesson in Tagesson and Carelli 2016). Interestingly, this kind of houses has been documented in the Apeln excavation in Jönköping, dated to the 19th century and interpreted as representing a type of working-class lodgings emerging during this period (Haltiner Nordström and Pettersson 2014). Kina Linscott has recently highlighted an interesting record of several small houses in the outskirts of Stockholm, at the Åsöberget, Stockholm (Linscott and Nilsen in print). The discussion on these very small, one-room residential buildings for workers and handicraft people, has to be made in the future in accordance with the relative absence of this kind of houses in the present study, and needs to be considered as examples of a proletarisation. This very important issue urgently calls for further studies.

The plot structure is, however, more complicated than it looks. In the Jönköping excavations, there seem to be differences in the positioning of the residential houses. Some of the houses in the very town centre seem to have had the façades to the street from the very construction phase; the majority of the houses were gable-turned up till the 18th or even the 19th centuries. The same is obvious in Kalmar, where the northern part of the town housed more humble gable-turned buildings intended for the middling class, and the stone houses in the southern and more prominent part of the town were orientated with the façades to the street (Tagesson in print a). The same situation is also present in Vadstena, with older drawings and documentations of façade indicating houses orientated along Storgatan during the 17th century (Söderström ed. 2000). These results underlines the impression of great differences in physical and social space, and underlines structural differences in the towns, previously also discussed on the basis of town-plans, sizes of plots, the spread of novelties like tiled stoves as well as differences between houses of wood and houses of stone (Tagesson in print a, b; Tagesson and Jeppsson 2015 a and b).

The three-room residential building has been considered a novelty during the Early Modern period in Sweden. The extant survey of especially medieval houses documented in Norway emphasizes that this kind of residential houses may occur even in the beginning of the Middle Ages, but are interpreted as first and foremost a result of extending the house, and seem to be rather unusual. This type of building is absent in the archaeological material in Vadstena, but present in Jönköping already from the 1610s, where at least two quite different types is observed. The first one consists of a central stuga with two smaller unheated chambers on each side, the entrance directly to the stuga (house plan A, fig. 4). The other one is quadrangular, with the direct entrance to the big stuga, and with two small adjacent chambers on the one side (house plan B, fig. 4).

The study in the first section of this paper indicated homogenous traditions in the housing culture in Scandinavia during a long period. The present study aims to scrutinize a body of excavations on a smaller and narrower scale, but on the contrary comprising a vaster body of documented buildings at each town. On this micro-level the changes seem to be profound during the Early Modern period. In the medieval material, the two-room house seems to be a normal type for residential functions. This plan includes one heated room, a stuga, and a not heated vestibule. The archaeological documentation of houses in Vadstena from both the late medieval as well as the early modern period (ca 1400-1600) reveals houses with a rather simple morphology: houses with one big stuga and a plain vestibule. The vestibule does not contain a kitchen, or a separate chamber. Tentative results from the very big excavations in Nya Lödöse, seem to indicate that this kind of houses, with vestibule, chamber and stuga, but no separate kitchen, was still a standard residential building (Obrink 2016:117).

Interestingly, these two types are not previously known in the ethnological material, and may possibly be a specific urban house-plan. The first type seems to be rather common; it is observed in Jönköping in the Apeln block in the weapon artisans’ part of the town, but also present in the Dolken block. Some houses of this type are also present in Gothenburg, but hitherto not observed in Kalmar. The second type seems to be very exclusive, no parallels are hitherto found, not even in other parts of Jönköping. One common feature for these types of houses in Jönköping is the direct entrance to the stuga, without any traces of vestibules or porches, and secondary interior passages to the chambers. This seems to be rather unusual in the ethnological material, and scarce in older archaeological record. The special arrangement in some of the houses, with the entrance

The presence of one-room residential buildings is very scanty in the present study; there is just one single house in Kalmar, dated to the 1660s. Also in the survey presented by Linscott and Nilsen, this kind of residential building seems to have been rather unusual 45

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era

Figure 4. House plans from the archaeological excavation in the Dolken block, Jönköping 1988. House plan A is represented in the southern part of the block (A30, A43, A45, A55) and house plan B is represented in the middle (A27). After Stibéus et al. 2009 and Tagesson 2014.

directly to the stuga and next to the fire-place, placed in an exterior wall, seems to be contradictory to general spatial arrangements in other house-types.

traditions on a very local scale. During the end of the eighteenth century, the morphology of the houses was however profoundly changed.

The tendency of different building traditions in different parts of the town of Jönköping is an interesting feature, but must be analysed further in future research. The case-study of tiled stoves in Jönköping provides a similar result, with the spread of this kind of novelty in a rather uneven way during the 17th century (Tagesson and Jeppsson 2015a; 2015b). The tendency of duplicating the old house types when needed to be exchanged and renewed is obvious in the Apeln case, and also to be found in Kalmar. Perhaps also the houses along the Storgatan may be stating the same tendency of continuity from the early 1600s up to the 1700s, which may be an illustration of strong building

The situation in Kalmar enhances different aspects. The residential houses are symmetrically placed on the south-eastern part of the plots, thus forming a rather distinct and repetitive pattern along the street front. The houses have been accessible from the narrow yards, and the borders towards the street presumably closed by a fence and a porch. The structure may therefore be considered as both exposed towards the street, but at the same time conceived as mentally retracted. The one-storeyed houses may have given an impression of a highly regulated planning of the constructed plots in the northern part of the town. In the southern part, towards the harbour, some of the plots were furnished 46

Andrine Nilsen and Göran Tagesson: Houses and Buildings – on Physical and Social Space with stone houses, in order to fulfil the intentions of the town government. These houses are characterized as multi-storeyed and with façades towards the street. The main entrance was also exposed and emphasized with prolific entrance porches as well as double-staircases on the street-front. The differences between these two spatial arrangements may be interpreted as a deliberate way of clean-cutting a hierarchical topography of the town (Tagesson in print a, b; Tagesson in Tagesson and Carelli 2016).

persons renting for a short period of time rather than buying a home there. In turn this meant that the houses got reordered in a new fashion. Johnson mentions Hubka’s reflections that there seldom were radical new ideas within the craft tradition but rather a re-ordering of the hierarchy of ideas within a common grammar (Johnson 1993:72; Hubka 1986:430). Improved heating technology made the use of more rooms possible. There was a keeping of a medieval core of the house, transformed and sometimes hidden behind plaster or paneling. The main room/stuga was traditionally multi-functional. Some of the previous functions are separated in multiple rooms of the house during the Early Modern period e.g. kitchen, bedchambers and storage. Family cycles change over time and so do the needs of functionality. In addition it was common to let out houses, rooms or sometimes beds and as the urban population and the pressures of finding accommodations increase the complexity of the household and the members within it force changes onto building and living.

The interior of the putative humble houses in the northern block is, however, rather diverse. When scrutinizing the house plans it is obvious that the possibilities of variations are plentiful, within certain limits. These residential buildings may comprise two or three rooms, with a lot of variations (fig. 5). There are examples of continuity in some of the plots, but the overall impression is of a morphological discontinuity. There are some features indicating rather up-to-date functions, such as the presence of separate kitchens, and an extra room with a fire-place, probably a secondary room for preparing food-stuffs. There are also examples of tiled-stoves, both as a complement in the heated stuga, but also as secondary heating in a stuga separated from a kitchen (Tagesson and Jeppsson 2015b). The variety in the rather heterogeneous material seems however to have had its certain limits; there is just one one-room house and no three-room buildings with additional chambers on the rear end (a typical feature for middle class houses e.g. vicarages and lower military officer’s residences) to be identified, which indicates that the possible variation was framed within rather distinctive socially accepted limits.

There are changes to roof constructions in Sweden as well. The turf roof was prohibited in urban areas such as Gothenburg for example during the 17th century (Bäckström 1923:29) so other materials came into use, which in turn changed the look of the house as well as altered its qualities, not to mention the skyline of the city. Jetties were a part of the Swedish urban landscape; today examples of it can be seen in preserved Early modern buildings in Eksjö for example. In the urban areas there seems to have been a need for making the best use of limited space. Jetties are introduced to widen the first floor both externally as well as internally. The external jetties created larger chambers on the first floor compared with the ground level, directed outwards overlooking the street. Domestic activities could be transferred to the first floor where the rooms were better lit than on the ground floor in a crowded, dark and narrow urban street. The urban buildings also varied from the rural by being used in a more diverse way (Giles 2014:21–24). Through historical documentation, archaeological surveys as well as early photos show the heterogeneity of building materials and building techniques making up a complex and multifaceted town.

Discussion The pattern we glimpse here shows elements of tradition but at the same time of change. The early modern period was a time of enormous urban activity and innovation in the form of reorganization of the urban plan, re-ordering of urban locations i.e. moving towns to new places, sometimes at some distance and sometimes to a location nearby. There were also a number of newly developed towns emerging. All this reordering combined with urban fires made possible, and also forced forward, a constant production of housing and building materials. The setting for innovating ideas, sometimes forced from circumstance, along with modern amenities like the chimney, the tiled stove and window glazing made room for new forms of habitation and building. The organization of the kingdom took a new form during the early modern period and a professionalization of the administration, with an urban center, brought forward additional reasons for people to pass through town. In addition, seasonal work meant that the rental market was booming with

The Early Modern urban settlement was built on a strongly iterated traditional building pattern that has been proven to have influenced the dwelling in numerous ways. The timbered two-room log house with a main room and a porch has been present since the initial phases of the urban planning process in Norway. It was then introduced on a larger scale in Sweden during the mid-1200s and grows to dominate the urban setting well into the Early Modern era. The three47

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era

Figure 5a. House plans in Kalmar, ca 1660-1800. The great variety of different house plans is presented according to number of rooms, the placing of the entrances and stoves. 5b. Houses from first half of the 18th century in Gesällen block, Kalmar. The houses on the three plots represent house-plans no. 14, 16 and 11. After Tagesson and Carelli 2016.

room integrated house with two rooms and a central vestibule popular in the 17th century has a layout that can be found in Trondheim in the 11th century, but seems to be rather unusual in the archaeological record before in Early modern period so far.

in the towns studied has long ranging references back well into the 10th century. Ways to insulate the home changed somewhat over the centuries; however the need for a warm house and solutions to solve this has always been present.

In Scandinavia the criterion for a functional residence is a house that is warm and free of draught. It has been revealed that the corner fireplace found in dwellings

We have shown that during the 17th century novelties and modern ideas seem to appear also among common people. In Kalmar and Jönköping, the three room 48

Andrine Nilsen and Göran Tagesson: Houses and Buildings – on Physical and Social Space houses are common, indicating separate kitchens as well as a stuga with a more specialized function for daily life, sometimes with a secondary heating, i.e. tile stoves and/or masonry ovens, as well as a wider use of chimneys. The introduction of windows, new ways of heating e.g. masonry ovens and ceramic stoves, as well as the use of chimneys is other evidences of the same process.

GOTARC. Serie C, Arkeologiska Skrifter, 0282-9479 ; 46. Göteborg: Inst. för arkeologi, Univ. Erixon, Sigurd (1947). Svensk byggnadskultur. Studier och skildringar belysande den svenska byggnadskulturens historia. Feldt, Ann-Charlott and Tagesson, Göran (1997). Två gårdar i biskopens stad - om de arkeologiska undersökningarna i kvarteret Brevduvan, Linköping 1987-89. Östergötland Fakta 3. Giles, Kate (2014). ‘Ways of Living in Medieval England.’ In Dwellings, Identities and Homes: European Housing Culture from the Viking Age to the Renaissance, edited by Kate Giles and Mette Svart Kristiansen: 13–28. Jutland Archaeological Society Publications 84. Højberg: Jutland Archaeological Society. Haltiner Nordström, Susanne and Pettersson, Claes (2014). Vapensmedernas gårdar. Arkeologiska undersökningar vid Smedjegatan. Faktorismide, köpenskap och bebyggelse 1620-1950. Jönköpings läns museum. Arkeologisk rapport 2013: 48. Hanson, Julienne (1998). Decoding Homes and Houses. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harris, Richard (1989). ‘The Grammar of Carpentry.’ Vernacular Architecture 20 (1): 1–8. doi:10.1179/ vea.1989.20.1.1. Hedvall, Rikard et al. (2000). Stadsgårdar i den senmedeltida stadsdelen Sanden, Vadstena. Riksantikvarieämbetet. Rapport UV Öst: 26. Hedvall, Rikard. (ed.) (2002). Arkeologi i Vadstena. Nya resultat med utgångspunkt i undersökningarna i stadsdelen Sanden. Riksantikvarieämbetet Arkeologiska undersökningar. Skrifter 46. Linköping. Hedvall, Rikard (2006). Stadsgårdar från 1500-tal. Kv Prelaten i Vadstena, Vadstena stad och kommun, Östergötland. Riksantikvarieämbetet UV Öst rapport : 30. Hillier, Bill and Hanson, Julianne. (1984). The social logic of space. Cambridge. Hofrén, Manne (1937). Herrgårdar och boställen. En översikt över byggnadskultur och heminredning å Kalmar läns herrgårdar 1650-1850. Nordiska Museets Handlingar: 6. Stockholm. Hubka, Thomas (1986). Just Folks Designing: Vernacular Designers and the Generation of Form. In: Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture. Dell Upton and John Michael Vlach, eds. University of Georgia Press, January. Johnson, Matthew (1993). Housing culture: traditional architecture in an English landscape. London. Lindström, Dag and Tagesson, Göran 2015. On spatializing history – the household as spatial unit in Early Modern Swedish towns. META Historiskarkeologisk tidskrift. Linscott, Kina and Nilsen, Andrine. In print. Building with wood in the early modern town. In: Cornell, Per et al. City, Culture and Social Encounters.

Our results stress these changes to be contemporary to other changes on different levels in society. The plot structure seems to change radically during the 17th century, from a retracted structure to a structure with the residential houses oriented towards the street. There are also tendencies of hierarchical urban structures within the towns, especially noticeable in the moved and newly constructed towns of Jönköping and Kalmar. In the latter town we have pointed to the separation of functions within the townscape, indicated in the investigated northern blocks in Kalmar with solely residential functions, but hardly any workshops, which may be interpreted as a separation of handicraft and artisan work from the daily life of the households. The same tendencies may also be noticeable in Jönköping. These evidences, along with the separated functions within the buildings, may be interpreted as different aspects of a distinguishing culture. These tendencies seem to have been even more clearer when studying the changes in housing culture during the 19th century, but call for further studies, including a wider range of disciplines and records. References cited Ahlberg, Nils (2005). Stadsgrundningar och planförändringar. Svensk stadsplanering 1521-1721. Uppsala. Almevik, Gunnar (2012). Byggnaden som kunskapskälla. Gothenburg Studies in Conservation 27. Atzbach, Rainer (2012). The Stube: Constructive Evidence for the Concept of a Smoke-Free Heated Living Room between the Alps and Southern Scandinavia. In: Carvais et al. 2012. Nuts and Bolts of Construction History Vol. 3: 269-276. Arvid Bäckström (1923). Studier I Göteborgs byggnadshistoria före 1814; ett bidrag till svensk byggnadshistoria. Nordiska Museet, Stockholm. Vol. 2 Christophersen, Axel and Walaker Nordeide, Sœbjørg (1994). Kaupangen ved Nidelva: 1000 års byhistorie belyst gjennom de arkeologiske undersøkelsene på Folkebibliotekstomten i Trondheim 1973-1985. Riksantikvarens skrifter 7. Oslo Chomsky, Noam (1957). Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mounton. Cornell, Per, and Fahlander, Fredrik (2002). Social Praktik Och Stumma Monument : Introduktion till Mikroarkeologi.

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Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era Nilsson, Susanne (2008). Kvarteret Aspen, Jönköping. Arkeologisk undersökning 1982. Jönköpings läns museum. Arkeologisk rapport: 60. Nordman, Ann-Marie (2009). Att flytta en stad. Hur Jönköpings stad flyttades under tidigt 1600-tal. Seminarieuppsats, Lunds universitet, Historisk arkeologi. Nordman, Ann-Marie (2011). 1600-talets borgargårdar i Jönköping. Kv Ankaret 8 och 9, arkeologisk undersökning, Jönköping. Jönköpings läns museum. Arkeologisk rapport: 62. Nordman, Ann-Marie, Nordström, Mikael and Pettersson, Claes (eds) (2014). Stormaktsstaden Jönköping: 1614 och framåt. Jönköping: Jönköpings läns museum. Obrink, Mattias (2016). Kulturella normer speglade av strukturer i en tidigmodern stad. META Historiskarkeologisk tidskrift. Rosén, Christina (2004). Stadsbor och bönder. Materiell kultur och social status i Halland från medeltid till 1700-tal. Riksantikvarieämbetet. Arkeologiska undersökningar. Skrifter 53. Lund studies in Medieval Archaeology 35. Schia, Erik (1987). ‘De Arkeologiske Utgravninger I Gamlebyen, Oslo.’ In Sødre Felt: Stratigrafi, Bebyggelserester Og Daterende Funngrupper., edited by Erik Schia. Vol. 3. Oslo: Øvre Ervik, Alvheim and Eide Akademisk Forlag. Stibéus, Magnus, Gustavsson, Jeanette and Nydolf, Nils Gustav (2009). Tyska Maden i 1600-talets Jönköping: tre undersökningar i kvarteret Dolken och kvarteret Droskan, RAÄ 50: Kristine församling i Jönköpings stad, Jönköpings län: särskild undersökning. Jönköping: Jönköpings läns museum. Söderström, Göran. (ed.) (2000). 600 år i Vadstena. Vadstena stads historia från äldsta tider till år 2000. Västervik. Tagesson, Göran. (2002a). Biskop och stad. Aspekter av urbanisering och sociala rum i medeltidens Linköping. Lund Studies in Medieval Archaeology 30. Linköping. Tagesson, Göran. (2013a). Vore bäst alle huus vore lijka – makt, ideologi och modernitet i den tidigmoderna staden. In: Ersgård (ed.) Visioner och verklighet – arkeologiska texter om den tidigmoderna staden. Gotarc Series C. Arkeologiska skrifter no. 76. Tagesson, Göran. (2013b). Kv Bokbindaren 28. Hemma hos Fröken Löfgren – från 1600-talets kronotomter till 1700-talets hantverksgårdar. Linköpings stad och kommun, Östergötlands län: arkeologisk slutundersökning. UV Öst rapport 2013:31. Linköping: UV Öst, Avdelningen för arkeologiska undersökningar, Riksantikvarieämbetet. Tagesson, Göran (2014). Tidigmoderna rum. Gård, hus och rum i 1600- och 1700-talets Jönköping. In:

Stibéus (ed.) Fällberedarens gård, apotekarens trädgård och slaktarens kaj. Arkeologi i kv Ansvaret, Jönköping. Tagesson, Göran (ed.) (2014). Kvarteret Gesällen 4 och 25. Särskild arkeologisk undersökning. Kalmar stad och kommun. Kalmar län. Riksantikvarieämbetet, arkeologiska uppdragsverksamheten. Rapport: 93. Tagesson, Göran. In print a. ‘Would be better if all the houses looked all the same…’ The Early modern town as power, ideology and modernity. In: Cornell, Per et al. City, Culture and Social Encounters. Tagesson, Göran. In print b. Houses of wood, houses of stone – on constructing a modern town in early modern Kalmar. In: Naum et al. Encountering the Other. Lund University. Tagesson, Göran. In print c. Tidigmoderna hus i fyra götaländska städer. Rapport från ett arkeologiskt forskningsprojekt. Otryckt rapport. Tagesson, Göran and Carelli, Peter (2016). Kalmar mellan dröm och verklighet. Konstruktionen av den tidigmoderna staden. Arkeologerna. Statens historiska museer. Tagesson, Göran and Jeppsson, Annika. 2015a. Varmt och skönt – och iögonfallande modernt. Kakelugnar som social konsumtion i det tidigmoderna Sverige. Fornvännen 2. Tagesson, Göran and Jeppsson, Annika (2015b). Kakel och kakelugnar i fyra tidigmoderna städer. Rapport från ett forskningsprojekt 2012–2014. Otryckt rapport. https:// shmm.academia.edu/G%C3%B6ranTagesson/ Reports Tagesson, G. and Nordström, A (2012). Kv Mästaren, Kalmar stad och kommun: särskild arkeologisk undersökning (2009). Riksantikvarieämbetet, arkeologiska uppdragsverksamheten, UV Öst. Rapport 2012:104. Tagesson, Göran and Lindström, Dag. In print. House and household – buildings, people and building biographies. Villstrand, Nils Erik (2011). Sveriges historia: 1600-1721. Stockholm: Norstedt Älveby, Kristina (1990). Kv. Häggen. Bebyggelselämningar och kulturlager. Arkeologisk undersökning 1990. Vänersborg. Lödöse Museum/Älvsborgs Läns Museum. Acknowledgements The article is part of two research project on early modern housing culture in Sweden. The first section by Andrine Nilsen, the second section by Göran Tagesson. The author wishes to thank the scientific board of the Magnus Bergvall foundation for supporting the subproject of the second section. Thanks to Norman Davies, Linköping, for revising the English.

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Structures and Social Order in a Medieval Italian Monastery and Village: Architecture and Experience in Villamagna Caroline Goodson

Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London email: [email protected] Abstract: The recent excavations at Villamagna (FR), Italy, have revealed the monumental remains of a monastery and abbey church of the tenth to thirteenth centuries, and the contemporary village where the monastery’s estate workers lived. These were all situated within the ruins of a substantial imperial Roman villa known as Villa Magna, an ancient name preserved through the middle ages. These different structures of medieval Villamagna provide a pertinent case study to explore how the differing topography, construction technique and quality, and uses of buildings in a given community over time might have been experienced by the people who lived there and used them. Italian medieval archaeology, as a discipline and community of scholars, brings a Marxian approach to interpreting sites like these, and the assumptions brought to bear in Italian contexts might be usefully juxtaposed with the approaches of other subsets of our disciplines. Keywords: Monastery, domestic architecture, topography, social hierarchy

ancient and universal roots of the Catholic faith. In the twentieth century, just as Classical Archaeology in Italy was developing techniques to reveal the origins and history of the Roman Empire, with particular attention to monumental remains, so too Christian Archaeology applied scientific analysis to medieval ecclesiastical and funerary sites in order to shed light on the origins and history of Christian societies. The Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana was founded in 1925 to promote and teach the subject, and the Vatican created a Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology at the same time. In the middle of the twentieth century, some medieval archaeologists turned away from the research interests of Christian Archaeology, developing an interest in national origins and the leftist politics of socio-economic history applied to the middle ages. (Augenti 2009; Brogiolo 2009)

Introduction he experience of power in the built environment is not neutral but context-specific, and the papers of this volume have employed different strategies for understanding past environments. In focussing on one site in central Italy excavated between 2005 and 2010, I aim to provide a case study which includes evidence for a broad range of buildings, related to diverse sectors of the medieval communities which used them, and to suggest ways in which these reflect and reinforce social structures. As with the other authors of these essays, I am of course embedded in my own research paradigms, specific to my area and specialism. In the context of these comparative essays, it is worth making explicit the assumptions and approaches that I am bringing to bear in my efforts to interpret the built environment. These are situated in the long history of medieval archaeology in Italy, and a review of its development will make clear how deeply ingrained is the analysis of social structure in some research programmes of medieval Italy.

Post-war Italy, like much of Europe, turned its attention to the rise of European nations and roles of Gothic and Lombard histories. (Geary 2002) Like scholars of other European countries, Italian archaeologists traced the arrival and dispersion of ethnically and culturally ‘barbarian’ peoples into Italy and charted their roles in the formation of medieval kingdoms of Italy and then modern Italy. This analysis was given a scientific edge through the study of material remains such as coins, jewellery and other grave goods, and pottery. (Gelichi 1997) Secondly, a movement developed within Italian archaeology to apply some of the Marxian thinking about class structure that increasingly motivated the history of the Roman Empire and of the Middle Ages to the archaeology of the medieval period. These trends towards social history developed in reaction to the

Medieval Archaeology in Italy In Italy, Medieval Archaeology developed in antithesis to Christian Archaeology (Archeologia cristiana), the study of the church, especially the shape of ecclesiastical buildings and Christian burials. From the time of the Counter Reformation, there had been enormous interest in Italy in the history of the Roman Catholic church, and the material remains of early churches had been held up as evidence of the 51

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Figure 1 Villamagna (FR). Plan of areas excavated in 2005–10. (Plan: M. Andrews)

history of great men, empires, and elite behaviour which had been the focus of earlier classical and medieval history. Giovanni Tabacco, among others, laid out an approach to medieval history which explicitly adopted the themes and language of Marxist sociology and which concerned itself with transformations from imperial hegemony to feudalism, not only in terms of rulers but also those they ruled, using property documents, wills and court records. His terms are clear from page one of his manual to medieval history: ‘’Socio-political’ history is here understood as the conscious acquisition by groups or hegemonic classes, and by a political powerstructure which gradually becomes institutionalized, of clearly-expressed forms of dominance and of the related general task of co-ordinating political control.’(Tabacco

1989: 1) This way of thinking about common people, power relationships, and their appearances in the built environment and material culture flourished among Italian archaeologists. Chris Wickham identified the strands which entertwined to create archeologia medievale italiana as the leftist socio-economic history of Giovanni Tabacco’s pupils in Turin (Beppe Sergi, Aldo Settia, Rinaldo Comba) who saw archaeology as a logical material counterpart ot what they sought to do with documents; the equivalent, but much more topographically-orientated Florentine group, pupils of Elio Conti, some of whom (Riccardo Francovich, Guido Vannini) unlike the Torinesi became archaeologists themselves; the historical geography school of Genoa, Massimo Quaini and Diego Moreno; the post-Lamboglia 52

Caroline Goodson: Structures and Social Order in a Medieval Italian Monastery and Village Ligurian tradition of practising archaeologists, which by 1970 was led by the scientist [geologist] Tiziano Mannoni; a group from Salerno, then led by [historian] Paolo Delogu and [archaeologist] Paolo Peduto; and the Rome- and Lombardy-based schools, with a longer tradition behind them, of archeologia cristiana. (Wickham 2001: 39–40).

discussion of art history and objects, new town planning of the late middle ages, etc. The introduction to the first volume declares that: We are convinced that this sector of historical research has had little success in Italy, because its practitioners have either misunderstood the term material culture, or have not recognized as culturally significant the historical experience of the ‘other’, of those ‘different from us’ and in particular the sub-altern classes. They have not given material culture the scientific dignity it deserves, which is recognized elsewhere in all of Europe, and have rather forced the subject into history of art, or of the so-called minor arts, or in folklore studies. (Archeologia Medievale 1 1981: 8)

The elite buildings of the high empire and the great Early Christian and Romanesque churches of Italy had been excavated and studied since the late nineteenth century. What then of the non-elite and how might the relationship between the dominant class and the subordinate classes be explored in the material record? To answer these questions, in the late 1960s and 1970s different types of sites were excavated, far away from the churches that the Christian Archaeologists were digging, using new techniques and new approaches, some borrowed from prehistory and much influenced by New Archaeology (Processualist) and the socialscientific methods in development in the Anglophone world. (Trigger 2014: 313–85) These currents in medieval archaeology achieved a certain synthesis at a conference in Scarperia (Florence) in 1972, the results of which were published as a special volume in the path-breaking journal of social history, Quaderni storici,(Quaderni Storici 24 1974: 689–1016) and with the creation of the journal Archeologia Medievale. The journal was founded and part financed in 1974 by Riccardo Francovich, an historian turned archaeologist. The form of title, and the politics, echo the well-known French journal of social history, Annales: economies, sociétés, civilisations, Archeologia medievale: cultura materiale, insediamenti, territorio.

The field of archeologia medievale has continued along this Marxian trajectory laid out in the 70s and has developed into a very rich discipline both inside Academe and across the public sector. (Gelichi 2014) The subject is taught in Italian universities, coexisting with Classical and Christian Archaeology in the Faculty of Letters—it is a humanistic discipline and indeed, insists strongly on the intersections between the textual and material records. (Brogiolo 2009) Over time the approaches of social history through the material record have broadened, and there is now quite a lot of good work being done on medieval church buildings and elite residences such as castles — that is the elite, hegemonic built environment — within this field, as well as the continued exploration of rural settlements, village archaeology and the sub-altern. Partly because of the shape of the discipline at its inception, there have been two dominant concerns in medieval Italian archaeology: 1) relationship with the Roman past; 2) social and economic history. Both of these themes are instrumental to understanding how the people of Villamagna, the case-study to which I will now turn, experienced their built environments over the course of the Middle Ages.

The introductory editorial lays out the reasons for its creation, identifying perceived problems in the discipline of archaeology and new methods which were to be applied, based on the ‘production, distribution and consumption of goods and the conditions for these activities’, the study of material culture — in the broadest definition — by sociological terms. The editorial board declared their approach to be informed by the Polish experience, a reference to the Institute for the History of Material Culture at the Polska Akademia Nauk, Warsaw. (Wyrobisz 1974) These Polish approaches were first applied in Italy at the excavations at Torcello (VE) and Castelseprio (VA). (Leciejewicz et al. 1978–9; Dabrowska et al. 1978–9) As examples of their research interests, the Italian archaeologists gave settlement history, history of the techno-economic relationship with the environment, landscape and territory history, and indeed the first volume of the journal has articles on castles and their villages—not simply a study of romantic turreted stone buildings but a study of the manipulation of work forces and territorial reorganisation (feudalism), a methodological

The site of Villamagna Villamagna (FR) lies at the base of the Lepini mountains, a small mountain range between the Apennines and the Mediterranean Sea, some 40km south of Rome. The Roman villa whose ruins dominate the site was built in the early second century, and stayed in imperial hands at least into the third century, and we have reason to believe that these were part of the Byzantine fisc in the sixth century. (Fentress and Maiuro 2011; Fentress and Goodson forthcoming) In the late tenth century, a group of nobles from Anagni gave land of the fundus Villa Magni (fundus being a plot of land and all of its appurtenances in Roman legal documents) and two other fundi to a monastery at the church of S. Pietro 53

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Figure 2 Plan of early medieval (eighth- to ninth-century) remains in Area A. The remains of the rooms of the Roman winery were partially reused, with post-holes indicating where upright posts were added to support roofs (Plan: M. Andrews)

located on the same fundus, endowing the monastery with a place of worship and a core of agricultural property. (Flascassovitti 1994: no. 1) The monastery’s archive (now in the Chapter Archive of the Cathedral of Anagni) preserved a series of charters and trials from the tenth through thirteenth century, and these provide a window into a small rural monastery with properties in the area of the original fundus, which increased through pious donations and acquisitions. The estate of Villamagna became a rival power to the local bishoprics, embroiled in regional and papal

politics of the central Middle Ages (eleventh-thirteenth centuries), including the major cathedral city of Anagni. These documents point to a community under a great deal of tension in the twelfth and thirteenth century, with pressures on the monastery acting as lord over the territory, and pressures on the free peasants and unfree serfs of the estate. (Goodson 2016b: 414–16) We will put aside the documentary record and the situations it describes for the time being and concentrate on reading the evidence of the material record, as revealed by excavation. 54

Caroline Goodson: Structures and Social Order in a Medieval Italian Monastery and Village Three areas of the site were excavated between 2006 and 2010, and the results of the publication, with detailed analysis of each phase has been published in full. (Fentress et al 2016) [Figure 1 Map of site] The first area, A, was a Roman winery on a vast scale, comprising baths, reception spaces and, at its heart, a cella vinaria combined with a banqueting hall. This complex was one of the presentation spaces of the imperial villa and was decorated with fresco and marble revetment, even the tanks associated with wine production. This winery was abandoned around the middle of the third century and some of the marbles were removed, others were left as ballast in the holes left when the terracotta storage containers, dolia, were removed. (Fentress and Maiuro 2010) It was reoccupied in the early middle ages (eighth-ninth centuries), and then again in the central middle ages (tenth-thirteenth centuries). Dozens of medieval post holes were identified in excavation. Through analysis of their position in relation to the Roman walls and the materials and (rare) floor surfaces associated with them, we have been able to assign them to two medieval phases. The first set of post holes align with the standing Roman walls and form the roof supports of a residential building, dating to the ninth century.[Figure 2 9C plan] The second, later set of post holes relate to a village of timber huts. This cluster of huts covered the main floor of the former winery as well as an area out behind it to the south and was in use form the tenth to the thirteenth century, that is, precisely in the same years as the monastery was based at the church of S. Pietro.

century and was apparently not a relevant part of the site in the medieval period. At Villamagna the phases of occupation of the site run from the Roman to late medieval periods (up to c. 1400), across more than one area. Where many excavations in Italy have focussed on sites that were either ancient or medieval, or concentrated on either ancient or medieval phases of occupation at a single site, our research focussed equal attention to both Roman and medieval phases from the beginning, and the relationship between the two. For the reasons described above, many important medieval excavations in Italy have tended to focus on rural sites, with strong interest in vernacular domestic architecture and material culture, not necessarily in relation to monumental architecture, especially churches. At Villamagna, we revealed both domestic as well as monumental architecture of the middle ages, and, as I hope to demonstrate in what follows, the power structures of rural Italy were embodied within and articulated through the shapes, locations and materials of its built environment. It was commonplace for European medieval communities to establish a hierarchy of their social interests, with religious institutions made of monumental stone, larger and more elaborately constructed than residential or administrative buildings. (Carver 1993; Liddiard 2005) This hierarchy is certainly present at Villamagna, and it appears to have reinforced the economic superiority of the monastery as well as the spiritual. I would like here to explore specifically how the experience of difference and hierarchy might have motivated certain kinds of interaction in the rural community of Villamagna.

The second area excavated, B/C, lies along the ridge to the north of the Winery. The trench was laid out around the remains of the church and the standing Roman ruins around it, which appeared in our magnetometry survey to be a residential wing of the imperial complex. We knew that there was a long-lived medieval church, called S. Pietro, with multiple phases of masonry and major renovations. It turns out to have been a late Roman structure, dating to the fourth century and probably was a late antique wine-production structure in the later Roman phase of the imperial villa (fourth century). The structure was rebuilt in the sixth century, at which point it probably served as a church, given the presence of carefully built graves at the entrance, and this building remained the main church in the valley for centuries. Our excavations revealed a series of structures around the church, recognisably monastic in character, including a square cloister on the flank of the church, with a cistern beneath it, boundary walls and a bell tower in front of the church. There were graves located inside the cloister as well as in front of the church, and a porch at the entrance. The third area, D, revealed a complex of Roman-period residential cells or barracks built along a paved road running towards the imperial residence. It ceased to be used after the sixth

Typologies of structures and materials of construction At Villamagna, the excavated parts of a village and a monastic complex date from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. The village, of which only two sections have been excavated, sat in the area of what had been the Roman winery, which had become a fortified residential complex in the early middle ages. The Roman building had originally been two stories tall, and in the middle ages, it stood proud over the ground level and the surrounding plateau. Some of the exterior walls of the Roman building still now stand to over 2 m height, thus it must also have been so in the middle ages. During the central medieval period, the villagers living at the site took advantage of the raised platform created by the Roman substructures and the enclosure of the exterior walls of the building which created a somewhat-protected area. Inside this area, we have been able to reconstruct the shapes of the timber buildings in at least two possible formations; in the most convincing reconstruction of these structures, we see at least two large oblong timber buildings.[Figure 3 55

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Figure 3 Plan showing the locations of post-holes relating to village longhouses and huts in Area A, eleventh to thirteenth centuries. (Plan M. Andrews)

village] The buildings reconstructed inside the former winery are slightly larger (5–6m x 15–16m, roughly) than the buildings excavated outside the winery, where we brought to light a sequence of nine oblong huts, measuring roughly 3.5m x 5m, most with hearths on the interior, which were built and rebuilt between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. These smaller structures have been interpreted as houses and the longhouses perhaps as farm buildings in the village of Villamagna. They are consistent in their building techniques over the central middle ages: they had clay floors, laid overtop of a

rubble and earth cores, which provided a level ground surface for the interiors and bases for the upright posts which formed the frame for the exteriors; walls were made of twigs, branches, mud, or clay on timber frames, nothing of them is preserved. There is posthole evidence for several of these huts, and one has preserved its floor surfaces, given with clear evidence for its successive rebuilding: nine times in about 300 years. While the material culture associated with these phases does not permit a very clear sequence of dating for each phase within that — the majority of the 56

Caroline Goodson: Structures and Social Order in a Medieval Italian Monastery and Village pottery is recognisable only as dating to the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, we may surmise that they were rebuilt regularly, about every 35 years, so once a generation. Outside the huts we found rubbish tips with food waste, fragments of querns from household grain-processing, and occasionally spindle whorls and other objects associated with domestic production. The huts were, on the whole, very basic residences, typical of peasant houses of the period. (see, eg. Valenti 2004) There is no evidence of different qualities of building material or for that matter material culture in the sites inside or outside, though the experience of being inside the shell of the Roman building, protected by its walls, must have been substantially more protected, drier and less windy than being just outside it.

many other medieval churches of Italy. (Hansen 2003) It is certainly clear that there were no major interventions to alter the shape of the building, aside from rebuilding an existing apse at the rear. Secondly, the auxiliary buildings around the church in the Central Middle Ages, at least those in our trenches, were made of stone with highly labour-intensive processes involving specialist skills: lime mortar and dressed stone, some of which had been quarried and shaped for purpose. The prestigious construction in this area is not exclusive to the church itself, but includes the cloistered spaces of the monastery. The complex for the dedicated religious men received major architectural investment, attesting to its prestige not just in relation to the church but on its own terms.

If we look at Area B, at the church and monastery, we see a radically different architecture which evolved contemporary to the village, over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The church was ancient by the ninth or tenth century, and it was then partially reconstructed and preserved, and to its north a walled compound, open to the sky with (we presume) buildings on the side for communal dormitories, perhaps, though we have no evidence of their construction. [Figure 4 Plan Central Med A and B] This square building was clearly the first step in creating a separate walled compound alongside the church, and indeed it eventually becomes the cloister of the monastic complex, with a large cistern underneath it. We did not identify the residential part of the monastery and assume it is somewhere beyond the limits of our trenches but contiguous to the cloister and near to the church. We recovered a certain amount of material from the monastic complex, including graves of individuals buried both inside and outside the cloister, but the most significant remains are architectural: the strikingly well-built cloister and cistern, as well as the foundations for a free-standing bell tower and a porch at the front of the church. Early phases (tenth-eleventh century) of these structures used coursed rubble masonry, including reused Roman blocks and fragments of spolia, and in later phases (twelfth-thirteenth century) finely cut newly quarried ashlar masonry. The cloister wall, set into the courtyard of the monastic precinct, had decorative voussoirs around apertures in the cloister, and an elaborately engineered hydraulic system for collection of water. There are two observations to make about the organisation of this area around the church and its architectural development. First, the patrons of Villamagna strove to preserve the ancient shape of the centuries-old church, and perhaps even its masonry. We do not know if the brick masonry was rendered in this period or not, thus we do not know if the Roman bricks were still visible on the exterior of the church; it may be the case that the distinct, ancient building fabric was deliberately preserved, like the ancient materials in so

The church and the monastery attached to it, were the social and economic nucleus of the site of Villamagna. While the housing of the laity was set apart from the church, both spatially and through different construction techniques, the burials in the church yard suggests that the church was an essential part of the community topography. The dedicated religious of the monastery, when they died, were apparently buried within their monastic precinct while the men, women, and children of the village were buried outside the church. (Fenwick 2016; Goodson 2016b: 417–19) In medieval society, the dead were remembered by the living through formal liturgical ceremonies, officiated by religious professionals, and in personal popular commemorations. Walking through the burial ground of the village to enter the church may have provided a space for lay remembrance of Villamagna’s past and the deceased of the community, while the architectural distinctive liturgical space of the church served a different kind of commemoration for the laity. (Lauwers 1999) Strategies of interpreting The analysis of the physical anthropology of the individuals buried inside and outside the monastery at Villamagna has yielded rather little in terms of difference between the communities, apart from the fact that those buried inside the monastery are nearly all male. The indicators of nutrition over lifetime, markers of disease and stress on the body, and the quality of the burials are fundamentally the same across the entire population of Villamagna. (Fenwick 2016). Similarly, the pottery used in the village seems to be, for the most part, identical to that of the monastery in this period. (Rascaglia 2016) This suggests that the market of pottery was relatively limited, and everyone at the site used the same regionally produced (or even locally produced) common wares, whether in the monastic refectory or in a domestic hut.

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Figure 4 Plan of the church of S. Pietro in Villamagna and monastery. Top, c.1050; Bottom; c. 1250 (Plan: M. Andrews)

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Caroline Goodson: Structures and Social Order in a Medieval Italian Monastery and Village If the other archaeological remains between the ecclesiastics’ area and the peasants’ areas of the site, separated by about 400 metres, were broadly similar, the architectural differences were stark. Where the huts were made almost entirely of perishable materials, the church and monastery was built of stone. Both were built on top of and with reused ancient remains, but where the antiquity of the church appears to have been purposefully preserved,, the ancient buildings of the winery and the early medieval occupation of this area must have been decomposing hulks when the village was built here and their walls served as a sort of shelter, but were not otherwise reused in the housing of the village. The technology of the construction techniques in the village did not change — at least in ways that are visible to us — over the three hundred years of its existence. They remained rather basic, and typical of low-status domestic architecture. In the monastery, however, the buildings evolved from rubble masonry to glamorous ashlar masonry. This follows trends in the architecture of Central Italy, where other monasteries and cities were transformed by increasingly skilful masonry over the course of the twelfth century, and generations of trained masons worked in itinerant teams on major church- and castle-building projects. (Parenti 1994; Fiorani 1996) The abbey church of S. Pietro in Villamagna and the monastery of its monks was constructed in such a way as to to compete with its neighbours both in terms of architectural features, such as the free-standing bell tower and porch at the entrance, and building techniques, such as the decorative ashlars of the cloister and an elegant Cosmatesque pavement in the church. Where the built environment of the village appears to have been inward-facing, not following current trends, the monastery was decidedly outwardlooking, and concerned with projecting the prestige and power of the institution.

their relationships with others. The clearest expression of such ideas is perhaps Henri Lefebvre’s claim that ‘(Social) space is a (social) product [...] the space thus produced also serves as a tool of thought and of action [...] in addition to being a means of production it is also a means of control, and hence of domination, of power.’(Lefebvre 1991: 26). Thus, the experience of the buildings, and the repeated interactions with different social groups mediated by the buildings in which interactions took place serves to replicate power structures. In the case of Villamagna, the architectural attention concentrated on ecclesiastical buildings (and ecclesiastic’s buildings), on the one hand emphasized their antiquity and on the other hand up-dated certain elements with lavish bespoke craftsmanship. This effort expressed the values of the community, social position within the regional network and locally at the site and the domination of resources. The church, and the monastery attached to it, monopolised the attentions and the assets of the site. While all parts of the community used the church, at least on occasion, the residents of the monastery and the clerics of the church enjoyed a privileged status in this community. Each person at Villamagna experienced the monumentality of the church in comparison with the huts of the village, the hegemony of the site was reproduced. The power of the church within medieval society was not merely one of Marxian domination of resources and the pervasiveness of ideas about the value of church and churchmen in many corners of society. (Gramsci 1971; There are many ways in which we might interpret the differences between lay domestic architecture and the ecclesiastical buildings. For some people, faith and devotion to God, through the channels of the church and churchmen, may have provided personal and spiritual benefits. That is, a community channelling its resources into building and running a church, need not be understood simply as oppressive control of resources (ie big powerful churchmen in stone buildings vs small weak peasants in huts). There may have been perceived benefits afforded to all through the monumentalisation and glorification of the religious buildings, in the form of spiritual rewards. (Arnold 2005) For example, medieval narratives recount the collaboration of townspeople in the construction of monumental churches, the ‘cult of carts’ (Barnes 1996: 257–9; Hamilton 2013: 275ff) Ecclesiastical institutions competed for patronage from elite laity, who paid for subsidiary chapels, liturgical furnishings, and otherwise contributed to the finances of the institution. It has often been argued that architectural refurbishment was as much a reflection of wealth as it was a desire to acquire further wealth. (Kraus 1979; Owen 1989) The church was set apart physically from the monastery by about 400m, and the distance might have facilitated the monastery’s seeking contributions from patrons elsewhere in the

These differences in construction technique, materials and scale are surely expressions of a power structure, which, as it manifest in the built environment, conditioned the ways in which the churchmen and laymen of Villamagna interacted. To cite Hillier and Hansen, the built environment is shaped by, and shapes, how people interact: ‘spatial organisation is a function of the form of social solidarity’. (Hillier and Hansen 1984: 18, 82, and especially 142). This principal axiom is (part of) the influential hypothesis of Hillier and Hansen and the concept that has been perhaps most influential in the study of the historic environment in the past decades; their algorithmic computation of layouts, reducing relationships to single ratios, is rather less often cited in studies of the historic period. (Paliou et al. 1994). A key aspect of the durability of this theory is its indebtedness to structuralist ideas of practice, and that the movement through, use of, and experience of the built environment informs and reminds people of 59

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era valley, even in Anagni. The records of the monastery, discussed below, reflect increased contributions of property to the estate over the twelfth century.

spiritual capital of controlling access to the divine, and the redemptive powers of the liturgy. The records of property transactions and a transcriptions of legal proceedings describe a population of peasants who had very little social differentiation between them, whether they were vassals with a whole or fractional feudum ; very few landowners had significantly larger rents than others, few had enough land that they could make a significant profit. The suggestion is that there was little social mobility, within the community but also relatively little internal hierarchy. Those who acquired significant resources seem to have emigrated away from Villamagna. (Carocci 2016)

Alternatively, the spatial separation and distinctions between the built parts of the site might be understood as part of a collective desire on the communities’ parts to improve. The urban sociologist Richard Sennett sought to explain differentiation in the architecture and urbanism of historic (Western) cities through individuals’ relationships to their own bodies, which reconfigured their experiences. For him, the medieval city, with specifically designated religious buildings and an empathetic mentality, became ‘a moral geography’; religious ‘sanctuaries’ were set apart from the city, and they provided principled models. (Sennett 1994: 159) Thus ecclesiastical architecture was deliberately differentiated from the rest of a medieval city, signalling the possibilities of individual transformation within them. Sennett’s moral geography, though intriguing, was never tested against explicit examples of any place, so it is impossible to know how much his ideas relate to the realities of medieval builders or church-goers of Italy or anywhere else, nor whether they might reasonably be supported by specific medieval evidence. His idea remains, however, provocative as it suggests additional means by which we might explore hierarchies in building. In the particular case of Villamagna, if we turn to the textual record of the community who lived at the site, we can shed some light on the degree to which the small scale wooden huts housed people who supported the monastery and church with their labour and their loyalty, while also being subject to them.

From the 1150s, some of the parcels worked by the men of Villamagna were contested by a local Lord, Corrado of Sgurgola. Corrado claimed that the monastery had appropriated some of his lands and compelled the peasants in the village of Villamagna (part of which we believe we have excavated) to farm those lands on his behalf. (Carocci 1997) Decades of conflict ensued, with the men of Corrado stealing animals, burning part of the village and threatening the rest. Eventually papal envoys were summoned to resolve the matter. Around 1250, over 50 persons gave depositions, each declaring himself to be a vassal of the monastery or a monk. Each described his obligations to the monastery, the procedures for seeding the lands with wheat and barley, working the fields two days per week during harvest, with animals if they had them, and during vendemmia (so from June to September) and providing the annual obligatory gifts of cakes or salt pork. Compared to other vassals in Lazio, Sandro Carocci has demonstrated, this was relative onerous as workload, and so it is curious that these men were so determined to preserve their obligation to the abbot, when Corrado’s obligations would probably have been lesser. (Carocci 1997: 120) Many of the witnesses declared that they were not necessarily required to live at Villamagna, rather they were permitted to leave their lands and take with them their own goods and the wood of their houses, as long as someone performed the compulsory corvée labour. (Flascassovitti 2007, no. 143; Carocci 1997 ; Hubert 1994) Most vassals in central Italy were tied to their lands in other parts of medieval Italy. Perhaps this option of moving freely was enticement enough to stay and carry out the work obligations. Perhaps there were other benefits to having the abbot as lord, because–to a man—the witnesses who gave testimony to the papal officials affirmed their allegiance to the abbot as lord. The people who lived in the village, and the people who no longer lived there, chose to fulfil their work duties to the monastery, rather than the lords of Sgurgola. It may be that they simply reported a fact: that they understood their lord to be the abbot, and that the lands they worked were his, despite the challenge of the

Textual Record The archive of the monastery of S. Pietro in Villamagna has been partially preserved. Through its collection of property transactions and records of privileges enjoyed by the monastery and extended to others, we can further reconstruct the population of Villamagna. (Flascassovitti 1994; 2007; Goodson 2016a) From the foundation of the monastery in 976, the abbot of S. Pietro in Villamagna led the religious community of monks at the monastery, was the seigniorial lord over the estates owned by the institutions, as well as the lord over those who worked and lived on it. This kind of monastic lordship was in many ways typical for the area in this period (Toubert 1973) and the abbot as leader of the institution behaved nearly identically to secular lords in the landscape, controlling the terms of work and the relationships between peasants and the land, resolving disputes on the estate between workers, and collecting rents and other payments. (Reynolds 1994; Loud 2003) Thus the monastery and its men dominated not only the control of resources at the site, but also the work force and the landscape as well as the 60

Caroline Goodson: Structures and Social Order in a Medieval Italian Monastery and Village neighbouring lord. It is more likely, however, that the challenge to the monastery’s lands and the peasants’ labour was an attempt to break the dominance of the monastery as major landholder, and that the peasants might have taken advantage of the overtures made by the lay lords of Sgurgola. Yet they did not do so.

Carocci, S. (1997). Ricerche e fonti sui poteri signorili nel Lazio meridionale nella prima metà del XIII secolo: Villamagna e Civitella. In Il sud del Patrimonium Sancti Petri al confine del Regnum nei primi trent’anni del Duecento. Due realtà a confronto, Atti delle giornate di studi, Ferentino 28-29-30 ottobre 1994: 112–44. Rome: Centro di Studi Giuseppe Ermini. Carocci, S. (2016). A peasant village in a world of castles (eleventh to thirteenth centuries) In Fentress. E., Goodson, C., and Maiuro, M. (eds) Villa Magna: an Imperial Estate and its Legacies. Excavations 2006–2010: 401-9. London: British School at Rome. Carver, M. (1993) Arguments  in  stone  : archaeological research and the European town in the first millennium. Oxford: Oxbow. Dabrowska, M., Leciejewicz, L., Tabaczynska, E., and Tabaczynski, S. (1978–9). Castelseprio. Scavi diagnostici 1962–1963. Sibrium 14: 1–138. Fentress, E. and Goodson, C. (forthcoming). Structures of Power: From Imperial Villa to Monastic Estate at Villamagna (Italy). In Reynolds, A., Carroll, J., and Yorke, B. (eds), Power  and  Place  in Later Roman and Early  Medieval  Europe. Proceedings of the British Academy, n.p. Fentress, E. and Maiuro, M. (2011). Villa Magna near Anagni: the Emperor, his Winery and the Wine of Signia. Journal of Roman Archaeology 24: 333-69. Fentress, E., Goodson C., and Maiuro, M. (eds) (2016). Villa Magna: an Imperial Estate and its Legacies. Excavations 2006–2010. London: British School at Rome. Fenwick, C. (2016) The cemetery and burial practices. In Fentress. E., Goodson, C., and Maiuro, M. (eds) Villa Magna: an Imperial Estate and its Legacies. Excavations 2006–2010: 351–75. London: British School at Rome, Fiorani, D. (1996). Tecniche costruttive murarie medievali: il Lazio meridionale. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider. Flascassovitti, C. (1994) Le pergamene del Monastero di S. Pietro di Villamagna: 976–1237. Lecce: Congedo. Flascassovitti, C. (2007). Le pergamene del Monastero di S. Pietro di Villamagna vol. II: 1238–97. Lecce: Congedo. Gelichi, S. (1997). Introduzione all’archeologia medievale: storia e ricerca in Italia. Milan: Carocci. Gelichi, S. (ed.) (2014). Archeologia Medievale, numero speciale – Quarant’anni di Archeologia Medievale in Italia. La rivista, i temi, la teoria e i metodi. Geary, P. (2002). The Myth of Nations. The Medieval Origins of Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Goodson, C. (2016a). Documents relating to the Monastery of San Pietro in Villamagna. In Fentress. E., Goodson, C., and Maiuro, M. (eds) Villa Magna: an Imperial Estate and its Legacies. Excavations 2006–2010: 31-33. London: British School at Rome. Goodson, C. (2016b). Villamagna in the Middle Ages. In Fentress. E., Goodson, C., and Maiuro, M. (eds) Villa Magna: an Imperial Estate and its Legacies. Excavations 2006–2010: 410–42. London: British School at Rome.

In the case of Villamagna, the textual evidence from the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries casts light on a tense political situation involving both lay and ecclesiastical members of the community. Where there is evidence for the domination of ecclesiastical institution over lay peasants, including those who had sworn loyalty as vassals, both in terms of their work obligations and in terms of their material worlds, the peasants nonetheless pledged allegiance to the abbot. In our analysis of the purposeful differences in the built environment, the monastery and church are architecturally differentiated and their occupants privileged, at least in terms of architectural investment. Yet the situation was surely not simple. Despite a compelling interpretation of the built environment in terms of its power structures, with a dominant stonebuilt monastery and a very modest hut village, the voices of the peasants themselves, reported through the papal interviews, profess a preference to preserve the hegemony of the monastery. This evidence for allegiance should encourage us to think beyond Hillier and Hanson’s social logic, to recognise the different and complex ways in which hegemonic power might work in a given context. Sub-altern agency is, of course, notoriously difficult to trace in the historical record. (Scott 1990) The peasants’ rejection of Corrado’s lordship in favour of the abbot does not negate the exploitative relationship between the monks (as lord) and the peasants at Villamagna, nor does it necessarily imply their approval of their position. It suggests that there were reasons for which they believed themselves better off under the monastery. The starkly hierarchical arrangement at Villamagna was, it appears, preferable to alternatives. References Cited Arnold, J. (2005). Belief and unbelief  in medieval Europe. London: Hodder Arnold. Augenti, A. (2009). Medieval Archaeology in Italy. In Gilchrist, R., and Reynolds, A. (eds), Reflections: 50 Years of Medieval Archaeology 1957-2007: 131-54. Leeds: Maney. Barnes, C. (1996). Cult of the Carts. In Turner, J. (ed.) Grove Dictionary of Art vol. 8: 257-59. New York: Grove. Brogiolo, G. (2009). Italian medieval archaeology: Recent developments and contemporary challenges. In Gilchrist, R., and Reynolds, A. (eds), Reflections: 50 Years of Medieval Archaeology 1957-2007: 155-71. Leeds: Maney. 61

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. New York: International Publishers. Hillier, B., and Hansen, J. (1984). The Social Logic of Space. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hamilton, S. (2013). Church and People in the Medieval West, 900–1200. New York: Routledge. Hansen, M. (2003). The Eloquence of Appropriation: Prolegomena to an Understanding of  Spolia  in Early Christian Rome. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider. Hubert, E. (1994). Mobilité de la population et structure des habitations à Rome et dans le Latium (IXe-XIIIe siècles). In Comba, R., and Naso, I. (eds), Demografia e società nell’Italia medievale, Società per gli Studi Storici Archeologici ed Artistici della Provincia di Cuneo: 107–24. Cuneo. Kraus, H. (1979). Gold Was the Mortar: The Economics of Cathedral Building. London: Routledge. Lauwers, M. (1999). Le cimetière dans le Moyen Âge latin. Lieu sacré, saint et religieux. Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 54.5: 1047-72. Leciejewicz, L., Tabaczynska, E., and Tabaczynski, S. (1977). Torcello. Scavi 1961-62. Rome: Istituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Originally published as La production de l’espace. Paris: Éditions Anthropos, in 1974). Liddiard, R. (2005). Castles in Context, Power, Symbolism and Landscape, 1066 to 1500. Bollington: Windgather Press. Loud, G. (2003). Monastic Economy in the principality of Salerno during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Papers of the British School at Rome 71: 141–79. Owen, V. (1989). The economic legacy of gothic cathedral building: France and England compared. Journal of Cultural Economics 13.1: 89-100. Paliou, E., Lieberwirth, U., and Polla, S. (eds) (2014). Spatial Analysis and Social Spaces: Interdisciplinary

Approaches to the Interpretation of Prehistoric and Historic Built Environments. Berlin: De Gruyter. Parenti, R. (1994). Le tecniche costruttive fra VI e X secolo: le evidenze materiali. In Francovich, R. and Noyè, G. (eds), La storia dell’alto medioevo italiano (VI-X secolo) alla luce dell’archeologia: 479–96. Florence: All’ Insegna del Giglio. Rascaglia, G. (2016). Pottery of the tenth to thirteenth centuries. In Fentress. E., Goodson, C., and Maiuro, M. (eds) Villa Magna: an Imperial Estate and its Legacies. Excavations 2006–2010: 315–25. London: British School at Rome. Reynolds, S. (1994). Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scott, J. (1990). Domination and the Arts of Resistance  : Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sennett, R. (1994) Flesh and Bone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization. London: Norton. Tabacco, G. (1989). The struggle for power in medieval Italy: structures of political rule, trans. R. B. Jenson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Originally published as Egemonie sociali e strutture di potere nel medioevo italiano, rev. 2nd ed. Turin: Einaudi). Toubert, P. (1973). Les structures  du Latium médiéval: Le Latium méridional et la Sabine du IXe a la fin du XIIe siècle. Rome: Ecole francaise de Rome. Trigger, B. (2014). A History of Archaeological Thought. 2nd rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Valenti, M. (2004). Insediamento altomedievale nelle campagne toscane. Paesaggi, popolamento e villaggi tra VI e X secolo. Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio. Wickham, C. (2001). Medieval Studies and the British School at Rome. Papers of the British School at Rome 69: 35–48. Wyrobisz, A. (1974). Storia della cultura materiale in Polonia. Metodo di ricerca, nuova problematica o disciplina scientifica autonoma? Studi storici 14.1: 164–73.

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Ethnic Buildways: Phenomenology in the Architectural Grammar of Later Medieval Córdoba (Spain) D.A. Lenton

School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia email: [email protected] Abstract: This article addresses a fundamental problem encountered when interpreting past material culture as signifiers of ethnic identity: classifying cultural remains as ethnic styles produces static interpretations which do not recognise changes over time. An alternative methodological approach is proposed that examines the phenomenological aspects of past ethnic communities’ practices, termed buildways, which were embodied in the production and inhabitation of past built environments. Using the case study of medieval Córdoba’s religious architecture, it is argued that reconfiguring the buildways of architectural grammar is a route into interpreting the actions of ethnically aware people. Expressions of ethnic identities can be found in the adaptations and hybridisations of architectural settings that accommodated the requirements of ethnic practices. Critically, those ethnic practices changed over generations. Keywords: Ethnic practices, phenomenology, Medieval Córdoba, buildways, architectural grammar, semiotics, adaptation, hybridity.

a shared Anglo-Saxon aesthetic (Webster 2012). Burials and bead technologies have been used to identify discrete ethnic Lombard groups in Trezzo, Italy; groups that were imposing their ethnic culture on Roman cultural heritage (Siena and Giostra 2012). Mediterranean pottery types have been interpreted as the signature of Arab settlers in Vasconia, Spain, in the eighth century (Quirós Castillo 2012). In these examples, the material culture has been used to label ethnic communities or identify particular ethnic practices but the role of material culture as tools for ethnic expression has not been satisfactorily considered. Ethnic identification and self-identification constantly changes (Jones 1997: 14-18) and material culture is a primary conduit through which communities implement their group accomplishments (Ehrhardt 2013: 389; Naum 2014: 671). It is the vehicle for community action not just the result.

Introduction I have often been frustrated by archaeological studies that have identified particular styles of material culture as cultural or ethnic signifiers. Studies of objects’ styles have proved useful in describing interactions between different ethnic groups (Jones 1997; Verhaeghe 1998) but generally lead to an interpretive dead-end. Static interpretive models are produced in which little or no allowance is made for adaptations of material use or changes in forms over time. In the past, Medieval research in particular has too often focussed on historical references to forms used by specific ethnic groups (e.g. Pepper 1992: 3-6; Blair et al. 2002) in what is essentially a culture-historical approach, that is, the search for the cultural remains of a preconceived ethnic lifestyle. Furthermore, the built environments in which ethnic groups lived their lives have been largely overlooked in archaeological investigations (Immonen 2007), when, as I will demonstrate in this article, architectural settings can be fertile data sets for research into ethnic identities.

Our understandings of ethnic expression have moved on from ‘positivist’ and ‘subjectivist’ identifications of past ethnic groups (Jones 1997: 77-83) to include common social practices - the habitus, where ethnicity is defined as a ‘collective social’ experience over time (Bourdieu 1977: 164-165) that is embedded in the historical memory of the group (Halbwachs 1990: 46). It is vital that our analyses of archaeological materials now move with that comprehension. Ethnic groups communicated with each other in social life by producing, consuming and conversing with forms of material culture that were loaded with cultural meaning (Gell 1992; 1998: 251-2). The choice of familiar or foreign forms and the strategic fusion of significant designs were often deliberate and meaningful within historical contexts. In particular, the study of foodways

There have been many examples of the labelling of static ethnic communities without the consideration of material transformation or development in ethnic practices. For example, the association of distinctive square and round barrows with the distribution of Pictish stones in Scotland north of the Forth has been generally accepted as a lingering Pictish pagan practice that signalled kinship claims (Maldonado 2013: 26). Coin hoards (Leahy 2013: 235) and high-status Christian burials in early medieval England are seen as frequent statements of an Anglo-Saxon ethnic identity (Sherlock 2012). Together with artwork, they are associated with 63

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era as certain eating habits and culinary practices that can be associated with a particular ethnic group has been profitable in interpreting ethnic behaviour in the past. Variations and contrasts in foodways have been used to visualise community practices of social inclusion and exclusion, power relations, kinship construction, and cosmological logic (Sykes 2007; Gosden and Hather 2007; Staller and Carrasco 2010). Similarly, the architectural practices, building technologies and living habits of an ethnic group, which might be termed buildways, can be sensitive indices of ethnic identities.

doors, windows, decorations and route ways, used time and again, through which vistas were manipulated, religious references were made, and gender and social statuses were demonstrated. The visitors’ ‘understanding’ depended upon their knowledge of the visual cues and architectural principles as the building was ‘revealed’ by manipulating the body and mind of the visitor through ritualised movements and actions (riding, walking, eating etc.) (Johnson 2002: 8990). Although the effects on the other bodily senses were under appreciated by Johnson (Giles 2007: 109), the visual habitus provided the agent’s basic values and their oppositions to ‘other’, which shaped group thinking and contributed towards ethnic identity.

In this article, I propose a methodological approach based on identifying, understanding and interpreting the social practices embodied in architectural grammar. In the past, architectural grammar as described by Glassie (1975: 6) and developed by Johnson (1993), has been seen as the static material residue of historical events (Graves 2000: 10) and neglectful of the nonvisual senses (Giles 2007: 109). However, I propose that by extending the concept of grammar to include the sensory and phenomenological experiences of people who lived within specific architectural settings, we may reconfigure those repeated social practices that formed and transformed everyday life. In so doing, we can envisage how ethnically aware people drew from the palette of choices available in their habitus (Johnson 2002: 20) in constructing and developing their community relationships, values and identities (Robb 2010: 494). I discuss a particular case study – medieval Córdoba’s surviving public religious architecture – to argue that examining the material and phenomenological aspects or buildways of Córdoba’s architectural grammar is a route into interpreting the actions of ethnically aware craftspeople, merchants, clergy and patrons. I propose that each community’s ethnic relationships with their material culture were semiotic in that their meaning was not inherent or fixed but constructed over time and that their expressions of ethnic identity were materialised in the adaptations of religious buildings to accommodate the requirements of their intentional ethnic practices. Córdoba was a particularly special example of a later medieval society in constant flux. It was a veritable menagerie of ethnic groupings, religious allegiances and mercantile trades. Much of its religious built environment survives and is subject to continuous archaeological investigation.

In order to extend Johnson’s visual approach to architectural grammar and include the whole phenomenological experience we may draw upon ‘embodiment’ interpretations that have described the ways in which architecture actively constructs, classifies and bounds social identities (Gilchrist 1994: 59). Gilchrist’s (1994) work on monasteries developed theories of space as the habitus that guides individual agents through social spaces. As a person travelled through physical space, the body was subjected to the sensory experience of the journey through a metaphorical space. A visitor would have recognised thresholds between secular and monastic space on the basis of construction materials and decorative focal features to which we might add lighting schemes, acoustic designs and aromatic environments (Classen et al. 1994: 2-3; Frieman and Gillings 2007: 13). Visual, tactile, audible and fragrant cues were often in place to guide them in local practice. Narrative sequences were revealed in the grammar during the physical movement of the body reminding the traveller of the metaphors of biblical stories. The monks themselves were guided in their use of space by a more formal knowledge of performance: repeated, ritualised gestures that were structured by the liturgy. The habitus-knowledge possessed and exercised by any given person reinforced their membership of the ethno-religious community in a localised setting (Gilchrist 2005: 245). Consequently, to comprehend the ethnic expressions and practices of medieval people in their architectural settings we need to understand that they recognised cultural meanings in the grammar of their built environment. Furthermore, their human relationships were semiotic in that their meaning was not inherent or fixed but developed through those relationships. They were centred on repetitive practices employing architecture and space; as participating in ethnic practice required emotional commitment, a continued involvement in long-term projects, and the storage of group cultural memories (Latour 1987; Halbwachs 1990; Robb 2010). Indeed, many archaeological approaches

‘Buildways’ – Architectural Grammar and Bodily Experience In his examination of British castles, Johnson (2002: 20) developed structural interpretations of medieval architecture to describe the various ways in which people experienced the ‘spatial grammar’ of the castle as a familiar habitus-knowledge that was learned during youth. This spatial grammar was a system of rooms, 64

D.A. Lenton: Ethnic Buildways:Phenomenology in the Architectural Grammar (e.g. Hodder 1982; Tilley 1991) have accepted that past communities were driven by the desire to make meanings through the creation and interpretation of signs according to cultural conventions. However, archaeologists recognised early on that problems existed with the Saussurean (1974: 67-68) approach when it was applied to material culture (Hodder 1986: 48) as Saussurean signs are linguistic vehicles (namely words) for the expression of abstract concepts (Chandler 2002: 18) and need have little relation to their cultural meaning. The relationship is arbitrary and disembodied from the human mind and indeed, the body (Barrett 2013: 7). No account is taken of the materiality of artefacts or the object’s mnemonic role in social practices (Jones 2007: 14-16).

attitudes, kinship relationships and ethnic identities that are inhabited and experienced bodily. For the purposes of systematic analysis, architectural grammar may be considered technical, syntactic or semantic (Eco 1986: 73). Technical grammar refers to the craft tradition, particularly the awareness and use of materials and the skills and abilities of the artisans. Different social groups may have employed different building techniques. The choice to build in a particular way involved the choice of materials used, the degree of work put in, standard dimensions, and the construction procedure (Ó Carragáin 2005: 1039). These were expressions of human agency and can be recorded in the field as building techniques with context references (Gelichi and Guštin 2005: 30). For example, stonework may be large or very large, dressed or undressed, roughly-squared or rectangular, set in regular or irregular coursing with thick or thin mortar (see Table 1).

More useful to archaeological interpretation is the alternative branch of semiotics pioneered by Charles Sanders Peirce (1909; 1931-58), who sought to explain human relationships in a world where humans were unavoidably entwined with their material culture. Peirce expounded a model for signs in which they possessed three related elements: a material form that an author uses as a vehicle to convey an idea (e.g. a medieval parish church); a concept formed in the mind of the audience upon interpretation (e.g. Christian devotion); and the target of the concept (e.g. the congregation). In this approach, architectural grammar is actively and meaningfully related to the conceptual world. This is different from the Saussurean model and provides considerable advantages for archaeologists. Peircean semiotics can be appropriately applied to the analysis of architectural grammar because it allows for the fact that relationships between people and architecture might be affected by material properties (Gardin 1992; Bauer and Preucel 2001) and produce consequential effects in everyday practice (Gell 1998: 251-252).

Table 1. Identifying Building Techniques as Archaeological Contexts

Peirce’s model breaks down into three categories of material forms - symbols, icons and indices. Most useful is the indexical form - a mode in which the form is not arbitrary but is directly connected in some way (physically or causally) to the concept. This link can be observed and cited, for example, incense, clocks, a pointing ‘index’ finger (Chandler 2002: 3637), a crucifix, a triumphal arch and Doric columns all index a concept in the mind of the author and the target audience. Therefore, everyday acts of building architectural grammar and living within a built environment, which I term buildways, can be loaded with specific meanings and concepts to an ethnically aware individual or group. Buildways constitute the production of social events that cite past events within the collective memory (Ó Carragáin 2005: 103-4). This indexing is an expression of agency with social effects. These effects comprise the construction of community

Stonework

Material: Limestone, Sandstone; Granite; Flintstone Size: Small (no larger than one hand); Large (larger than the hand); Very Large (too large for one person to lift) Dressing: Freestone; Ashlar; Roughly Dressed; Undressed Shaping: Rectangular; Squared; Roughly Squared; Irregular; Unshaped Coursing: Regular; Irregular; No Coursing; Rubble Mortar: Thin (not exceeding 10mm); Thick (10-20mm); Very Thick (exceeding 20mm)

Brickwork

Material: Local Clay; Imported Clay Finishing: Faced One Side; Faced Both Sides; Common (unfinished); Sandstock (dusted with sand) Shaping: Rectangular; Square; Special Forming: Wire-cut; Hand-moulded; Timberset; Fired; Adobe (sundried) Mortar Pointing: Tuck (lime putty); Ribbon (raised); Flush

Earthwork

Material: Clay Cob; Organic Daub; Pisé (rammed earth blocks)

Syntactic grammar is typological or conventional in nature. For example, pointed arches can be grouped together as Gothic architectural styles and dated. Semantic grammar concerns relations between the significant units of architecture, such as a colonnaded church aisle that leads a procession to the altar. It describes the cognitive associations those elements are given within the realms of religious, social and ethnic practice. These grammatical codes are not tightly defined but are subject to a degree of crossover that is 65

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era not limiting in archaeological investigation but helpful in the process of description and interpretation.

Christian identity, oriental despotism, and so on (Eco 1986: 67). In this methodology an architectural grammar may be denoted in buildways by an ethnically aware group of people but the grammar may also encourage connotations about ethnic identity and kinship relations. Understanding the grammatical properties of a given architectural case study can enable us to think about how these buildings formed a part of society as vehicles for ethnic identities.

The detailed field recording of building techniques as archaeological contexts is my starting point for this interpretive method. We have a significant volume of information about the trades of the people who constructed medieval buildings. More than two hundred manual occupations have been recorded as separate crafts in the Islamic world. Woodworking crafts included sawyers, carpenters, lock makers, turners and chest makers. Stoneworkers included quarrymen, stone shapers, ashlar finishers and skilled carvers, all denominated into masters, apprentices, journeymen, unskilled labourers and slaves. These were coordinated within social organisations of craft guilds distinguished by family connections, levels of experience and taxation grades (Shatzmiller 1994: 21-8). Islam’s brickworkers were generally regarded as vastly superior to their Christian counterparts (Cabañero Subiza 1992: 2-5). Craftsmen constructing brickwork cupola ceilings, elaborate arches and corbels would have necessarily included skilled carpenters, who were very experienced in designing and building complex temporary formwork structures specifically to hold up brickwork shapes during the construction process. The craftsmen would have needed to produce special and particular brick shapes from purpose-made moulds that fitted together perfectly on site.

Medieval Córdoba: the Religious Architectural Setting The city of Qurtuba was the capital of the caliphate of Muslim al-Andalus in the ninth and tenth centuries and a local capital after the caliphate’s fall in the eleventh century. It had a growing population, whose Arab ethnic minority and Muwallad (Muslim convert) majority both claimed descent from the Arabian Desert tribes (Menocal 2002: 43-4). The city’s ethnic minorities also included the Sefarad community (Arabic speaking Jews) (Ray 2006: 75) and Christians of Visigothic heritage who were usually referred to as Mozarabs (living like Arabs) (Dodds et al. 2008: 23-4; 79). The surviving architectural evidence of public religious buildings includes a number of Islamic period minarets, which were once associated with the masajid (neighbourhood mosques). The extensive remains of the Central Friday Mosque – La Mezquita – also survive together with one of La Mezquita’s associated ritual bathhouses - a hammam. No churches survive from this period although elements of an early synagogue may have formed the foundations of a fourteenth-century synagogue building – La Sinagoga de Yishaq Moheb. Historical sources recorded an exodus of Muslims from the city soon after the Castilian Conquest in 1236 (Edwards 1982: 141). The reduced Muslim community in Córdoba came to consist of specialised artisans, particularly building-workers, who were usually referred to as ‘Mudéjar’ (a pejorative term meaning domesticated Muslim) (Menocal 2002: 236).

In later medieval Christendom, the masons’ craft was organised on highly hierarchical lines. Masons were the most specialised craftsmen and generally the best paid in medieval Europe. Distinctions were made between the categories of craftsmen by nomenclature and wage differentials. Only the freemasons were qualified to work the finest ‘freestone’ that could be cut in any direction for architectural mouldings and sculptures. A general carver was often known as an entayller. Finished stone was incorporated into the walling by layers. Less skilled work including random rubble walling was carried out by roughlayers and hardhewers (Parsons 2001: 2). Layers also laid bricks when required and a rivalry (often violent) existed between masons and jobbing bricklayers (Moore 2001: 233).

Extensive remains survive of the ‘Mozarabic’ parish churches founded by Fernando III of Castile in the mid thirteenth century (Vargas González 2003a: 215). The 14 parish churches were built on the sites of razed masajid to the ‘three-ailed plan’ derived from their mother cathedral – Santa Maria in Toledo (Wilson 2005: 158). The parishes formed Córdoba’s administrative centres as Mozarabic mercantile and agricultural families moved into the city from the north. The churches were later enhanced with porticos, side chapels and belfries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and in 1510, the Catedral de Santa Maria was built (Aguilar Gavilán 1995: 50) to the Roman Cruciform plan in the centre of La Mezquita.

The architectural forms produced by these craftsmen may cite or denote, cultural forms, familiar traditions or practical functions; but they may also connote diverse ways of conceiving them (Eco 1986: 62). They may act as sign-vehicles to convey a specific concept in a specific cultural context and play a social role in the structuring of cultural or ethnic identities. For example, round arches, ogival arches, and ogee arches all function in the load-bearing sense and the production of arches denotes a long-standing craft tradition. Yet they may also inspire diverse connotations – imperial authority, 66

D.A. Lenton: Ethnic Buildways:Phenomenology in the Architectural Grammar

Figure 1: Ground floor plans of the 6 minarets of Islamic period Córdoba.

Córdoba’s Jewish community continued to identify themselves by their tribal names and lineage (Gampel 1992: 16-17; Sed-Rajna 1992: 133-5). The Jewish community was boosted by incoming Castilian merchants and administrators, who rebuilt the synagogue (Léon Muños 2003: 236). By the time of their expulsion in 1492, many Jews had converted to Christianity in the parishes (Casal García 2003: 236). They were frequently referred to as Conversos (converts) in documents but during the years of the Holy Inquisition, many were accused of being ‘CryptoJews’, whose practices were considered heretical in stark comparison to the ‘limpieza de sangre’ pureblooded Christians (Rawlings 2002: 4-5).

They were designed on plan to be very nearly but not quite square parallelograms, a local variation in alAndalus not universal in the Islamic world. Together with their sculpted windows, stonework arches and vaults, these tall thin walls would have required highly skilled masonry gangs to construct. Consequently, the minarets were unlikely to have been built by a disparate group of jobbing craftsmen or journeymen. To construct a tall tower with such thin mortar and still have it standing several centuries later requires perfectly cut and carved blocks and the highest skill levels of masonry. The construction process was necessarily organised by a master’s workshop or guild-like structure and included a hierarchy of skills for the different tasks involved. Córdoba’s stone working guilds included quarrymen, stone shapers, ashlar finishers and skilled carvers, all denominated into masters, apprentices, journeymen and unskilled labourers (Lewcock 1995: 133-134). In using the same construction techniques, Córdoba’s masons were referencing each other through their buildings in creating and continuing a number of distinctive technical grammars. These communities of craftspeople knew each other’s work and connected with each other’s families as they maintained their everyday work and social practices.

Ethnic ‘Buildways’ in Medieval Córdoba The Islamic Period Mosques Local masajid (singular: masjid) were used for daily prayer by small groups. Calling the faithful to prayer from the top of the minaret was carried out by the muezzin. The masjid was the ‘place of prostration’ where formal prayer consisted of repeated sequences of standing, bowing, prostration and genuflection; thus, prayer was not only mental and verbal but was physically performed in defined movements that created a bond between the faithful. This practice demonstrated the central Islamic concept of God’s overlordship under the guidance of the imam (Dickie 1995: 35).

La Mezquita was the point of weekly congregation for the entire Islamic population of the city (Dodds et al. 2008: 131). The primary building technique employed was also very large, ashlar, rectangular, limestone construction in regular courses set in thin mortar. La Mezquita’s minaret was also built near-square on plan rather than overtly rectangular. To the south-east of the courtyard lies the prayer hall or liwan with a series of horseshoe arcades running perpendicularly to the transverse wall. The transverse wall runs north-east to

The minarets [see Figure 1.] were constructed in the ninth and tenth centuries and employed the primary building technique of very large, ashlar stonework. The limestone blocks were carved finely enough to be laid in thin mortar in regular courses (Lenton 2013: 87-91). 67

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era

Figure 2: Ground floor plan of ‘La Mezquita’, the Great Friday Mosque of Córdoba.

south west and contains the Koran niche or mihrab [see Figure.2].

doors and maintain the structural elements would have been acts of community benefaction. The employment of local craftsmen and labour would have maintained the city’s guilds, and sustained the setting for social interaction over a continuous period of time. Engaging in these common projects would have formed a sense of intellectual camaraderie and common purpose for the cohesion of the ethnic community.

This traditional layout is along an axis called the qibla that travels directly to the Ka’bah shrine in Mecca. The mihrab is located at the point where the qibla meets the transverse wall. It would have been flanked by a pulpit or minbar, where the imam led the congregation in prayer. Islamic surveyors were often trained in astronomy (al-Hassan and Hill 1992: 69), so it is likely that the surveyors laying out the orientation of La Mezquita were aware that Mecca is south-east of Córdoba rather than due east as it is in North Africa.

In the prophetical tradition, a blessed priority is given to the congregation in the first row, that is, the first row of worshippers enjoys greater proximity to the source of the blessing because it closely addresses the wall nearest to Mecca (Dickie 1995: 36). The blessed priority would have been a reason for the tenth-century extension of La Mezquita’s transverse wall. This extension accommodated a greater number of priority worshipers. The Muslim population was growing largely because Mozarabic families were converting to Islam (Dodds et al. 2008: 16; 26) and these Muwallad families often constructed a Muslim heritage for themselves by taking on ancient Arabic tribal names (Aguilar Gavilán 1995: 39). It is possible that the new Muslim families were demonstrating their newly found Islamic

This recognition of construction rules and the organisation of the masajid and La Mezquita would have presented a familiar syntactic and semantic grammar to worshipers educated in religious conduct from an early age. This would have established the sponsors and clergy as prominent citizens amongst the network of Andalucían cities. A common tradition of physical and spiritual subjugation was denoted through bodily congregational prayer. Furthermore, the processes of organising labour to elaborate the 68

D.A. Lenton: Ethnic Buildways:Phenomenology in the Architectural Grammar

Figure 3: Ground floor plan of the Baños Árabes hammam.

devotion in a very public manner by adopting the preexisting mosque architecture and practices. Conversely, it is more likely that the blessed priority was taken by established Arab-Muslim families whose lineage was more securely defined. In which case, the old Arab families were purposefully distinguishing themselves in their religious activities from the ethnically different converts at the back of the prayer hall.

group of hammamat in terms of its basic plan but adjusted to accommodate the local environment and local social practices. By sustaining the grammar of a hot, a warm and possibly a cold room, the sponsor publically identified himself with Córdoba’s large community of hammamat providers. The building would have been almost entirely enclosed and devoid of natural light with essential lighting being provided by lamps or candles. This would have created dark and lighter areas in the rooms. Together with the scents and taste of the oils used in the cleansing process and the burning of lamps or incense, this sensorium would have denoted a familiar experience for the visitor accustomed to the hammam environment (Telmissany et al. 2009). The habitual users of hammamat were in a position to form social links with each other inside these buildings (Cuffel 2009: 172). A visiting client would recognise the functions of each of the rooms, the personal services provided, the social activities carried out in each location, and the required code of behaviour. A common way of doing things was being perpetuated.

The Baños Árabes Hammam A number of Islamic period hammamat (bathhouses) have been excavated near La Mezquita (González Virseda 2003: 204) and the Baños Árabes hammam remains standing near the great mosque [see Figure.3]. The primary building technique employed was very large, rectangular limestone construction in regular courses set in thin mortar (Lenton 2013: 97). The rectangular plan comprised a barrel-vaulted chamber to the west, which once contained a hot room next to a furnace. A warm room would have been located in the space that is now a courtyard. A cold room may have occupied the western end of the courtyard area; although it is possible that small urban hammamat packed in tightly around La Mezquita forwent their cold rooms for lack of space. If so, the ideal of a three-tiered hammam (Cuffel 2009) may have been contemplated but not realised. Either way, the Baños Árabes hammam was created with a local plan variation that would have inevitably affected its use.

Once the grammar was established the proprietor was in a position to manipulate the established social rules and to create alternative experiences for the visitor. For example, centrally positioned light makes for dark, private, corners that could be enhanced by imported essences and curtains between the arches. Perimeter lighting would create a more uniform ambiance for the patrons and encourage more public social interaction. Consequently, there may have been an internal social hierarchy perpetuated by the use of the

The proprietors of the Baños Árabes made a choice to align the grammar of their building with an identifiable 69

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era grammar. Furthermore, the use of the primary building technique of dressed stone blocks set in thin mortar may have been significant. Together with bichrome arches and foliate columns it follows the grammar of religious buildings (mosques and masajid) rather than commercial ones (Dickie 1995). The proprietor may have been establishing a prestigious character within the grammar of a hammam.

churches. Lower skilled Muslim masons probably lacked the resources to move town and, hence, formed the dwindled ranks of the ‘Mudéjar’ artisans still living in the Morería district north of La Mezquita (González Virseda 2003: 204). These ‘Mudéjars’ would have constituted the main workforce of masons working on churches but the community’s brickworking skills were their primary crafts not their stonemasonry (Menocal 2002: 236).

The sexes were strictly segregated in hammamat and women’s sessions may have been organised differently from men’s sessions. Male authors of the period complained that Arab-Muslim women wore their finest clothes and cosmetics to the hammam and socialised with ‘subordinate’ Jewish and Christian women. This was a practice that they considered immodest and scandalous (Cuffel 2009: 176). It seems unlikely that Andalucían Jews or Mozarabic Christians visited them uninvited. In order to frequent the Baños Árabes, the patron needed to understand the practices of hammamat generally and the specific routines of this one. A visitor who was not a Córdoban Arab would have had to be shown where to go and what to do. Their first visit would have set them apart from the Córdoban Arabs. Consequently, the syntactic grammar of the hammam created a sensorial environment that was habitual to those who grew up with the concept but utterly alien to those who did not. To the Arab-Muslims, the hammam was a quintessential setting for the common practices of their kinship and ethnic relations (Telmissany et al. 2009: 8).

The ground floor plans of these parish churches were significantly different from the Roman Cruciform plan more commonly known in Northern Europe. Their ‘three-nave plan’ (Vargas González 2003b: 218), did not orientate the apse towards sunrise as in most European Gothic churches (Muirden 2006: 33). Instead, the entrances were aligned towards the setting sun in the south-west [see Figure 4.] The large elaborate rose windows caught the last rays of the sun and illuminated the evening Vespers ritual - perhaps a more significant rite than Matins or Lauds in the morning in the Mozarabic liturgy. The reuse of masajid foundations were also a driving factor in this. As part of a self-asserting Mozarabic tradition, it seems that the Church’s patrons were demonstrating dominance over the conquered ‘Mudéjars’; converting and co-opting the religious significance of the buildings’ materials. Additionally, establishing the longevity of the church building’s authority if the builders thought that the site and materials had once comprised a Visigothic church. The semi-octagonal plan of the apses was based upon the rotation of a square on the ground to mark eight cardinal points. This basic geometry was not only simple for a semi-literate master mason to achieve but created a shape that could be raised to third storey height without the need for buttressing (Iglesias Costa 1989: 82). Similarly, the ad triangulum profiles were achieved by rope measurements staking out the base of an equilateral triangle. Both these devices of the ‘mistery of masoncraft’ were available to a Mozarabic mason who possessed a sketchbook passed down from his own master (Wilson 2005: 18). Unlike in the Roman Cruciform plan, the choir was located in the central nave (Wilson 2005: 158). The overall appearance was of a wider, squatter, basilica and a church that functioned very differently. On entering one of these churches, the congregants were faced with a wide-open space. Their focus would have been drawn to the expanse of people in the standing area either side of the central nave rather than the long tunnelling effect of the Roman Cruciform layout. The incense burning around the church would have reached every nostril rather than just a prominent few towards the front of the congregation. The burning of differently scented incense would have been used to mark the passing of cyclical time in association with particular rituals (Herrera 2011: 6-8). The congregant

The Mozarabic Churches The Iglesias Fernandinas parish churches of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were all laid out with a nave and two aisles to meet a semi-octagonal apse at the head of the church. The western profiles were all constructed ad triangulum, where the ratio of half the base to the height is one to the square root of three (c.f. Hislop 2000: 16). Therefore, it seems clear that imported master masons set out the church buildings with their carvers working on the Gothic windows and doors. However, the stonework used to construct the churches was of a lower grade than that employed in their Islamic antecedents. The primary building technique included reused limestone of uneven sizes, not cut to fit each other and consequently bedded in considerably thicker mortar than the masajid they supplanted (Lenton 2013: 141-163). Hence, there seems to have been a shortage of quarrymen and skilled entayllers immediately after the Castilian Conquest. This may have reflected the disappearance of the skilled Arab artisans bemoaned in contemporary sources and the reluctance of Christian workers to move into the city (Edwards 1982: 141). Perhaps the highest skilled Arab craftsmen had no desire to remain in Córdoba converting masajid into 70

D.A. Lenton: Ethnic Buildways:Phenomenology in the Architectural Grammar

Figure 4: Ground floor plan of the parish church of San Pedro – one of the Iglesias Fernandinas.

would have been made bodily aware of the nature and significance of the ceremony by the manipulation of the sensorial environment as they were enveloped in the cyclical practices of the Mozarabic church. The sound of the choir was closer, louder and more encompassing than if it had been placed behind a rood screen. Although the priests were prominently situated in the central apse, they were not set at an extreme distance and would not have given the impression of greatly elevated status. The altar would have been visible and audible from every part of the nave and aisles. Consequently, the experience for the congregant would have been altogether more encompassing than occurred with the Roman Cruciform plan.

incoming Mozarabic colonists could depend upon the same inclusive and cyclical rituals coupled with access to social and practical resources that they had relied upon in their homeland. Later Church Embellishments The stonework generally used to construct the various additions to these parish churches in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was of a higher grade than that of the previous centuries. The patrons of Córdoba’s parish churches invested in new syntactic elements: side chapels, bell towers, elaborately carved portals, and covered porticos. The primary building techniques included newly quarried stones of more regular sizes, well shaped to fit each other, indicating considerable economic investment in high quality craftsmen (Lenton 2013: 199-212). It is clear that skilled entayllers built many of the later church additions and imaginators (image makers) worked on the façades. They were designed by home-grown but internationally connected architects in a variation on Early Mannerist architecture associated with the prominent architect Juan de Herrera (Daroca Bruño et al. 2003). The Herrerian variation was becoming established, not only as official Court style but as the style of choice for landed and merchant families. The embellishments would have been a visible distinction and improvement on the Mozarabic churches and would have broadcasted the patrons’ commitments to ‘Good Works’ in the community. Patronage had become a fundamental practice of the Christian ideal of almsgiving and salvation. It was a practice through which an underlying Christian identity was formed in a community and reminded the patron’s kinsmen who to pray for (Caskey 2006: 195). This kind of investment in the fabric and social space of church buildings and chapels was a visible form of patronage for families establishing themselves in a new territory, whose previous lineage was often tenuous. It served as a practical and physical

The Mozarabic church layout denoted the nature and structure of the Mozarabic Rite (Dodds et al. 2008: 140). Although Pope Gregory VII had tried to standardise the liturgy as the Roman Rite in the eleventh century, the Visigothic-Mozarabic tradition, with its ‘heretical’ practices, had proved highly resilient (Hamilton 1986: 51). The Mozarabs saw themselves as Christian traditionalists with practices that were ‘pristine’ since the Visigothic Kingdom. They often viewed ‘Latin’ Roman Christians as a foreign menace corrupted by undesirable Cluniac ideas (Menocal 2002: 144). The Mozarabic Rite set out the Monastic Offices and the Mass within a feast-day cycle written in the same volume (Walker 1998: 69-72). This allowed the monastic and lay communities to sing and receive the Mass together regularly. Consequently, the establishment of the semantic grammar involving wide multi-aisled basilica-like churches prevailed numerically over the Roman Cruciform plan. I propose that these church forms were an active subversion of the cultural norms of the Roman Church by Mozarabic clergymen, who were expressing a diasporic collective identity. Córdoban churchmen were using their churches as vehicles in the construction and extension of Mozarabic ethnic identity. In every Mozarabic church environment, 71

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era method of constructing Christian-Castilian identities for newly converted families as was the case in other Castilian cities (Martz 1999). Furthermore, Córdoba’s public benefactors were adopting the approved styles of Castile’s Counter-Reformation Hapsburg Court. They were demonstrating political allegiance to the monarchy and the Castilian state. These building practices enabled the patrons to engage socially with artists, other patrons, financiers, and liturgical advisors, which could help form a sense of intellectual camaraderie and common purpose for a community (Caskey 2006: 199). Guilds and fraternities often took responsibility for the maintenance of chapels and keeping the lights. Guilds met in chapels to conduct their institutional business (Giles and Clark 2011: 231), which excluded Jews and ‘Mudéjars’ from commercial life. Porticos were frequently the setting for secular contracts and the endowment of brides (Peters 1996: 72). The repetitive practices of these religious and secular rituals within the familiar syntactic and semantic grammar of the church educated the parishioners in ethnic conduct from an early age. These church-based practices were effective vehicles for developing social and commercial success in an ethnically conscious urban environment.

Figure 5: Ground floor plan of ‘La Sinagoga’ synagogue.

the case with La Sinagoga, medieval synagogues were generally located in protected positions in enclosures away from the street front (Isserlin 1996: 47) [see Figure 5.]. The east wall had a recess and would have been the location for the ark - a chest containing the Torah. Either side of the ark there would have been seating for the rabbi and any visiting dignitaries. Against the west wall, would have been the places of the wardens of the synagogue either side of the bimah, the desk from which the Torah was read during ceremonies (Meek 1995: 8). Public worship would have involved particular prayers and readings from the Torah Law (Isserlin 1996: 46). The Sabbath morning service was the great cyclical occasion for reading from the scrolls over the lunar year (Stow 1992: 69).

The Church authorities saw it as necessary to establish a diocese in the late fifteenth century (Menocal 2002: 236). The new cathedral was inserted into La Mezquita to the Roman Cruciform plan and created a vehicle for the promotion of the Roman Rite as the predominant liturgy in the ordination of priests. The dedication of the Cathedral to Santa Maria was probably significant as Isabella I of Castile associated herself with Mary, the Queen of Heaven, in the construction of her royal identity as the Queen of a Heavenly Court (Aguilar Gavilán 1995: 57-60). Isabella promoted the monarchy in a parental relationship with the Castilian state and its subjects (Lehfeldt 2003: 136). Furthermore, her new Roman Cruciform cathedral was in an architectural style associated with the Counter-Reformation. The monarchy and its bishops were promoting Roman orthodoxy and encouraging the shift towards Castilian allegiance. It was common for convert families to express group solidarity in their patronage of particular churches and convents (Martz 1999). It therefore seems likely that Converso and Morisco families, who had no previous affiliation to the old Mozarabic Church, were among those patrons investing in the new elements of church buildings.

Synagogue architecture lacked a prescribed grammatical form and adapted to the architectural conventions of its surroundings. In the case of La Sinagoga, the builders chose to employ very large, roughly dressed, part squared stonework in regular coursing with thick mortar - the primary building technique that the Christian community reserved for ecclesiastic buildings. Perhaps the Jewish community sought to legitimise their presence by drawing on the same architectural techniques and craftsmen as their Christian counterparts. The Jewish community was undoubtedly engaged with the wider community of Córdoba as it used ‘Mudéjar’ arched brickwork techniques in the fabric of the walls and probably employed ‘Mudéjar’ artisans to form the prayer hall’s ataurique plasterwork. The prayer hall itself was built to a courtyard-shaped plan analogous with Córdoba’s surrounding courtyard houses. It comprised recognisably Jewish syntactic elements that were the vehicles for Jewish ethnic practices but its semantic decorative features cited wider Córdoban cultural practices.

The Fourteenth-Century Synagogue: La Sinagoga Synagogue architecture can be difficult to identify as the building need not be large, elaborate or any particular shape (Krinsky 1996: 19). However, as was 72

D.A. Lenton: Ethnic Buildways:Phenomenology in the Architectural Grammar Under Torah Law, the construction of a synagogue has never been a requirement (Kadish 1996: 102) but has been considered within the tradition as a convenient agent for calling to mind the necessity of prayer (Krinsky 1996: 18-19). In the later medieval period, it also became used as the place for the arbitration of legal disputes and the sealing of contracts (Meek 1995: 97). It was a container for keeping the Torah and a public vehicle to demonstrate to the Sefarad community that Hebrew law was being followed (Meek 1995: 10). The citation of the synagogue encouraged bodily participation in the sacred tradition. Incense would have been burned in the synagogue with twicedaily sacrifices but unlike in the Christian churches, the recipe was a constant one derived from the Book of Exodus and kept secret within the tradition (Temple Institute n.d). Consequently, the smell of the synagogue and the clothes of the congregants would have been rather more consistent and identifiable than that of the Christians and Muslims around them. Although much of everyday Jewish ritual practice was carried out in the home, the synagogue formed a structuring vehicle for the maintenance of the Jewish community identity. The repetitive practices of public ritual within the familiar syntactic and semantic grammar of the ark and the bimah educated the membership in religious and secular conduct from an early age. This acquiescence to recognisable rules of movement and organisation would have established La Sinagoga’s leading families as prominent actors amongst the Jewish communities of Castilla la Nueva (New Castile).

As the Muslim population expanded by the conversion of Mozarabs to Muwallads more families would have taken care to demonstrate their Arab legitimacy by investing their time and resources in the masajid and La Mezquita. Although, I would argue that the older established Arab families denoted the concept of the blessed priority in the Friday Mosque and used its hierarchical connotations to distinguish their identity from the Mulwallad-Arabs in the Mezquita’s architecture. The technical, syntactic and semantic elements that architects provided for the mosques of Córdoba cited cultural connections with the mosques of Damascus and Jerusalem but their rather universal adornments prove unreliable indicators as ethnic signifiers. However, once combined with the Andalucían craft techniques and the local practices of Córdoban Arabs they became localised hybrid forms. The phenomenological experiences of the Mezquita and the masajid channelled religious values and beliefs as underpinning practices of Islamic identity but it was the localised fusion - the hybrid nature of selected forms - that characterised the practices of the Córdoban Arab ethnic group. Furthermore, Córdoba’s local hammam practices would have been entirely recognisable to visitors from other Islamic lands, but their local variations would have distinguished the Córdoban Arabs’ way of life. If Arab men and women were inviting Mozarabs or Jews into the hammamat on religious and festive occasions then their social practices would have been very different from those in more conservative Muslim cities. The post-Conquest exodus of the higher skilled craftsmen probably led to a breakdown or realignment of the guild structure. Nevertheless, stonework and brickwork would have to have been carried out by artisans who had connections with the local infrastructure of materials production. In their new status as ‘strangers’, ‘Mudéjars’ would have been legally prohibited from competing with Christians in other trades (Zozaya 1992: 168-9; King 2011). It therefore follows that the ‘Mudéjar’ builders would have been highly protective of their organisations, connections and the mysteries of their craft practices. Consequently, a ‘Mudéjar’ labour diaspora formed the majority of the construction workforce and building had become a ‘Mudéjar’ ethnic practice. The survival of the Baños Árabes into the post-Conquest period as the only standing hammam in Córdoba was probably the result of ‘Mudéjars’ continuing Arab ethnic practices in the nearby Morería.

By the sixteenth century, Judaism was effectively outlawed in Castilian territories (Williams 1990: 89) and La Sinagoga passed into the ownership of the Guild of Shoemakers (Casal García 2003: 236). Shoemaking was one of the professions traditionally practiced by the Jewish communities in Iberian cities (Ray 2006: 60) and it seems likely that Converso descendents inherited the building post-expulsion. As a synagogue had not been a necessary requirement for the Jewish community to function, La Sinagoga, therefore, may have been an unpleasant but tolerable sacrifice for the Converso community, whose survival now depended upon changing their public identity to that of loyal and devoted Castilian Christians. Ethnic Communities in Transition: Adaptation and Hybrid Forms The families and institutions that maintained the Mezquita and their local neighbourhood masjid contributed to Islamic Córdoba’s civic identity in both conceptual and practical ways. By the promotion of an overtly Islamic architectural grammar, prominent members of Córdoban society provided community cohesion through their denotation of moral authority.

The incoming Mozarabic Church transformed the abandoned masajid into the central foci of Mozarabic Christian parish life. The adornments and proportions of French Gothic architecture were grafted on to the remains of basilica mosques to create new hybrid forms. This innovation of fusing the increasingly 73

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era dominant semantics of the Latin Church with the syntax of the Mozarabic floor plan would have denoted the crusading authority of Cluny and Rome but more furtively promoted the habitual practices of Mozarabic Castile. The Mozarabic colonists who patronised the parish churches had to adapt their ways of life to religious and political pressures as well as to the local environment. The frontier families who sought new lives and opportunities in Córdoba were thus able to continue some of the comforting ethnic rituals of their homeland, whilst securing the protection of the Church of Rome.

styles and elements. Having had no previous allegiance to Mozarabic church practices, Converso families were arguably using the churches as vehicles to align themselves with the Latin practices being overlaid on to the Mozarabic parish churches. In a political climate where aristocratic Christian families were establishing their ethnic identities by their ‘pure’ bloodlines (Rawlings 2002: 4-5), Conversos and other middle level families perhaps prospered by overtly engaging in parish church practices to demonstrate their Christian and therefore Castilian, credentials. Conclusions

Respectable middling families identified themselves by investing in church practices. This form of patronage was designed to be a long-term commitment and investment by families, whose social status and community identities were formed and maintained within the practices of the parish churches. Continual investment in the fabric of the churches over several centuries put their expressions of civic identity into physical forms. They collaborated through fraternal and guild institutions that emphasised the practices of Christian devotion initially as the essence of Mozarabic character and later as the expression of wider Castilian identity. Later medieval Córdoban public benefactors were demonstrating political allegiance to the expanding Castilian state. However, they did this by adapting the state-approved styles and merging them with their own civic and domestic practices to create localised expressions of community identity. By connecting socially with architects, artists and master craftsmen, aspiring families could construct a fellowship that included other middle ranking patrons, members of the upper clergy and elite ranking families. Their motives may have been purely to advance their social and commercial connections but the effects of practicing such intellectual pursuits and Christian good works would have been the framing of common community values and purposes.

In this article, I have demonstrated that examining the phenomenological aspects or buildways of architectural grammar is a route into interpreting the social groupings of craftspeople, merchants, clergy and patrons. Such people used their buildings in everyday practices, which enveloped and promoted the family and kinship relationships that were critical to their ethnicity construction and its development over time. In Córdoba, ethnic communities employed particular sights, sounds, smells and experiences in their architecture that signified their religious and secular practices as common ways of doing things. Their participation in ethnicity construction required emotional commitment, continued involvement in long-term projects, and the storage of group cultural memories. Consequently, medieval buildways were loaded with specific meanings and phenomenological experiences that were lived by ethnically aware individuals and groups. Over subsequent generations these practices became embedded in the ethnic mindset of each group. Although religions underpinned ethnicities they did not strictly define ethnic community identities. Expressions of ethnic identity were in the adaptations and hybridisations of architectural settings to accommodate the requirements of ethnic practices. Critically, those ethnic practices changed over time and over generations with the needs and desires of their participants. The continuous reuse and adaptation of Córdoba’s public religious architecture emphasised the continual adaptation of Córdoba’s ethnic communities as traditions evolved. Therefore, it is important that we consider each ethnic community’s buildways in our future archaeological interpretations along with other considerations of food, clothing, language, and portable technologies.

For the Jewish community, a fairly standardised courtyard plan was sufficient to fuse with the few requirements of synagogue practices to create a hybrid form. Nevertheless, the rebuilding of La Sinagoga was a deliberate cultural choice on the part of its patrons that would have underpinned and motivated Jewish ethnic identity. The hybridised syntactic grammar of La Sinagoga formed a structuring vehicle for the reproduction of Jewish ethnicity through every day practices. Once the synagogue was sacrificed, the parish churches conceivably became the social focus of the Converso community. Some Converso merchant families, along with their Christian Castilian counterparts would have been connected with other merchant families around Europe and were well placed to be the intellectual drivers of imported Renaissance

Acknowledgements I am very grateful to Catherine Frieman, James Flexner, Roberta Gilchrist, John Barrett and the anonymous peer reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this text. 74

D.A. Lenton: Ethnic Buildways:Phenomenology in the Architectural Grammar Declaration of Conflicting Interests

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Hybrid Vernacular: Houses and the Colonial Process in the West of Ireland in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Eve Campbell

Independent researcher email: [email protected]

Abstract: This paper explores the development of the vernacular stone dwelling in early modern Ireland. A group of modest

stone buildings from Clare, in the west of Ireland, are discussed, using the approach of monument biography. The buildings are connected with a social strata of minor-gentry families, and are interpreted as hybrid architectural forms whose genesis is rooted in a complex set of negotiations between these vertically displaced native families, their anglicised patrons, their subtenants and dependents, and the colonial state. The buildings are argued to simultaneously embody divergent associations rooted in both a native ethos and colonial discourses on architecture and civility. Keywords: Ireland, hybridity, vernacular architecture, colonialism

to have a number of common characteristics including a long, rectangular floor plan; mass roof-bearing walls, typically of mortared stone or mud but sometimes of dry-stone or sod; open, axially located hearth and thatched roof. Opes as a rule were in the long side walls, not in the gables. Each room occupied the full width of the house. In addition, the buildings are considered to lack a ‘formal’ plan, deriving their form, not from trained architects, but from the wellspring of a common building tradition (Ó Danachair 1972: 77; Mullane 2000, 75; Gailey 1984: 7-10; O’Reilly 2011: 194-208).

Introduction The vernacular stone thatched dwelling in Ireland has assumed iconic status. It has come to represent ‘Irishness’ itself, being cast as the symbol of a romanticised unchanging tradition with roots stretching into the Iron Age and earlier (Gardiner 2011). Yet, the origins and development of the stone thatched dwelling in Ireland remains poorly understood. This paper argues that the development of the vernacular stone thatched dwelling in Ireland was deeply rooted in the colonial process that reshaped the island from the mid-sixteenth century onwards. Impacting factors included the widespread deforestation, changing property regimes, shifting social relationships and the influence of incoming architectural styles from England, Scotland and beyond. Drawing on recent field work from the barony of Burren, County Clare, this paper will discuss a group of modest stone dwellings dating to the latter half of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. The buildings can be connected with a social strata of minor-gentry families who occupied a role as social brokers based on their longstanding social networks in the Burren community, coupled with their ability to adapt to the post-Cromwellian order. These buildings are interpreted as hybrid architectural forms whose genesis is rooted in a complex set of negotiations between the vertically displaced native families, their anglicised patrons, their subtenants and dependents, and the colonial state. The buildings are argued to simultaneously embody divergent associations rooted in both a native ethos and colonial discourses on architecture and civility.

Although much early scholarship on vernacular dwellings tasked itself with the important job of empirical description of the standing buildings, most of which dated to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a concern for the origin or ‘evolution’ of these buildings was present from the start. In part influenced by current concerns in Irish archaeology and a conception of rural Ireland as preserving ancient vestiges of the Indo-European world (Gardiner 2011: 711), much of the earlier research sought to link contemporary vernacular dwellings with prehistoric and early medieval buildings uncovered during archaeological excavations. Åke Campbell postulated that the house type represented by the Irish vernacular dwelling ‘once flourished in the Rhineland and Central Europe, spreading westward with the Celtic wave’(1935: 66). Caoimhín Ó Danachair’s early work argued that Irish vernacular dwellings were remnants of a very old tradition, and he was pessimistic about significant development or change in rural dwellings in Ireland between the early medieval period and the nineteenth century. He argued, for example, that ‘It is certain that there are country houses still inhabited which are constructed in the same way as at the beginning of the Christian era or earlier’(Danaher 1938: 226). Indeed, Ó Danachair suggested that in Iraghticonnor,

Rural Vernacular Dwellings in Ireland While exhibiting significant regional variation, the rural vernacular dwelling is Ireland is generally considered 79

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era Co. Kerry, stone-gabled houses may formed part of a ‘common building tradition’ with some of the ‘earlier stone churches’ in the region (ibid: 235). Estyn Evans, viewing Ireland as preserving aspects of a prehistoric culture, freely compared extant peasant dwellings and Neolithic dwellings unearthed in recent excavations (1940: 167). The tendency to view vernacular dwellings as vestiges of a prehistoric tradition has not completely faded. Fidelma Mullane, for example, has implicitly drawn links between Neolithic structures often called ‘houses’ in the literature and later vernacular dwellings, commenting ‘the dwelling-house … stands as a testimony to an ancient system of values, a worldview which has filtered through the millennia from the Neolithic Age to the twenty-first century, retaining many of the same essential characteristics of height, shape and width for thousands of years’ (2000, 71).

dwellings constructed from wattle, timber, sod and/ or earth. Much evidence for their form and use comes from a combination of historical and cartographic evidence (Ó Danachair 1969), with only a handful of excavated sites. Foreign travel writers left vivid accounts of the dwellings they encountered in Ireland. Produced in a colonial context, this body of literature sought to construct the Irish ‘other’ by reference to their alien habits, and as a result they tend to focus on the dwellings of the majority tenant class, much to the chagrin of Irish elites (Keating 1902, vol.1: 34). Within Ireland there was a repertoire of building forms including light, circular, wickerwork structures called ‘creats’, sub-rectangular buildings of sod, mud and/or wicker, sometimes roofed with crucks (O’Conor 2002: 208; Horning 2004: 375-6). These forms could be used in different contexts from seasonal and temporary settlement to more permanent occupation.

F. H. Aalen argued that all vernacular dwelling in Ireland are essentially derived from hip-ended buildings with central hearths. These are renderings in stone and earth of wattle and post antecedents (1966, 58). The work of Alan Gailey (1961; 1976; 1984) and Philip Robinson (1979) was implemental in highlighting the importance of the early modern period in the development of the vernacular dwelling in Ireland, and the contributions of English and Scotch building traditions to its form. Gailey, for example, argued that the hearth lobby form of buildings were introduced to Ireland in the seventeenth century by English settlers (1984: 188).

Mud-walled buildings are well represented in the archaeological record. Examples have been excavated at Jerpointchurch, Co. Kilkeny, Lough Gur, Co. Limerick, Piperstown, Co. Louth, Moneycross, Co. Wexford and Tullykane, Co. Meath with occupation phases ranging from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century (Foley 1989; Cleary 1982a, 1982b, 1983; Barry 2000; Schweitzer 2009; Baker 2009). Many of them have been interpreted as the dwellings of free Anglo-Norman tenants. These structures often had a mural chimney instead of a central hearth. It is notable that all these sites are within later medieval Anglo-Norman lordships, underlining the impact of the high medieval settlement on later architectural forms. Architectural regionality was noted by contemporaries. A seventeenth-century account of the barony of Forth in Wexford, for example, related that ‘the plebeians have their habitations completely built with mud-walls so firm and high as they frequently raise lofts thereon … more civil and English-like contrived than vulgarly elsewhere in many parts of Ireland’ [italics mine] (Hore 1862, 72).

Creats and ‘Cooples’: The late-medieval background In order to understand the post-medieval vernacular dwelling it is necessary to consider earlier house forms. Later medieval Ireland possessed a welldeveloped tradition of masonry building exemplified by stone castles and churches. Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries an estimated 3,000 towerhouses were built, serving as the residences of Gaelic and Anglo-Norman lords and nobles (Sherlock 2011: 115). Alongside this masonry tradition was a vernacular tradition of building in timber. In 1530, the chronicles lamented O’Donnell’s burning of ‘the best wooden house in all Ireland, the house of MacCosnava on Lough Allen’ (O’Donovan 1990, vol. 5: 1401). Richard Bartlett’s seventeenth-century maps depict elaborate timber buildings testifying to the existence of multi-storey structures, towers and cruciform buildings (Hayes McCoy 1964; Donnelly et al. 2007). Many stone castles had elaborate wooden appurtenances ranging from halls to agricultural buildings. Indeed, cruck-roofed timber halls ranked among those extolled in Gaelic praise poems (Simms 2004).

There is some evidence for stone dwellings. David Obeachayn priest of the diocese of Kifenora is recorded in 1400 to have built a stone house on the ‘lands of Kyllmuginy’ belonging to the mensa of Killaloe (Twemlow 1909: 501). Two rectangular buildings with low stone walls have been found at Cahermaguillamore, Co. Limerick, with occupation dating from the fourteenth to sixteenth century (Ó Riordáin and Hunt 1942: 60-1). FitzPatrick has also highlighted the presence of later medieval stone houses or tighe móir in the cahers of the Burren, which she interprets as ‘the dwellings of later medieval and early-modern Gaelic gentry class on their small Burren landholdings’. The structures are typically rectangular in plan, and composed of undressed stone with rounded corners.

At the other end of the social spectrum, the majority of the people in Ireland appear to have resided in 80

Eve Campbell: Hybrid Vernacular They have internal dimensions of between 8m by 5m and 14m by 7m (FitzPatrick 2009: 299-302).

transhumance, were the caoraigheacht or creaghts. Noted in the native sources from the end of the fourteenth century, the caoraigheacht comprised herds of cattle and other livestock owned by an aristocrat or other noble, along with his followers, who are grazing or travelling through other people’s lands with or without permission (Simms 1986, 382). Bi or triannual movement around the landscape was also occasioned by the practice of periodic land redistribution that was a feature of many of the later medieval Gaelic lordships (Nicholls 2003, 69; O’Conor 2002, 205).

There is significant evidence, both archaeological and documentary, for the presence of sod walled buildings, usually featuring a central hearth. The roofs either rested on the solid walls with a post and wattle core, or were raised on crucks (O’Conor 2002: 204; Gailey 1987: 89; Robinson 1979: 13). The practice of building with crucks was introduced to Ireland before the midthirteenth century by the Anglo-Normans, and was widely adopted by the Gaelic Irish, in part due to their movability (O’Conor 2002: 204-5; O’Conor and Finan 2002, 81-2). Excavated evidence for the later-medieval use of crucks in conjunction with sod walls comes from Glenmakeeran and Tildarg, both in Co. Antrim (Williams and Robinson 1983: 37; Brannon 1984: 168) Breen has also identified potential sod-wall cruck-built dwellings in the Beara peninsula, Co. Cork at Ballynacallgh and Canalough (2005: 95, 144) .

Quinn and Nicholls have suggested that the lowest strata of Gaelic society were largely mobile, moving ‘from place to place and master to master to a surprising degree’, in large part because ‘their ties … were with a particular master, not with the land’ (Quinn and Nicholls 1987: 36; Nicholls 1976, 9-10). From the sixteenth century English writers repeatedly noted the short duration of Irish leases and the prerogative of tenants from across the island to move after between one and three years (Nicholls 1976: 10; Atkinson 1895: 394; Hamilton 1867: 366; Hamilton 1885: 248; Kew 1998: 38; Lucas 1956: 30; Piers 1788, 115-6; Madden [1738] 1816: 11). Canny has noted peasant mobility between the Pale and the Ulster lordships in the sixteenth century, and has argued that to some extent the demand for tenants gave peasants a strong economic position (1970: 27). In the context of a labour shortage tenants could use the threat of moving on to bargain better conditions from their lords. Spenser, for example, reported that ‘the poor husbandman’ favoured short leases because ‘he thinketh by his contynuall libertie of chainge to keepe his landlorde the rather in awe from wronginge of him’ (1882-4: 128). Mobility could thus be a form of resistance.

Accounts of chimneyless sub-circular wattle buildings woven to roof level or roofed with sods or thatch predominate among contemporary accounts, where they were often called ‘creats’(Gailey 1984: 21; Gailey 1987: 88-9; O’Conor 2002, 201). Writing in 1620, Luke Gernon, for example, noted that ‘the baser cottages are built of underwood called wattle, and covered with thatch and some with green sedge, of a round form and without chimneys’ (Litton Falkiner 1904: 355). Descriptions of similar buildings were made by Moryson (1591-5), Gainsford (1618), Lithgow (1619), and Story (1693) among other (Kew 1998: 38; Morley 1890: 430; McInerney 2012: 36; Lithgow 1906: 374; Story 1693: 16). These structures also appear in contemporary illustrations, notably Thomas Bartlett’s maps of Ulster (c.1600), a map of Carrickfergus (c.1560) and in Pacata Hibernia (c.1602) (Hayes McCoy 1964; Horning 2004: 378; Andrews 2004: 167-8). Due to their ephemeral form, creats leave little archaeological remains, and only a handful have been identified archaeologically (Breen 2005: 91; Cleary 1982b: 85; O’Conor 2002, 202).

There is some evidence that even at an elite level temporary dwellings were used in certain circumstances. Transhumance, mentioned above, is a good example. John Dunton’s 1698 account of a visit to the ‘booley’ of an O’Flaherty lord in Connamara illustrates that early modern Gaelic elites were content to seasonally dwell in wattle and daub buildings (2003: 59). Indeed the seasonal occupation of temporary wattle structure could have been viewed as positive and desirable, connected with connotations of leisure, and the noble pursuits like hunting. Simms has noted references to the fian both or wilderness hut used by Gaelic elites during hunting trips, a building form she connects with ‘Spartan values’ (2010, 20). The Gaelic nobility elected to demonstrate their wealth not in dwellings but in the patronage of the learned classes, lavish hospitality and the maintenance of large herds of cattle. The early modern colonial process thus pitted two ethea of nobility against each other, with two conflicting conceptions of the role of material culture.

Mobility and Architecture The prominence of flimsy dwellings in Ireland among the majority of the population must be considered in the context of Gaelic institutions and lifeways. Temporary and seasonal movement were both features of later medieval Ireland, especially so in the Gaelic and Gaelicised lordships. The phenomenon were distinct and were not fully comprehended by contemporary foreign writers who conflated the two, and used the practices to argue that the Irish were nomadic to legitimise the colonial enterprise. Transhumance, involving the summer pasturing of cattle on uplands was widely practiced (Gardiner 2015). Distinct from 81

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era A distinct vein of early modern Gaelic poetry is explicitly concerned with the fraught issues of social status and material culture. At a time of radical social upheaval the role of material culture in claiming and articulating social position was shifting and contested. As novel material goods flooded into Irish ports from the sixteenth century (Flavin 2014), poets voiced their distinct anxiety about the social implications of such goods. The seventeenth-century Munster poem Pairlement Cloinne Tomais is a vitriolic satire on a parvenu element in Irish society who have used their new-found wealth to buy luxury commodities (Williams 1981). Similarly, Laoisioch Mac an Bhaird’s poem A fhir a ghlacas a ghalldacht scorns a noble youth for sporting sumptuous ‘gold-embrodiered’ English clothes and cropped hairstyle. The poet reminds the youth that the true Gaelic noble ‘has no longing for a feather bed, he had rather lie upon rushes … in a hut of rough poles than the taille of a tower’ (Bergin 1912).

study. They are Lislarheen House, Ballyconnoe Houe and Cahermakerilla House, all located in the Burren (Figure 1; Figure 6). Lislarheen House Lislarheen House is in the townland of Lislarheenmore on the eastern slopes of the Caher Valley in the civil parish of Rathborney. It is shown on the 1840 OS map as a small ruined T-plan building (Figure 2). The 25-inch OS map (1895) shows it as a sheep fold. The remains are lamentably fragmentary. The NE portion of the house survives but much of the rest of it has been robbed out (Figure 3; Figure 6). Scaling from the 25-inch map the original footprint of the building was c.21m E-W by c.7m N-S. The T projection was c.4m square. The walls are c.0.80m thick and composed of flat bedded limestone rubble bound with mortar. The 1895 map shows an internal wall dividing the house into roughly equally sized rooms but it is difficult to say whether this was original or a later insertion for stock management. The location of the entrance(s) is uncertain. The T-outshot is a particularly interesting feature of the building. In light of contemporary architectural comparisons it may have served to carry a stair.1 The strong mortared walls could certainly have carried an upper storey. If this was the case then we would expect there to have been a chimney, but it is not possible to say if it was located in the gable or at the centre of the building.

The Study Area The case study of the Burren, Co. Clare, will be used to understand changing early modern house forms. The Burren is an area of upland karst limestone on Ireland’s Atlantic coast. The name Burren, meaning rocky place, applies not only to the geological formation, but also to a barony of the same name. The barony was also coterminous with the medieval Gaelic lordship of the O’Loughlins, which in turn was subject to the overlordship of the O’Briens of Thomond. The Burren landscape is characterised by dramatic limestone terraces and swathes of exposed pavement, cut by glacial valleys with deeper soil cover. The area has a long history of human settlement and the stony landscape is dotted with archaeological monuments and laced with webs of relict stone walls. The predominance of small farming and extensive grazing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had ensured a high survival rate of relict settlement in the Burren, making it a rich resource for archaeologists.

The house had a trapezoidal yard (31m by 23.5m) attached to its N side bound by a drystone wall of coursed limestone rubble. The N wall of the yard was built along the lip of a shallow limestone cliff. To the E of the house, on the valley floor there is a substantial rectangular enclosure associated with the settlement. It is c.80m by 65m and enclosed by tall battered drystone walls (1.78m high). The house is situated in a landscape of irregular stone enclosures and is at some distance from the modern road. In the 1630s Lislarheenmore formed part of the extensive estate of Donogh O’Brien. The townland was allocated to Hugh O’Davoren in the Cromwelliam land settlement (Simington 1970: 18). The O’Davorens were a local Gaelic professional family who served as brehons to the O’Loughlens and ran a law school at the nearby townland of Cahermacnaghten (FitzPatrick 2008). Hugh O’Davoren was listed at the tituladoe in the 1659 poll tax along with 19 ‘Irish’. Residents of the townland are also included on the return of the Court Leet of the Finavarra manor court in 1678. The role of Lislarheen as a political hub is indicated by the fact that

This high rate of monument survival coupled with a good early modern historical record makes the Burren conducive to the study of early modern houses. Studying these buildings is not straightforward. Vernacular dwellings are notoriously difficult to date, they are often heavily modified or incorporated into later buildings. Many of them are not recorded on either the Register of Monuments and Places (RMP) or the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage (NIAH) because they are too modern or not of immediately obvious architectural interest. This study uses the approach of monument biography, charting the history of the buildings and their inhabitants by piecing together fragments from the historic record. Three buildings are examined for the purposes of this

Comparable buildings include Graney House near Castledermot, Co. Kildare. It is a T-plan house 13m by 7m with a 4m by 4m stair outshot (KD040-013----). Castlebaldwin, Co. Sligo is an L-plan building of similar dimensions with a stair outshot (SL034-185----). 1 

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Figure 1 Clare House distro map

Figure 2. Burren Houses and Gardens

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Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era The 1840 OS map depicts Ballyconnoe House as a simple rectangular structure, aligned east-west. The building is perched on the edge of a shallow limestone cliff, falling off to scrubby ground to the north and west. Most of it has since been demolished, but a stretch of c. 7m of the northern wall survives (Figure 4). Scaling from the 1840 OS map the building was an estimated 10-15m in external length and circa 5-7m wide (Figure 6). The surviving stretch of wall is composed of two outer skins of masonry with a rubble core. There is a blocked window ope in the western end of the wall and its eastern end terminates in the jamb of a doorway, with an in situ punch-dressed hanging eye. Two punchdressed corbels were found amidst collapse from the building.

Figure 3. Lislarheen House

The dwelling is set within a matrix of irregular fields, and has three possible house sites in close proximity. To the west it overlooks a large regular quadrilateral enclosure of some 1.48 acres (Figure 2). The enclosure is bound by tall battered dry-stone walls and has an original entrance in its eastern side.

three member of the O’Davoren family residing in the townland were acquitted under the articles of Limerick. The family also supported the local Catholic clergy and in 1704 the parish priest of Gleningh was resident in the townland. Lislarheen passed out of O’Davoren hands in 1773 when it was sold for the sun of £1,500 (Registry of Deeds, Book 298, Page 366, No.97730).

Ballyconnoe was the hereditary land of a sept called the Uí Chonnmhaigh, after who the townland was named. The sept were present in the townland from at least the mid-fourteenth century, when they are mentioned in the Caithréim Thoirdhealbhaigh. They were a learned and clerical family. In the mid-fourteenth century a member of the sept served as chief professor or music in Thomond, and in 1434, another, Donnchadh Ó Connmhaigh was appointed bishop of Kilfenora. Additionally the sept habitually served as vicars of Kileany, and held other clerical posts in the diocese (McInerney 2014: 108). Historical references indicate that members of the sept continued to occupy the townland in the late sixteenth, and early seventeenth century. They are mentioned in the Fiants in 1577, and 1602, and on a land deed in 1598 (Nicholls 1994, vol. 2: 413; ibid, vol. 3: 549; Ainsworth 1961: 294). In 1641, Ballyconnoe North was held between one Thomas Oge

Ballyconnoe House Ballyconnoe House lies in the south-west end townland of Ballyconnoe in the civil parish of Killeany. It is located at the southern end of the Caher Valley, within a 600m of the medieval church of Killeany and the early eighteenth century chapel of Toomaghery. The earliest, albeit stylized, depiction of the house is on Henry Pelham’s 1787 Grand Jury map of Clare, where it is labelled ‘Ballycunno House’. The building remained a landmark on the 1840 OS map, where it is marked ‘Ballycunnoe’ House, and noted to be ‘in ruins’ (Figure 2). By the time the 25-inch OS map was being surveyed, in 1895, the ruined building had been further robbed out, and it was not marked on the map.

Figure 4. Ballyconnoe House elev

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Eve Campbell: Hybrid Vernacular O’Connor and Daniel O’Bryan (Simington 1967: 491). It is probable that in this case O’Connor is an Anglicisation of Uí Chonnmhaigh, sometimes also rendered as Connowe, O’Conowa, Conway or O’Konowe. The townland of Ballyconnoe North passed to the Creagh family during the Cromwellian land settlement and formed part of their estate well into the nineteenth century. No tituladoe is listed for the townland in the 1659 ‘census’, but it may well be that members of the Uí Chonnmhaigh continued to occupy their ancestral holding. In this regard it is notable that John O’Donovan reporting in the OS letters identified Ballyconnoe House as the ‘ruins of the house of O’Connoe or O’Conway More, after whom this townland was named’ (OS Letters).

Figure 5.

Like Lislarheen House, Ballyconnoe House was listed as the dwelling place of a Catholic priest in 1704. It was the residence of Mortagh Flanagan, Catholic priest of Kileany, Killymoon and Killileagh (Popish Parish Priests). The same Mortagh Flanagan’s name appears on dedicatory plaque in Toomaghery chapel, reading ‘IHS – pray for me Mortaugh Flanagan, who built this altar in the year 1700’ (Frost 1892: 32). He was buried in the medieval church of Kileany, leaving a carved funerary monument (Anon. 1896: 2). Cahermakerilla South-west of Ballyconnoe North, in the same parish of Kileany, lies Cahermakerilla House. Like Ballycunnoe House, the building is shown on the 1787 Grand Jury map of Co. Clare, where it is labelled ‘Karrowmckerrila Ho.’. It is depicted on the 1840 OS map, but unlabelled (Figure 2). The 25-inch OS map (1895) again shows the building, somewhat modified, and does not provide a label. The building survives as a multi-phase three-bay rectangular structure aligned east-west and measuring 7.8m by 16.6m (external) (Figure 5; Figure 6). While its N and W walls are extant, its S wall has been mostly demolished and its E wall much modified to accommodate a modern cattle crush. The central and western bay form the earliest phase of the building. This phase is represented by a rectangular mortared stone building (7.8m by 13m). Its wall are 0.75m-0.85m thick and composed of two outer skins of coursed stone with a rubble core. There are three opes in its N wall, the central ope (1.22m wide) would appear to have been a door and the other two (0.50m-1.0m wide) may have been windows. The W wall also has a window (0.54m ext; 1.10m int. wide) and another survives in the S wall (0.56m wide ext.). A mural fireplace is present in the W wall surmounted by a relieving arch. The mural

Figure 6.

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Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era fireplace suggests that in this phase of the building it has a gabled roof.

and Cahermakerilla House having been built in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Ballyconnoe and Lislarheen were both in ruins by the 1840s, and while Cahermakerilla was occupied until the early twentieth century, it was much altered.

During the second phase of the building a mural hearth with a very tall chimney was inserted into the W end of the N wall, blocking one of the earlier opes. The chimney reaches a height of 6.7m above ground level (Figure 5). It is square in plan and features a squareshaped cornice. During the third phase, an internal wall was built bisecting the building. The W wall was raised and the W end of the N wall was built into a gable, changing the orientation of the roof and halving the building in size. Internal beam holes in the E and W walls suggest that a loft may have been inserted at this time. A cornice was added to the exterior of the E and W walls, indicating that the S wall of the central bay was demolished during this phase. In the fourth phase of the building a dry-stone annex (3.5m wide) was appended to its east end. Phases three and four date to between c.1840 and c.1895.

All three buildings are of modest size ranging between 21m and 10m in length and 7.8m and 5-6m in external width. This is very close to FitzPatrick’s figures for the tighe móir, and O’Reilly’s average dimensions for nineteenth and twentieth-century vernacular dwellings (3-4m by 13-14m) (2011: 197). Unfortunately the poor survival of the buildings precludes definite statements on the arrangement of windows and doors, but Cahermakerilla and Ballyconnoe would seem to have had façades composed of a central doorway with a window on either side. Both would also seem to have been initially single storey constructions, although the corbels at the latter site could have facilitated a loft. Lislarheen may have had a first floor judging from the T outshot. It is not clear if Ballyconnoe or Lislarheen had chimneys but the possibility of lofts and/or upper floor at both sites suggests that they did. The chimney is perhaps the most prominent feature of Cahermakerrila. In phase 1 the building had a mural hearth in its W gable wall, and this was replaced by a huge chimney in the N wall in phase 2. Perhaps the biggest architectural break that the houses exhibit is their fabric. All three possess thick limestone walls bound with lime mortar. Cahermakerilla and Ballyconnoe have walls made with a coursed outer skin and a rubble core, while Lislarheen’s walls are of more solid construction. Lislarheen and Cahermakerilla have square quoins, in contrast to the tighe móir.

The house is accessed along an avenue leading S to a minor road (Figure 2). It is not clear if this is an original feature. A walled garden with a battered dry stone wall flanks the garden to the W, and some of the fields nearest the house appear to be laid out follows its axis. In 1641 the one and a half quarters of ‘Karrowmckerrell and Carrowlupane’ were held between Donnell O’Bryan and Murtagh and Conor O’Loughlin. Like Ballyconnoe, the denomination passed to Pierce Creagh after the Cromwellian land settlement, although he seems not to have maintained title to it. Between the late seventeenth century and the early nineteenth centuries the townland is associated with a family called Mahon (Simington 1967: 492). In 1659 ‘Nicholas Mahon, gent’ was listed as the tituladoe in the townland along with seven ‘Irish’ (Pender 1939). In 1786 a ‘Thomas M’Mahon of Cahermakerrila Esq’ is recorded as converting to Protestantism. In 1821, the townland was held in freehold by one Francis McMahon, who was also resident there (List of Freeholders). By the 1850s the Mahons were no longer resident in the townland, and their previous holding was part of the Creagh estate (Griffith 1855: 30).

All three sites exhibit elements of designed landscape (Figure 2). Lislarheen and Ballyconnoe both have very large quadrilateral enclosures located in close proximity to the house that are arguably contemporary with their construction and have been for containing animals or walled gardens. Cahermakerilla has an enclosure to the W of the house and an avenue approaching from the S. These designed elements sit alongside more irregular landscapes of small stone enclosures and field walls. Excavated Evidence in Co. Clare and Limerick

Minor Gentry Houses of the Burren

We can add to these three dwellings a number of seventeenth century stone buildings that have been excavated in Counties Clare and Limerick. In 1945 a seventeenth stone house was excavated at Knockadoon, Co. Limerick (Figure 7). The building had an L plan with a central block (17.3m by 6.8m) and an eastern extension. Its walls were composed of limestone mortared with clay (c.0.75m wide). It has a central free-standing stone hearth and another double mural hearth in the extension (Ó Ríordáin and Ó Danachair

While exhibiting a degree of architectural variation all three buildings discussed share a number of common characteristics. They were all the most prominent buildings in their townlands in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and were landmarks bearing their townland names. Ballycunnoe House is arguably the oldest and could be late sixteenth or seventeenth century in date. The combined archaeological and historical evidence points towards Lislarheen House 86

Eve Campbell: Hybrid Vernacular These dwellings were not the product of some homogenous peasantry. They were built and occupied by a distinctive social stratum, comprising of families who typically held at least townland in freehold (often renting more land) and were designed in the contemporary documents as ‘gentlemen’ or ‘yeomen’. They were often descended from later medieval Burren noble or professional families, who had successfully negotiated the Cromwellian land settlement, building a role for themselves as substantial farmers or middlemen. All three sites can be connected with minor-gentry families. Lislarheen and Ballyconnoe were built and associated with the O’Davorens and the Uí Chonnmhaigh families, both local learned and clerical septs. The occupants of these sites used the honorifics gentleman and esquire denoting their gentry status. Both Lislarheen and Ballyconnoe were listed as the residences of Catholic priests at the turn of the eighteenth century, underlining their proprietor’s role in patronising and providing hospitality to the clergy.

Figure 7.

1947). A smaller rectangular stone house with a similar double hearth of probably seventeenth century date has been recorded at Inis Cealtra (Figure 7) (Macalister 1916-17: 49). A seventeenth century stone house was excavated at the church site of Noughaval in the Burren. It was rectangular in plan (8.9m by 5.8m) with coursed outer skins and a rubble infill. The walls were mortared and internally plastered. The dwelling had an internal partition, and a clay floor. The hearth was on a flag against the internal E gable wall (Ní Ghabhláin 1992). Thady’s Fort, Ballycally, Co. Clare was excavated by Etienne Rynne in 1959 (Figure 7). The site comprised a rath with a central rectangular stone house 13.4m by 6.2m. The walls were 0.75m wide and composed of a double skin of masonry with a rubble core. The walls were internally plastered and the hearth was in the long wall opposite the door (Rynne 1962-4: 250-2).

The builders of these houses formed part of a social group that the geographer Kevin Whelan has dubbed the ‘underground gentry’ (1995: 7). This stratum remained the de facto leaders of rural Catholic society, drawing their position from the persistent vertical social ties and the reservoir of memory sustaining them. The contemporary vernacular appellation for these middlemen is instructive: tiarna beag, meaning little lord and Anglicised ‘terny beg’. The use of the common sixteenth-century title for the lords of a territory is significant in that in many instances underground gentry did maintain some of the attributes of old tighearna or lords. They were dispensers of patronage, facilitating access to jobs, subleases, conacre, or cottiers holdings, being largely responsible for recruiting and organising subtenants. Informally, or in their role as landlord’s agents, they served as arbitrators, and they settled disputes. Unlike the interloping Cromwellians, or Anglicised native landlords, who had long retreated into the realm of the polite, middlemen were immersed in the popular culture of their communities. Their relationships with their clients took on a more persona, paternal tenor, turning on the kin and communal bonds that underpinned the moral economy. These vertical bonds were cemented by a reservoir of memory. The underground gentry were in Whelan’s words ‘obsessed to the point of neurosis with ancestry’. In their ability to bridge gaps between the landlord and the subtenant, middlemen families served as cultural, social and economic brokers (1995: 24).

These type of buildings have received little attention by scholars. Ó Danachair was perhaps the first to describe similar forms in work on the vernacular houses in Kildare (1966-7: 243). He termed the buildings ‘thatched mansions’, describing them as ‘substantial, two-storied building of simple form’, frequently with 5-6 bays, and often the biggest houses in their townlands (ibid). He described one such house that he surveyed in Kildare: It consisted of two large rooms on the ground floor and two large rooms in the upper storey, each storey being simply divided by partition. Access to the upper storey was provided by a moveable ladder through a trap door in the floor. The two upper rooms were bedrooms, each of them had a fireplace in the gable wall. Each of the ground floor rooms also had a fireplace; on the left was the kitchen with its great open hearth and builtin oven, and on the right the other room, used for general purposes, part store, part sitting-room, part sleeping accommodation (ibid).

Whelan’s work has largely focused on south-east Ireland, his analysis holds well for the barony of Burren. Along with most of Connacht, the barony was allocated to Catholic transplantees during the Cromwellian land settlement. The rocky, exposed landscape was 87

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era uninviting to outsiders, and most transplantees allocated land in the barony opted to sell it and/or refused to leave their home territories. The barony maintained an overwhelmingly Catholic population, and the significant Protestant landlords, the O’Briens, were native Gaelic converts, rather than incomers of British origin. The land settlement did have an impact on the pattern of landholding in the barony, but to a much lesser extent than other parts of the island. The colonial process played out in the extension of state administrative structures into the area and the rationalisation of complex Gaelic landholding practices and their replacement with English tenures, engendering a new legal relationship to land.

tenants were frequently required to build on their rented holdings. Thomas Spaight’s 1681 abstract of the Earl of Thomond’s rentals c. 1656-73 records many such references in rental covenants, often in conjunction with directions to enclose land or plant orchards. These rentals were to substantial tenants of the Earl, who typically held multiple townlands on leases of between 31 and 99 years. On 3 February 1658, for example, one Christopher Hurt entered into a 31 year contract with the Earl and agreed to build within seven years ‘a House 40 foot long, 18 broad and 14 foot high, of lime and stone, well floored with boards, and slated’ (Petworth Collection, Rents: 46). Similarly, Samuel Burton, who rented 8 and a half quarters of land from the Earl in 1657, was required to build a house ‘with lime and stone, 40 foot long, 18 foot wide, a story and half high, with a loft of boards and chimneys and to slate &c. the roof ’(ibid: 104). Dimensions varied. Within the town of Ennis, the required size was 18 foot wide, 14 foot high and extending back the length of the plot (ibid: 59). Larger tenants were often asked to build bigger dwellings of between 50 and 60 foot (ibid: 44; Ainsworth 1961: 364). In addition to stone walls and slated roofs many of the Ennis tenants were required to roughcast their dwellings and insert glazing (O’Mahoney 2004: 172). Other rentals were vaguer in their requirements. A lease by Slany ny Brien to one Donogh O’Heyne in 1614 simply required the lessee ‘to build a stonewalled house’ (Ainsworth 1961: 100-1), while in 1655 Colonel Henry Ingoldesby asked a tenant to construct ‘a decent and sufficient house after the English manner’(ibid: 352).

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The politics of architecture In order to understand the architectural forms built by native families in the early modern Burren, it is necessary to consider the role of architecture in contemporary discourse. Architectural forms served as a key marker of difference, mapping onto a binary schema that contrasted civil English men with their savage Irish counterparts. As Fynes Moryson put it ‘we live in cleanly houses, they in smokey cottages’ (Kew 1998: 52). Irish dwellings were both a marker of incivility and its root. Moryson attributed the standard of Irish building to laziness: ‘Idlenes makes them also slouenly and sluttish in their howses and apparrell’ (ibid: 102). While for Spenser the dwelling of the Irish peasant was ‘the chiefest cause of his so beastly manner of life and savage condition’ (Morley 1890: 122). Throughout the various plantation schemes that were undertaken in the century between c.1540 and c.1640, the regulation of housing was a key concern. Most of the official plantation schemes outlined strict building requirements for undertakers (Robinson 1984: 129). Plantation surveys used walling material as a key indicator of Englishness or Irishness. Stone dwellings bound with lime or clay mortar were typically adjudged ‘English’ or ‘in the manner of the Pale’, as were boxframed timber buildings (Gailey 1984: 44). The mortared stone dwellings returned in the surveys tended to between 18 and 25 feet long (Robinson 1979: 138). The influx of new architectural styles that came with the plantations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had an impact on vernacular dwellings styles. English timber-frame dwellings of the hearth-lobby type, for example, may well have contributed to development of the hearth-lobby stone house in Ireland (Gailey 1987: 90-1).

In addition to the stone and lime-mortar buildings some leases called for the construction of ‘coopled’ or cruckframe dwellings, incorporating masonry elements. These buildings seem to constitute a compromise between vernacular forms and improved ideals. In 1668, Donagh O’Brien of Leamenah stipulated that a tenant built a ‘house of three cooples and two ends with a stone wall and a double chimney’ (ibid: 367). Teige O Lemessy, a tenant of the Earl of Thomond, was required by a lease commencing in 1666 to build a ‘house of eight couples with stone wall, stone chimneys, plastered and ruffcasted within the time of seven years’(O’Mahoney 2004: 149). We know that such building were indeed constructed for in 1672 Thomond’s manor court accused one George Ross of carrying off a house of ‘of four couples, seven foot high in the leg or thereabouts, and about fifty foot long in the floor, and a cross house that was thereunto adjoining of two couples and a half that had a stone wall thereunto, there being twixt the said house a double chimney the lower part thereof being of stone and mortar and the upper part being of timber’(ibid: 149).

Outside of state-sponsored plantations, landlords often stipulated that tenants should build in lime-mortared stone. Seventeenth-century rentals from the Thomond and Inchiquin Papers from Co. Clare indicate that 88

Eve Campbell: Hybrid Vernacular Leases enjoining tenants to build in stone did not necessarily translate into a landscape of improved stone dwellings. The returns of the Thomond Manor Courts indicate that failure to carry out required improvements was a common offence. Indeed, Thomand’s seneschal for the manor of Crouraghan and Kilrush tasked the manor jurys with inquiring whether leesees had ‘improved according to their contracts’(ibid: 142). The business of the courts leet and baron for Crouraghan held in October 1672 was almost entirely taken up with lessees who had either failed to carry out improvements or who had carried them out inadequately (ibid: 148-9). This was a story echoed across the Earl’s other manors. At the courts leet and baron of Kilrush in July 1672 all seven items concerned improvement, with five lessees being found not to have carried them out as required (ibid: 157). Similarly, at the court leet in Ennis held in October 1672 some 33 out of 43 items of business concerned failure to implement improvements (ibid: 172-3).

population, were key to national prosperity (Fox 2009: 393). From this perspective Petty advocated the reform of Irish peasant lifeways and material culture. Among the principal deficiencies of Irish cottages was their unsuitability to domestic industry, namely dairying and textile production (1899, vol.1: 578). The housing thereof consists of 160M nasty cabins in which neither butter nor cheese, nor linen, yarn nor worsted, and I think no other, can be made to the best advantage; chiefly by reason of the soot and smokes annoying the same; as also for the narrowness and nastiness of the place; which cannot be kept clean nor safe from beasts and vermin, nor from damps and musty stenches, of which all the eggs laid or kept in those cabins do partake. Wherefore to the advancement of trade, the reformation of these cabins is necessary (Italics mine) (ibid: 190). Petty recommended the building of ‘168,000 stonewall houses, with chimneys, doors, windows, gardens and orchards, ditched and quicksetted’ to replace ‘the lamentable sties now in use’ (ibid: 147). The proposed reform of the dwellings of the largely self-sufficient peasantry was bound up with drawing this sector tighter into the market economy and inculcating in them a desire for consumer goods, while at the same time necessitating them to earn money by either engaging in market-orientated agriculture, domestic industry or wage labour. Petty argued that the self-sufficiency of the peasantry was a bar to trade, and thus national prosperity. He calculated that the estimated 180,000 families who lived in cabins without chimneys spent on average only 52 shilling per annum each, the principal outlays being tobacco, shoes and a tailor’s wages: ‘Men live in such Cottages as themselves can make in 3 or 4 days; Eat such Food (tobacco expected) as they buy not from others; wear such Cloaths as the Wooll of their own Sheep, spun into Yarn by themselves’ (ibid, vol.1: 188). Petty desired to ‘beget a luxury in the 950 M plebeians, so as to make them spend and consequently earn double to what they do at present’ (ibid, vol.1: 192).

Dwellings and political economy In the 1660s the dwelling became a more explicit object of state observation and regulation with the advent of the hearth tax. The tax, introduced to Ireland in 1662, levied 2 shillings on all ‘hearths, firing place and stoves’ payable in two moieties on Ladyday and Michaelmas (MacLysaght 1967: 6). Legislation was introduced in 1665 to streamline the tax collection process. In addition to allowing for the farming of tax collection, it introduced a tax of 4 shilling on dwellings with no fixed hearth (ibid: 14), although this penalty appears not to have been well implemented (Dickson et al. 1982: 140). William Petty drew on the figures collected during the tax in his writings on Ireland. For Petty the dwelling constituted a key analytical category. In his Political Anatomy of Ireland (1672) he analysed the population based on the type of house they lived in. Petty reckoned that 80% (160,000) of the dwellings in Ireland comprised of ‘cabins, with neither chimney, door, stairs nor window’ (1899, vol. 1: 142, 156). A further 12% had one chimney, 3.4% had 2-3 chimneys, 2.8% had 5-6 chimneys, and 1.8% had between 7 and 20 chimneys (ibid: 143). This contrasts with England where during the same period between 66% and 75% of dwellings had one hearth and 20% had two (Crowley 2000: 57).

Following Petty’s line of argument, the Irishman Samuel Madden writing in 1738 argued that the reform of housing was a prerequisite to engaging the peasantry in successful cottage industry, and he also linked it with creating within their ranks a desire for consumer goods.

The improvement of Ireland’s vernacular dwellings was a key concern for Petty. The reform of the ‘brutish’, ‘wretched’ and ‘beastlike’ dwelling was concomitant with the reform of its inhabitants, and ultimately with the ‘advancement of trade’. For Petty trade and manufacture was central to the creation of wealth. He cast an underpopulated and underdeveloped Ireland against the foil of the Netherlands in arguing that industry and commerce, allied with adequate

… there is an absolute necessity to lodge them better … if we would have them cultivate their lands or manufactures to any purpose. The flax they spin is generally sooted and blackened with the smoak, and sells at much the worse price for that reason, and no trade or business can be carried on, nor even butter or cheese made, or drink brewed, or life itself sustained with any ease or comfort in them. We should therefore 89

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era improve their buildings … and see them more snug, warm and decent, to give them a taste and desire for the reasonable satisfactions of life, and this will be the best way to spur them on to industry and labour, for the more they spend, the more they must earn, if they keep in their present sleepy sloth, dirt and rags, they will never labour, but prefer the dog’s life, ease and hunger (Madden [1738] 1816: 11-2).

1957: 72; Lucas 1956: 34). Indeed native oak has not been discovered in any Ulster house dating after 1720. (Gailey 1987: 92). Traditions of architecture disappeared with the woods, and the enclosure of commonly held resources imbued with use rights (e.g. house bote). The English timber-frame dwellings found in planted land in Ulster disappeared along with native architectural forms (Gailey 1984: 45-6). Shortage of timber affected roof construction. The lack of beams long enough to span a wide gap may be one of the reasons why the house tended to develop in length and not in width and contributed to the spread of the mass wall thought not to have been used in Ulster before the seventeenth century (Ó Danachair 1972: 78). The use of timber shingles too disappeared (ibid: 79). Certain elements survived. Wattle was used for door, screen and smoke hoods up until the twentieth century (Lucas 1956: 29).

He further argued that the current state of rural housing inhibited the accumulation of wealth and encouraged thieves: ‘Good and substantial buildings are … a security and defence to men’s possessions and quiet in the country … The weakness of cabins, renders then inhabitants fearful and emboldens thieves … it even discourages thrift, where it is unsafe to lay up money, which is open to every invader (ibid: 10). Madden’s writing echoed broader trends in early eighteenth-century political economy where the language of comfort (‘reasonable satisfactions of life’) was marshalled to bolster new consumption patterns. In this discourse levels of comfort and convenience became correlated with notions of progress from barbarianism to civilization (Crowley 2000: 143). This ethic was at odds with traditional Gaelic articulations of status. Whelan’s study underlines the fact that for many families ostentation in architecture was not a priority. Much like the medieval Gaelic lords, they preferred to articulate their social positon through lavish hospitality and patronage of popular culture (1995: 7; O’Conor 2005).

Post-colonial cottages? It is in this context of contemporary discourse and shifting social relationships, that we should view houses like Lislarheen, Ballyconnoe and Cahermakerilla. How might we interpret these buildings? One useful lens is that of postcolonial theory. Postcolonial theory refers to a body of writing concerned with understanding the colonial encounter. While originally firmed rooted in literary criticism where it focused on colonial representation, postcolonial theory has increasingly been employed as an analytical framework to understand the material culture in colonial situations in multiple contexts. Homi Bhabha is prominent among postcolonial theorists drawn on by archaeologists. In an Irish context, Horning has drawn on his work to explore interactions in seventeenth century Ulster (Horning 2014; 2016). Bhabha has contributed a number of concepts to postcolonial theory, notably hybridity, mimesis and mimicry, and the colonial ‘Third Space’.

Material consequences of colonialism: enclosure and deforestation The type of building that people built were not just a reflection of contemporary discourses. They were shaped by access to resources and materials. In 1596 Edmund Spenser could proclaim Ireland to be ‘adorned with goodlie woodes, fitt for buildinge of houses … as that if some princes in the world had them’ (1882-4: 38). Yet by the close of the seventeenth century the loss of this vital timber resource had deep consequences for livelihoods. Perhaps one of the largest factors in the shift away from native timber traditions of building was the large-scale deforestation that occurred during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Ó Danachair 1972: 78). The situation had become so dire that in 1705 the Irish parliament passed an act to secure the planting of timber trees and wood. The act targeted the destruction of young trees, forbidding the use of ‘wattling in the walls of houses or cabins, or out-buildings, any kind of gad or gads, wyth or wythes, of oak, ash, birch, hazel or other tree whatsoever’(Lucas 1956: 30). The only wood available for building was bog wood, drift wood and scrubby trees like gorse, hazel and willow (Ó Danachair

It is his notion of hybridity that I wish to use here. Hybridity refers to new ‘in between’ cultural forms forged through the colonial encounter. These forms are not simple resolutions of the ‘tension between two cultures’, but are inherently ambivalent, simultaneously holding contradictory meanings (1994: 113-4). Bhabha argues that the production of hybridisation is the effect of colonial power rather than ‘the noisy command of colonial authority and the silent repression of native traditions’ (ibid: 112). As such hybridity has subversive potential. Hybridity, as Bhabha puts it, ‘unsettles the mimetic or narcissistic demands of colonial power but reimbricates its identifications in strategies of subversion that run the gaze of the discriminated back upon the eyes of power’(ibid).

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Eve Campbell: Hybrid Vernacular The underground gentry were themselves a hybrid social class, the products of a colonial process. They were at once brokers of a new social order and nobility of an old order. Their material culture too embodies this hybrid character. Their dwellings are ambivalent, simultaneously holding divergent meanings. They employ elements drawn from native building traditions, but also speak to contemporary discourse on ‘civil’ and ‘improved’ housing, that was in particularly evident on the estates of the Earl of Thomond. The decisions by women and men to use or reject certain building forms or materials could be a clear statement of identity and outlook (Whelan 1995: 10). Yet these decisions were circumscribed by the ability to marshal labour and materials. Changing relationships to land and landownership allied with changing social relationships shaped the needs and imperatives behind house building. It is in this distinctly colonial context that the vernacular dwelling in Ireland finds its origin. While the buildings carried within them echos of older traditions they are the products of material negotiations of women and men carving out a space for themselves in a changing world.

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The Development of the Apartment Building in 18th century Vienna Paul Mitchell

An independent structural archaeologist in and around Vienna, serving clients including the Imperial palaces, the Ministry of the Interior and the Monuments Agency email: [email protected] Abstract: Apartment buildings (Mietshäuser) – offering several storeys of rented flats of varying size – emerge in Vienna in the course of the eighteenth century. The new buildings, which were necessarily founded on the remains of older houses, were erected as speculative investments, banking on rental revenue in future decades. The apartment buildings catered above all to the rising middle and professional classes of the growing imperial capital. The paper examines the roots of this development, which lie in the constrained topography of the fortified city, the obligatory letting of accommodation to imperial civil servants and in developments in the architecture of the baroque palace (purpose-built servants’ quarters, subletting due to the relative impoverishment of the owners). The new buildings went hand in hand with the improvement and standardisation of amenities – tiled stoves, ‘fitted kitchens’ and same-storey privies. The paper examines the evidence for the new buildings both in the form of architects’ plans and on site. Buildings archaeology initiated to protect medieval and renaissance substance inevitably leads to the recording of all substance whether it be Romanesque or modern and to the reconstruction of the more recent room structure. Several buildings are showcased. Due also to the efforts of ‘enlightened absolutism’, which encouraged church organisations and religious orders to convert their properties to rented accommodation, a significant proportion of the urban population lived in apartment buildings by 1800. This form of housing went on to become normal for the Viennese working classes during the nineteenth century and remains dominant today.

centre. It was in this area that apartment buildings first emerged.

Introduction In the late eighteenth century a type of building emerged in Vienna, which was to become the dominant form of residential accommodation – apartment buildings, defined here as a purpose-built building, with or without an older core, offering apartments for rental on several floors. This article examines the origins of these buildings, drawing on evidence both from architects’ plans and from on-site analysis. It does not pretend to tell the story of rented accommodation as such. This practice existed before the eighteenth century and was not completely confined to apartment buildings, even after they emerged.

Standing buildings analysis in Vienna was still rare in the 1980s, but expanded at around 2000 with the appearance of a new generation of researchers, who were able to exploit not only relatively plentiful written sources (primarily property registers, from the fourteenth century onwards), but also modern technology (dendrochronology, digital surveying and recording methods). There were also two helpful and important local peculiarities: Consistent and datable changes in the structure of masonry over time on which there has been considerable work; and the marking of bricks with signs or initials, a frequent practice from the eighteenth century onwards (Mitchell and Schön 2002; Mitchell 2014). The history of dozens of Viennese houses has now been uncovered, with the masonry nucleus of many houses reaching back to the thirteenth century (Buchinger, Mitchell and Schön 2002: Schön 2013).

The buildings showcased in this article have not been freely chosen from among the many of their sort. They were subjected to standing buildings analysis, which in Vienna usually takes place in advance of development in order to gather information for architects and heritage officials. Generally speaking, houses built completely from scratch after 1750 are not regarded as suitable subjects for analysis. Although many are now being substantially altered, such houses were common until recently, so that scarce resources have been concentrated on buildings with a medieval or early modern core instead. The case study houses here were all substantially rebuilt, so that the older substance is responsible only for eccentricities in the ground plan and not for essential features. With one exception, the buildings come from the formerly fortified city

Previous research The history of apartment buildings in Vienna has rarely been a subject of study, perhaps surprisingly considering the continued importance of privatelyrented accommodation in the city today, with privatelyrented accommodation forming c. 32% of all homes in Vienna in 2013, and with a further c. 24% of homes council housing and c. 22% with housing associations 95

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era and similar organisations (Putschögl 2012). In the decades after the Second World War, however, there were analyses, which remain very relevant today. In his doctoral thesis in 1957 the architect Johannes Daum analysed apartment buildings in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Daum 1957). His work was based above all on the study and statistical analysis of plans of conversions or new buildings, which owners and architects were compelled from 1731 onwards to submit to the local authority for approval and which survive in large numbers in the city archives (Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv – Vienna City Archives, Unterkammeramt). Daum covered a lot of the ground which this article will touch on. He rooted the emergence of the apartment building in the rapid growth of the Viennese population during the course of the eighteenth century, particularly in the fortified city centre where space was at a premium. Daum traced the development of rented accommodation from the sixteenth century onwards and identified the second half of the eighteenth as that period in which the apartment building emerged as an independent, purpose-built architectural type. He was very concerned with the shape of the house plots and the disposition of the buildings on them. He made keen observations about the advances in construction methods which accompanied the new architecture. These were often included in the ‘enlightening’ regulations of the period, for example floors resting on parallel joists joined to each other by wooden plugs (Dippelbaumdecken), which were both statically superior and meant to combat the risk of fire (Daum 1957: 77). Daum saw these efficient and regulated buildings as the beginning of modern ‘technical construction’ (Daum 1957: 31).

century (Lichtenberger 1982). Lichtenberger based her description on written sources, in particular the Hofquartierbücher (discussed below). She was interested in different types of housing and their relation to socio-economic groups and structures in the city centre. Lichtenberger’s work contains a great deal of material, but again examines the houses ‘at a distance’ i.e. exclusively from archive material. Lichtenberger tries overly hard to press the multi-phase buildings into categories, which can be listed and enumerated. Before the advent of modern standing buildings analysis the complex history of Vienna’s houses was often overlooked in favour of the most immediately visible phases. Another important work, by Konstanze Mittendorfer, is a thorough discussion of housing in the early nineteenth century and of the sources available (Mittendorfer 1991). Vienna in the Early Modern and Baroque periods (Figure 1) Vienna is close to many quarries (limestone, sandstone) and is built on deep layers of loess and marl, which allowed it to become an internationally important centre of the brick industry in the nineteenth century (Mitchell 2009). It was thus never one of the quaint, timber-framed settlements typical of Southern Germany, for example, but developed into a town of large, many-storied masonry buildings. After slow beginnings in the High Middle Ages it had become, alongside Cologne, Nuremberg, Lübeck and Breslau (Wroclaw), one of the largest cities in the Germanspeaking area by the end of the medieval period (De Vries 1984: 269-287). Its population has been put at 30,000 in 1520 (Weigl 2003/1: 110). With short interruptions Vienna was to be the most important Imperial residential city in Central Europe until the end of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918.

Daum’s picture was sound, but he does not appear to have examined the actually existing buildings themselves and this article thus aspires not only to translate and update his results, but also to contribute detail not covered in the plans. It is rooted in many years of standing buildings research in Vienna and relies on case studies in which not only plans but also a detailed record compiled on site are available.

Medieval Vienna relied on staple rights in the Danube trade as the chief source of its prosperity and was surrounded by wall 4 km in length (Krause 2014). At the centre of the urban area stood the church of St. Stephen. It was already one of the largest churches in Austria in the late twelfth century, but only became a cathedral church after the proclamation of the Vienna bishopric in 1480. Between the church precinct and the harbour to the north of the city lay the main market area and the houses of the burghers, which sometimes included the house towers now better known from Italy or Regensburg in Bavaria. The castle of the Habsburg dukes (the so-called Hofburg), Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire from 1452 onwards, lay on the southwestern edge of the town and aristocratic families and court officials settled around the castle from around 1300. A large Jewish area (c. 800 people) existed in the north-western part of the town until its violent dispersal

Other books should be mentioned at this point. Renate Wagner-Rieger’s study of non-aristocratic housing also appeared in 1957 (Wagner-Rieger 1957). This was a detailed survey, which concentrated on an art historical discussion of the facades, but also included catalogues of both the houses and the architects involved. Twenty years later (i.e. in 1977) Elisabeth Lichtenberger published a comprehensive book, which analysed the social geography of the Vienna city centre in its development from medieval burgher town to modern financial and commercial centre (Lichtenberger 1977). She also published various articles, including one concentrating on the eighteenth 96

Paul Mitchell: The Development of the Apartment Building in 18th century Vienna

Figure 1. Fortified Vienna and its suburbs, c. 1773-1781. Government survey plan (Wiki Commons).

in 1420. Substantial suburbs catering for visitors and for trades dependent on water and including several hospitals completed the picture.

The other major development was the growth in power of the dynasty and the court (Ehald 1978), which was spectacularly inaugurated by the execution of the city mayor and two former mayors in 1522 and the proclamation of a new, less ‘democratic’ city constitution in 1526. The castle precinct was now extended considerably and from the late sixteenth century onwards garden palaces were also erected in the surrounding countryside and the suburbs, firstly by the Imperial family, then by the aristocracy and ultimately the lower nobility. Hundreds of such complexes existed by the late eighteenth century. As the court and its bureaucracy grew, nobles flocked to the city to guarantee their privileges and influence. The absolutist state would not emerge fully until final victory over the Protestants in the early years of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), however. The property of the Protestant nobility was sequestrated in 1620 and the

The medieval city underwent radical change from the early sixteenth century onwards. Following a narrow escape during the Ottoman siege of 1529, the city was refortified on a massive scale in the Italian manner (Mitchell 2013). Another phase of improvements followed in the mid-seventeenth century. The heart of the city was consequently cut off from the suburbs, part of which were demolished to allow the defenders a free field of fire. Together with the construction of related buildings, such as armouries, and the presence of a permanent garrison, this can be said to have led to a militarisation of the city, which was now the anchor point of the Imperial defensive system against the Ottoman Empire. 97

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era last Viennese Protestants driven into exile in 1627. The Counterreformation thereafter led to the expansion of the Jesuit-controlled University and the construction of numerous religious houses in and around the city, with dramatic consequences for urban topography.

buildings in Austria were rendered and this material was thus not visible, and the cellar extended. Vaulting became more common, although ceilings featuring painted and carved wooden beams were still common in the seventeenth century, before being eclipsed by stucco. The courtyard façades were increasingly clad with arcades and, later, open galleries resting on corbels (in Viennese Pawlatschen). Vaulted staircases replaced open wooden stairs and rectangular or simple segmental-arched windows the many and colourful types of medieval windows. After the triumph of the Counterreformation, i.e. from the early Baroque period onwards, neighbouring house plots were increasingly joined together, allowing the construction of larger houses or noble ‘palaces’ (known as Palais in Vienna) with broad façades in which a trend to symmetry increasingly became the rule. Now the cellars were massively extended, with two basement storeys becoming the norm.

By 1710 Vienna was a city of 110,000 inhabitants and the capital of a powerful absolutist state (Weigl 2003/1: 110). With the reconquest of Hungary following the second Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, the city expanded further. Considerable service industries were needed to cope with the population and thousands of civil servants now served the state and the city government. Increasingly, the government intervened to bypass the guilds and encouraged the establishment of manufactories in the suburbs. As the century progressed the Habsburgs and their chancellors encouraged urban improvement and educational reform. This ‘enlightened absolutism’ reached its peak under Joseph II. (Emperor 1765-1790), who not only proclaimed the toleration of Protestants and Jews, but also reformed the Church and the religious houses, setting considerable resources free in the process.

Only very few city centre houses of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century have survived to a substantial extent. The formerly Jewish house at No. 8 Judenplatz (‘Jewish Square’) became a four-sided house around a small dark courtyard after 1528. It initially retained its medieval height (two upper storeys) and included a stable for ten horses. It acquired new cellar spaces, however, and some rooms there and in the ground floor were vaulted. The distribution and shape of the windows were also changed. The house was generally the property of artisans in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and was bought by the textile merchant Valentin Lehner in 1629. The house is not far from the traditional cloth market and Lehner’s greatest innovation, a vaulted cellar room of around 100 m², which was accessed both from the square and internally by a ramp, was presumably intended as a storage area for his wares. The house was subsequently bought and enlarged by Maria Anna Countess Zeyhl in 1694 (Schön 2003).

The textile and clothing sector, based on the domestic system, was the most important industry in Vienna. By 1784 it included around 40% of all tradesmen and of ‘factories’, with silk, cotton and leather goods as the most dynamic sectors (Weigl 2003/2). The population of the city in 1794 has been put at 220,337 (Weigl 2003/1: 110) The rapid growth in population obviously put considerable pressure on the housing market. Viennese houses in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Medieval house plots in Vienna had varied greatly in size (Schön 2013: 195-196). Houses often initially consisted of a main building standing directly on the street and various subsidiary buildings, but, over time, these were linked up into single complexes around a central courtyard. Medieval houses generally had one, sometimes two upper storeys, and were only partially basemented. The ground floor was used for work and storage purposes with many houses also including stabling facilities and wine presses. A well of up to 15 m depth could often be found in the entry passage, sometimes in the courtyard. The large masonry cesspit was tucked away in the rear part of the plot. The living spaces – small halls, parlours with wooden panelling, bedchambers and often also the kitchen – were upstairs. Heating was provided by tiled stoves, in the parlour and perhaps in the study or shop of the businessman or artisan.

Identifying the full list of inhabitants of the burgher houses such as this is pretty much impossible in the early modern period, due to the sparse nature of the sources. Clearly, they were generally the homes and business premises of the owners, but they were also large enough to house tenants and employees. Presumably, members of the extended family often lived in the houses also. Elisabeth Lichtenberger has written that the three-storey burgher house converted and extended by Swiss merchant Anton von Stampa at Bäckerstraße 7 in 1561-1565 was intended from the beginning to be a partially rented property. This is entirely possible, but there seems to be no actual evidence at this early stage, in this case or anywhere else, of purpose-built rented buildings (Lichtenberger 1982: 242; Buchinger and Schön 2002).

During the course of the sixteenth century new storeys were often added in brickwork, although almost all 98

Paul Mitchell: The Development of the Apartment Building in 18th century Vienna Another, very different house was built almost from scratch by the incoming commander of the military garrison Christoph, Freiherr von Teuffenbach between 1568 and 1584 at Bankgasse 8 between two quiet side streets not far from the castle. This thin building was built to satisfy Teuffenbach’s need for a representative town house. It included a ground floor hall (sala terrena) with up-to-date trough vaulting. In the courtyard are two now rare sixteenth-century oriels. Guests arrived by coach and stepped out at the foot of a straight staircase with groin vaulting, which took them to upper storey rooms well lit by rectangular windows. This house is one of the oldest surviving noble palaces found in the city to date (Buchinger et al 2006).

it with a tax. It had encouraged the hosting of complete strangers in family homes and can thus be said to have encouraged the spread of rental relationships. On the other hand its abolition removed an impediment to the free development of the private rental market. Baroque palaces In the medieval period, the houses of the nobility had generally been built in the vicinity of the castle and along the former Roman road known then as the Hochstraße (High Street) and today, in part at least, as Herrengasse (Street of the Gentlemen). The rising numbers of nobles and the expansion of the castle precinct, meant that the noble district subsequently expanded into the north-western and south-eastern sections of the town.

The court billeting system The pressure on the living space of the burghers was significantly increased by the Hofquartierpflicht or court billeting system, which emerged in the sixteenth century (Kallbrunner 1925). Every house not in noble or clerical ownership was examined by court officials, who decided how much living space, ideally around a third of the total, could be spared and allotted if necessary to court officials i.e. central government civil servants, who then lived in this accommodation, with family and servants, often for many years. The rents were set, latterly at least, at a third of the going rate. By 1620 672 and by 1709 1,200 households were being accommodated in this fashion. Court officials and their families numbered around 10,000 people in Vienna by 1730 (Weigl 2003/1: 122). Today, researchers benefit from the brief descriptions of hundreds of houses (Hofquartierbücher), which remain in the state archives, but for house owners at the time it was a great imposition, which could only be postponed by enlarging their houses, as in this case a number of years exemption could be granted. Afterwards of course still more space would be available for the unwelcome civil servants, so that the chief effect of the exemptions was perhaps only to ensure that the middle-class housing stock did not become entirely rundown.

Two neighbouring palaces on the Herrengasse, the Palais Batthyany and the Palais Trauttmansdorff, were examined in 2013 before being (re-)converted from business premises to luxury accommodation (Buchinger et al 2013). It could be shown that the eastern part of the complex later known as the Palais Batthyany goes back to a substantial medieval corner house with a large courtyard and at least one upper floor, but no confirmed cellars. It was already in noble ownership in the fourteenth century. Having been left in testament to the church, it was enlarged in the midsixteenth century. Three wings flanked the courtyard from the early seventeenth century onwards. In 1692 the new owner, a senior court official and member of the Order of the Golden Fleece Count OrsiniRosenberg, commissioned the adaption of the building by the distinguished and today very famous architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach. Fischer was the man responsible for Schönbrunn Palace, the Charles Church, the Court Library and much more. In this case he designed an elaborate façade, a monumental portal and a magnificent self-supporting circular staircase in the Palladian tradition. The palace was expanded and adapted twice more in the eighteenth century. The medieval house on the site of the Palais Trauttmansdorff was in aristocratic hands by the early fifteenth century, but archaeology showed that it was almost completely destroyed above ground. The firedamaged house was taken from its Protestant owners in 1620 and given to Kremsmünster Abbey, who rebuilt it and sold it on to the Count von Trauttmansdorff, a senior court official in 1638. It was now a large house around a central courtyard, with a large sala terrena and substantial cellars. The house was further adapted by the court architect Nikolaus Pacassi in 1750/51 and again around 1800.

The combined effect of the increasing numbers of nobles seeking a house in the city and of the billeting system disadvantaged burgher ownership and led to a reduction in the proportion of houses in burgher, later middle-class ownership in the city-centre area from 73.7% in 1566 to 56% in 1664 and 45% in 1779. These figures even underestimate the extent of the upheaval, for they do not take account of the nobles’ practice of building their palaces on the sites of two or more former burgher house plots (Lichtenberger 1977: 101, 106). The inefficient and unpopular billeting system was finally abolished in 1781 under Joseph II, who replaced 99

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era Baroque palaces were centred on representation. A monumental entrance in an elaborate façade led to a grand staircase – the grandest of them all is the staircase of Prince Eugene of Savoy’s Winter Palace (built 1696-1724), which features the tasks of Hercules as an analogy for the deeds of that great general (16631736) – and this in turn to the Piano Nobile, a sequence of ever more impressive rooms on the first floor, which aped the antechambers and receiving rooms of the Imperial palaces and could even include a ceremonial bedroom, in which guests could also be received. The family itself often lived in other parts of the complex. Prince Eugene’s genuine private rooms included a dining room, a bedroom, an office and a chapel. The ceilings were considerably lower than those of the ceremonial rooms. The prince’s servants were housed in the mezzanine, in the storey above the Piano Nobile and in surrounding houses (Mattl-Wurm 1999: 15-18; Seeger 2004).

quasi-manorial rights (tax and billeting freedoms, the right to appoint a judge for the area). The Starhembergs built a small manor house and surrounded it with rental properties both in the form of small houses and of long buildings with apartments ‘instead of a wall’ (anstath einer Mauren). During the eighteenth century more than 1,000 people lived at rent in the sprawling complex, overwhelmingly artisan families in small units. Clearly this was purpose built rented accommodation at an early stage, though it remained rather unique and both legally and architecturally different from the later apartment buildings. From 1785 to 1793 the complex was rebuilt in a more representative fashion, with a new façade and larger rooms, now also catering for the commercial and artistic middle classes. All trace of the ‘Free House’ was wiped out in the period after the Second World War.

However grand the palaces of the nobles were, there were limits to their display. The narrow medieval streets in the confined fortified area meant that the facades could not be properly appreciated. This was noted by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), the wife of a British diplomat, who visited the city with her husband in 1716 en route to Istanbul. Lady Mary also noticed something else, for which there is other anecdotal evidence, the subletting of parts of the great houses

Two eighteenth-century buildings built by wealthy figures not of a noble background can be introduced at this point. No older plans have survived for either building, so that only buildings archaeology was able to date their walls and reconstruct the original ground plans, thus uncovering their importance for the development of the apartment building.

Two pioneering buildings

The house at Am Hof 12 was built by the master shoemaker Johann Pockh in 1716-1718 using parts of its predecessor, which dated back to the fourteenth century (Figure 2) (Buchinger et al 2008). It was built on a plot of only 200 m², but compensated for this small area not only by acquiring an up-to-date façade and two cellar storeys, but also through no less than four upper floors. These had an identical room plan consisting of two largish rooms facing the street, with two badly-lit rooms behind them, one of which, on the third and fourth floors at least, was a kitchen. Under these circumstances it seems very likely that Pockh rented out at least two storeys from the very beginning, making the building a halfway house between a family home and a small apartment building. Unfortunately there is no relevant documentary evidence about the occupants of houses at this early date. Low-status, possibly servants’ accommodation was also created in the attic of Pockh’s house, very typically through the use of timber-framed dividing walls. Similar accommodation was also a feature of many nobles’ houses, for example in the squat third floor of the Countess Zeyhl’s house at Judenplatz 8 or in the attic of the Palais Trauttmansdorff from 1803 onwards.

..and what is an inconveniency much more intolerable, in my opinion, there is no house that has so few as five or six families in it. The apartments of the greatest ladies, and even of the ministers of state, are divided but by a partition from that of a tailor or a shoemaker; and I know nobody that has above two floors in any house, one for their own use, and one higher for their servants. Those that have houses of their own, let out the rest of them to whoever will take them; thus the great stairs (which are all of stone) are as common and as dirty as the street (Wharncliffe 1893: 235-236). Whether this development was more the result of the financial problems of the nobility, or of the high rents which tailors were prepared to pay, is unclear. The ‘Free House’ A remarkable complex which grew out of a Baroque palace or more properly a manor house was the ‘Free House’ (Freihaus) on the edge of the glacis facing the city centre (Spiesberger 1980). In the mid-seventeenth century the Counts von Starhemberg, a very important aristocratic family, acquired a large amount of land in the area, for which they purchased or were granted

The other pioneering building, Kahlenbergerstraße 26, stands on the main street of Nussdorf, a winegrowing village around four miles north of the city 100

Paul Mitchell: The Development of the Apartment Building in 18th century Vienna wing on the other side of a large yard to one side of the house and a large garden in the rear. The two-storey main building is built around a small courtyard and resembles a ‘normal’ Baroque garden palace with its Piano Nobile of rooms decorated with paintings and stucco and its attractive Rococo façade. Its ground floor, however, originally included no less than five living units of an entirely different type. Each consists of a kitchen with a smoke hood above a raised hearth and another room, the parlour, in which stood a tiled stove stoked from the kitchen. These, and another three units in the service wing, are the typical two-room living spaces of labouring or poorer white-collar families in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The ‘palace’ thus included eight small purpose-built apartments, which could of course theoretically, if somewhat improbably, all have been intended for maids, gardeners and so on. However, the planned and systematic character of this architecture makes the building very similar to the slightly younger and taller buildings of the inner city. We know for certain that parts of the house and even some upper storey rooms were rented by the early nineteenth century at the latest, because of a famous tenant: Ludwig van Beethoven rented three rooms of the Piano Nobile for a few months in the summer of 1817. Joseph Greiner, whose family had also apparently lodged in the house at that time, recalled in 1889, at the age of 93, standing in the garden on fine summer evenings listening to the great man playing the piano for his friends. From Greiner’s memories and from the analysis of the building, we can recreate Beethoven’s apartment. It was accessed from the main staircase. The small first room was the kitchen in which Beethoven’s elderly servant also slept. In the next room Beethoven’s possessions were stored. The connecting doors within the apartment were on the same side of the building so that store, kitchen and servant could be hidden from guests by a screen, creating a corridor. The last room was of course the airiest and also grandly decorated. Beethoven ate, slept and entertained there, with his piano occupying the middle of the room. Access to the next room of the sequence, i.e. the rest of the floor, was blocked off.

Figure 2. Vienna, Am Hof 12. Johann Pockh’s house, built 1716-1718 (Paul Mitchell, 2010).

Figure 3. Nussdorf on Vienna’s northern edge, Kahlenbergerstraße 26. Ignaz Schwarz’s country house, built 1763-1765. Service buildings both sides of the gate, main house with flags (Paul Mitchell, 2011).

The ‘second society’ and the new middle classes The new apartment buildings, two examples of which now follow, reflected the accommodation needs of layers of society, which had not existed at the end of the Middle Ages. These included civil servants, officers and professional men and also the very heterogeneous commercial classes. The medieval burghers, guild members living and working on their own city centre properties – a double use for which there no longer

centre (Figure 3) (Buchinger et al 2014). It is the only country house dealt with here and was built as a second home in 1763-65 by Ignaz Schwarz, a cotton merchant and manufacturer, who was ennobled in 1785. The substantial complex included a service 101

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era appeared to be an immediate need – had disappeared by the eighteenth century. Despite the presence of a few large factories in the suburbs employing hundreds of people, for example in the production of porcelain or metal goods (Weigl 2003/2: 174), the burghers were not immediately replaced by a small group of capitalists confronting a mass of waged workers. There were many simple labouring families, but also a mass of entrepreneurs of every type – from men at the helm of big businesses based on the domestic system to artisans employing only one or two people and pedlars struggling to make a living. Some of the members of all these new layers became very successful. The Imperial court could not ignore either their wealth or their talents and increasingly under Maria Theresa and Joseph II. such men were ennobled despite sometimes modest backgrounds (the so-called Dienstadel) (Wandruska 1971). There thus arose what was called in the late nineteenth century the ‘second society’ (Zweite Gesellschaft), consisting of people who were allowed to appear at court and, sometimes at least, despite remaining obliged to earn their living, to mix with older aristocratic circles. These people served to encourage others, that they too might rise.

Figure 4. Vienna, Grünangergasse 6. Josef Schmerling’s apartment building, built c. 1772 (Paul Mitchell, 2013).

In its subject, the middle classes, and the ordered, modern way in which they sought to live, there are parallels in the story of the emergence of the apartment building in Vienna to the discourse among historical archaeologists around the ‘Georgian order’, associated with the British buildings archaeologist Matthew Johnson and others (Hicks and Horning 2006: 278-280). The Georgian houses of the English-speaking territories and Vienna’s ‘Josephian’ (josephinisch) apartment buildings both follow symmetrical principles in their facades and in their ground plans, at least more than earlier houses did. The rooms are also less multifunctional. However, partly similar trends resulted in the centre of Austria’s cramped metropolis in very different buildings. The smaller houses which were built in the Viennese suburbs were more similar to Georgian buildings, but were for the most part replaced by further apartment buildings during the course of the nineteenth century.

early Baroque cellar complex, but was largely rebuilt above ground. Behind the main street-side body of the house are two wings of different width, which flank a small, dark courtyard. The architect’s plans have survived and the room plan has changed relatively little in the intervening period. Above the ground floor, there are three largely identical upper storeys accessed by a substantial (oval) spiral staircase typical of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Figure 5). This is in the north wing leaving space for an apartment of only 20 m² floor space. This space consists of a sequence of three rooms: First, the kitchen, second, the parlour, containing a tiled stove, which was fuelled from the kitchen, and third, an unheated bedroom. This combination of rooms is still typically medieval. Two of the apartments today retain not only a smoke hood in the kitchen, but also original single casement windows with original metal fittings and glass panes.

Apartment building: Grünangergasse 6 One of the oldest examples of the new type, but a very typical and ‘modern’ apartment building, was built in a quiet part of the city centre at Grünangergasse 6 in and around 1772 (Figure 4). The house was analysed by a team including the author in 2013 (Buchinger et al 2013). The building was built by Leopold Grossmann for Josef Schmerling, a senior civil servant. The house retains an important late medieval, Renaissance and

The same three rooms are repeated, with an additional walk-in pantry in the kitchen, in the southern wing across the courtyard, which is connected to the staircase by a short Pawlatsche (walkway) on each floor. These apartments cover almost 50 m². The most substantial apartments face the street, however. They each have five rooms and a floor surface of c. 95 m². 102

Paul Mitchell: The Development of the Apartment Building in 18th century Vienna Apartment building: Rabensteig 3 Rabensteig 3 is a much larger building than Grünangergasse 6 covering an area of 480 m², as opposed to 285 m², and with four upper storeys (Figure 6). This corner house was examined by the author in advance of development in 2013 and the subsequent building site has also been closely monitored (Mitchell 2015). The house was not far from the busy quayside in the medieval period and has turned out to be one of the most important houses still standing in Vienna. As could now be shown it incorporates a fragment of the earliest medieval town wall (twelfth century) and masonry from several medieval and Renaissance phases, with further highlights including two medieval portals, two outstanding Renaissance columns and even a fourteenth-century house tower. The house was purchased in 1780 by the master maker of bags and other leather goods Anton Steinwalter who substantially enlarged and altered it. Steinwalter and his architect Liborius Thadäus Gerl were confronted by a chaotic roofscape at three different heights which they normalised by raising the roof everywhere to the Figure 5. Vienna, Grünangergasse 6. First floor plan, 1772. Existing walls black, new walls pink, tiled stoves green, smoke hoods grey (Vienna City Archives, UKA 1645/1772 NR, Photo Günther Buchinger, 2013).

The main door opens centrally into a short corridor, from which tiled stoves in two rooms in the southeastern part of the apartment are fuelled. To the left is the kitchen with its own entrance from the stairs and an opening to the tiled stove in the north-eastern room. The fifth room is unheated and on the southern side of the building. All upper storey apartments included fitted (but not flushable) privies, which were accessed from the kitchen. The ground floor also follows the pattern of the upper storeys, but of course the front apartment is divided into two by the entry passage. Interestingly the southeastern apartment has two rooms with smoke hoods. Presumably the ground floor apartments were always possible commercial premises, as they are today. The ground floor apartments had to make do with two outside toilets in the yard. The only water supply is a well in the entry passage. All rooms on all floors are lit by windows, however curious the room shapes necessary to achieve this. Figure 6. Vienna, Rabensteig 3. Anton Steinwalter’s apartment building, 1785-1789 (Paul Mitchell, 2013).

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Figure 7. Vienna, Rabensteig 3. Second floor plan, 1785. Existing walls black, new walls pink, tiled stoves with crosses, smoke hoods dotted. (Vienna City Archives, UKA 2911/1785, Photo Paul Mitchell, 2014).

height of the house tower. The north-eastern part of the house was gutted and, while largely sparing the Renaissance vaulting, every single wooden ceiling in the building was replaced by the Dippelbaumdecken mentioned above. More light was let into the building by carving out a third, tiny courtyard. A substantial rectangular well staircase was erected. Some of the stairwell windows are still original. The architect’s plans from 1785 have survived in this case as well and there is also an additional partial ground floor plan from 1789, when a further small extension was made. The close monitoring of the building site has made it possible to compare the draft with the building as actually built.

small apartment was added. The large apartments face onto the street and are two rooms deep. The southernmost apartment consists in the 1785 plans of an entrance hall, a kitchen and four other rooms with 70 m² floor space. The next, centrally-lying apartment is similarly large, but consists only of a kitchen and three rooms. The northernmost apartment consists of a kitchen and a further four rooms, but covers a floor space of around 115 m². With windows on two sides of the building these are the most attractive units. The northernmost apartment in the fourth upper storey still has its original floorboards and fragments of original wall painting. All kitchens in all apartments are equipped with smoke hoods and all other rooms have tiled stoves stoked from the kitchen. The spaces needed for stoking the stoves are carved out of the thickness of the walls and resemble large cupboards or short passages. They were repeatedly adapted and reused for all sorts of ovens and flues until recently. The original floor boards were laid against the foundations of the stoves, as could be shown, preserving in some cases the position and shape of the stoves and confirming that these were a fitted element rented with the apartment.

Steinwalter and Gerl appear to have had relatively little interest in the highly irregular ground floor. Eleven tiled stoves, but only three smoke hoods are drawn, and it is clear that the ground floor premises largely served commercial purposes. An exception is a typical tworoom living unit against the rear wall, which may have been the caretaker’s apartment. The four identical upper storeys on the other hand are systemically designed (Figure 7). Each includes three large and one small apartment. After 1789 a second 104

Paul Mitchell: The Development of the Apartment Building in 18th century Vienna

Figure 8. Vienna, Rabensteig 3. Additional ground floor plan, 1789. Wall necessary to support privy walls in upper storeys circled. (Vienna City Archives, UKA 3686/1789, Photo Paul Mitchell, 2014).

The other apartments, originally one, then after 1789 two at each level, are standard two-room units (kitchen and parlour) in the rear of the building. Every room in the building is lit by a window, even if it is only to the stairwell or the tiny central courtyard. All apartments are connected by a corridor linking the stairs to the northern part of the house with help of a short Pawlatsche.

the ground floor, but which supports walls in all upper storeys (Figure 8). With the help of this wall, part of the southernmost apartment was separated off on each floor to create a separate toilet each for the southern and central apartments. On the plans from 1785, on the other hand, a faint pencil addition is visible, which appears to show the creation of a toilet in the corridor before the northernmost apartment. Thus, the large apartments did acquire separate privies after all. All the toilet rooms thus created were in use for sanitary purposes until recently and had been repeatedly modernised so that original fittings could no longer be recorded.

This apartment house is full of desirable residences and yet the 1785 plans show only two privies per floor, accessible from the stairs. Site monitoring has shown that only one of these two toilets was actually built on each floor, apparently meaning that twenty apartments relied on only five shared toilets. Until the arrival of the water closet it was common that servants collected their employers’ residues in chamber pots, but this seems an unlikely explanation in Rabensteig 3 when we bear in mind that the smaller apartments at Grünangergasse 6 each had their own privy, admittedly leading off from the kitchen. However, further analysis reveals a change of plans that led to each of the large apartments acquiring its own toilet. The additional plan of 1789 shows a new wall that makes little sense on

The property of the religious orders One of the reforms for which Emperor Joseph II. (17651790) is most remembered is his dissolution of hundreds of monasteries, including those of the Jesuits and the contemplative orders. In the Vienna city centre these measures led to the abandonment of two Jesuit houses, three monasteries, six nunneries and eight inns. Four monasteries, two nunneries and ten inns survived there, but the religious orders were encouraged to use 105

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era their inner-city property more productively than in the past (Lichtenberger 1977: 147-150; Mattl-Wurm 1999: 95-96).

inside. The windows themselves were in the eighteenth century generally single two-part casement windows without mullions, but under transoms, set well back in the openings, and which opened inwards. In winter a temporary window, which could not be opened, would be inserted flush with the facade to help keep out the cold. From the early nineteenth century onwards these began to be replaced by two-part casement windows opening outwards – the resulting double casement windows of this type were still being installed at the beginning of the last century (Bernard, Kruml, Kupf and Zimmermann 2014: 17-25). Oriel windows had been banned as a fire risk in 1737 (Daum 1957: 72).

The confiscated buildings were sometimes used for the burgeoning departments of the state or the local authority, but could also be demolished to make way for modern apartment houses, for example at the site of a nunnery of the Order of St. Clare at the corner of Singerstraße and Grünangergasse. As the monasteries and inns had taken over considerable space during the Counterreformation, these developments could be very substantial. The apartment building on the site of the Vienna inn of the Benedictine abbey of Melk, which retained ownership of the site, was built in 1769-1774 by the architect Josef Gerl, older brother of Liborius Thadäus Gerl, and a developer in his own right (Daum 1957: 28). It was one of the first apartment buildings owned by a religious order. The Melkerhof was organised around four courtyards and eight staircases. The apartments were generally large with between 65 and 200 m², meaning that the complex was purposebuilt for members of the middle and upper classes. Eighty rental units were recorded in 1849. As the abbey still needed a presence in Vienna, the building also included a chapel and a suite of rooms for the abbot (Dehio 2003: 509-511; Lichtenberger 1977: 157, 163-164). Another important complex of the same period was the Heiligenkreuzerhof (1769-71) by Adalbert Hild, which was adapted from a multi-phase Cistercian Inn, but organised along similar principles to the Melkerhof with many staircases and an area retained by the monastery. It offered 50 apartments of varying size (Kaltenegger and Mitchell 2002: 400-401).

The main or only tract of most buildings was two rooms deep and pitched towards the street. The best apartments were on the upper floors and facing onto the street, as we have seen (Lichtenberger 1982: 255256). Access to the apartments was guaranteed by impressive rectangular well staircases or large oval spiral staircases, which almost always survive, their reach extended efficiently by Pawlatschen. The living rooms usually led one into another, although larger units, as in the houses discussed here, increasingly had small, oddly-shaped entrance halls to which two of the living rooms opened. Furniture was now exclusively portable, with no built-in seats or beds. The most important room in the apartments themselves was the kitchen, in the smaller units it was simultaneously the entrance room. The kitchen was the source of food and heat. Every kitchen had a fitted smoke hood in brick which rested on a beam anchored in two walls. The hoods survive partially in some smaller apartments and their position is often visible elsewhere if only as a curiously uneven ceiling. Beneath the hoods were initially the raised masonry blocks on which food was cooked with an open fire, traces of these remained before development in Kahlenbergerstraße 26. This was the medieval way of cooking and was only overhauled by metal stoves in the nineteenth century (LeichtEckardt 1999: 161-167). Sometimes a small bread oven was built into a corner of the kitchen, again a typically medieval detail.

The gardens of the religious institutions were similarly disposed of. In 1786 Baron Tinti acquired a plot in the former Capuchin garden in order to build a large apartment house, but became insolvent after becoming bogged down in legal cases (Winner 1955/56). Room disposition and the standardisation of amenities In Grünangergase 6, Rabensteig 3 and the other apartment buildings built in this period and into the nineteenth century all upper storeys of a house were built on a more or less identical ground plan, with the size of apartments deliberately varied within a storey, in order to serve different tenants. The plans may still appear a little eccentric today, the result of the integration of older substance and of the need for windows in every room, but in fact these houses represent considerable and lasting standardisation in middle-class housing. The process was visible in the symmetry of the façades of course. The regular spacing of the window axes reflected the increased regularity

The other rooms, or most of them, were heated by tiled stoves (the typical heating method in Austria from the thirteenth century onwards) which stood in a corner of the room concerned and were stoked from a hole in the wall accessed from the kitchen or a separate corridor. From the Baroque period tiled stoves were increasingly created as single works of art, being first moulded in clay on a wooden framework, then cut into large pieces and baked (Franz 1969: 140). What the apartments still usually lacked was of course running water. Houses in most parts of the city did not 106

Paul Mitchell: The Development of the Apartment Building in 18th century Vienna and in close proximity! In 1835 the Viennese dramatist Johann Nestroy (1801-1862) brought out ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’, a romantic comedy of social mores (in German Zu ebener Erde und im ersten Stock oder Die Launen des Glücks), and definitely not to be confused with the British television programme of the same name. It is the story of two families who live in the same apartment building: On the ground floor the family of Schlücker, a small-scale dealer in bric-a-brac, who lives in fear of the landlord Zins; and on the first floor that of Herr von Goldfuchs, a wealthy international trader. Poor boy Adolf loves rich girl Emilie, of course, and after various escapades the young lovers are united, as the families’ fortunes are suddenly reversed, teaching Goldfuchs a badly-needed lesson in humility. Nestroy was referring here to the juxtaposition of different social groups in many apartment buildings, familiar to his public, and to underline his point and heighten the dramatic possibilities he split the stage into upper and lower parts.

Figure 9. Vienna, Rabensteig 3. Wood-lined toilet shaft, possibly sixteenth century. View upwards (Paul Mitchell, 2014).

acquire a piped supply until the late nineteenth century (Brunner and Schneider 2005: 188-205). The water closet came on the market much earlier, but inevitably remained rare initially (Furrer 2004: 65-82). Water could be bought from water sellers, but most came from the building’s well, which in the eighteenth century often featured a pumping mechanism, remains of which are often found. This could sometimes be used from the first floor, but fetching water was generally a laborious process. This means that the privies so conveniently attached to each apartment in a new building could not be flushed and were of the hole-in-a-board variety. Below the toilet seat was a wood-lined shaft, which sometimes survives (Figure 9). As the new privies were usually seated above or below another toilet, there could be up to four parallel shafts. This again was medieval technology, taken from the garderobe towers of castles and great houses.

Solid information about tenants is available from 1805 to 1846 in the form of the Konskriptionsbögen. These are held in the city archives and are effectively census records, originally devised in order to log men capable of military service on a house for house basis. The records survive sporadically at first and are fairly comprehensively from around 1830. ‘Strangers’ (people born outside Lower Austria) are also noted separately. All members of the family, their age and occupation, appear to have been recorded and the Konskriptionsbögen thus represent an enormously important social historical source, which, however, appears to have been employed only rarely by Viennese historians (Lichtenberger 1977; Ehmer 1980). The Konskriptionsbögen for the houses Grünangergasse 6 und Rabensteig 3 have been examined for the purposes of this contribution. It is not possible to link particular families to individual apartments, however.

As buildings archaeology shows, what was notable about this process of standardisation was less the technology itself, but the systematic way in which it was employed.

For Rabensteig 3 the Konskriptionsbögen confirm Nestroy’s picture. A great mixture of occupations is represented – civil servants, businessmen, coffee house owners, artisans (tailors, goldsmiths, a pipe maker), officers, even a handful of nobles, and the widows of such people. There are ‘strangers’ from within AustriaHungary, and alongside the Christians apparently three, assimilated or observant, Jewish families. Some of the tenants are poor: Jewish (‘tolerated’) Josef Lowy peddles diverse goods, while his wife sells homemade biscuits to help feed their seven children. The variety among the tenants may reflect the busy commercial district in which the house stands and the proximity of the central synagogue (next door, from 1826 onwards). The caretaker crops up from 1819 onwards.

The inhabitants Apartment buildings were investments which guaranteed a steady return beyond a foreseeable future. The builders appear to have been men of commerce more often than not, although senior civil servants and new or old aristocrats were also involved as we have seen. In the earliest buildings at least, the owners often lived in the building themselves, presumably in the best apartments. Anton Steinwalter lived to a ripe old age in his house at Rabensteig 3, dying in 1821 at eighty-six. Who else lived in the new apartment buildings? The short answer would appear to be: All sorts of people 107

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Figure 10. Vienna, Annagasse 12. First floor plan, 1815. Existing walls black, new walls pink, tiled stoves green, smoke hoods with crosses, servants’ rooms at top of drawing beside privies (Vienna City Archives, UKA 7944/1815, Photo Günther Buchinger, 2013).

The mix in Grünangergasse 6 appears to be somewhat different. There are shoemakers, midwives, two servants of the Imperial family, a few traders, a publican, a lawyer and even a professional chorister at the nearby cathedral. Two factors stand out, however: Firstly, the considerable presence of civil servants of all kinds, or of their widows; and, secondly, the high age of the tenants, some of whom are old enough to have lived in the house from 1772 onwards. It may be that

the civil servant Josef Schmerling deliberately filled his house with people he felt comfortable with. This is an important indication that not every apartment building was built with precisely the same intention or underlay the same rules. Grünangergasse has never been a commercial centre. It was then, and remains today, a backwater i.e. a suitably placid setting for the widows of civil servants. There were no obviously Jewish tenants.

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Paul Mitchell: The Development of the Apartment Building in 18th century Vienna The caretaker is repeatedly cited. He also worked as a carpenter.

sanitary facilities inside the apartment; and workingclass housing, mostly in the industrial areas, in which the Pawlatsche became a corridor connecting the front doors of the two-room units and containing also tap and WC. (Gauss 2003: LI).

Even Beethoven in his small apartment in Nussdorf had a servant on hand, yet common to both houses is a relative absence of live-in servants. There are a few ‘strange’ maids in Grünangergasse 6, but these are not identifiable in Rabensteig 3. The three- and four-room apartments there, inhabited by prosperous middle class people were surely served by servants, but these are not listed either in the large or small apartments. Either the men compiling the census regarded them as part of the furniture or apartment blocks varied in their provision for staff. In Rabensteig 3 there are no apparent sleeping spaces for maids or cooks, who may then have slept elsewhere, but other houses tell a different story: The smallish house at Annagasse 12 in the southern part of the inner city was built c. 1815 for the civil servant Josef Marschall and his sister Julie (Figure 10) (Buchinger and Mitchell 2013). The three upper storeys each consist of two comfortable apartments fronting onto the street. Behind the living rooms in the courtyard wings are kitchens and behind them in the rear of the property beside the privies, heated by tiled stoves and accessible only from the kitchens, are single rooms, which were surely purpose-built for servants.

Apartment buildings remain the prevailing form of housing in Vienna today. Bibliography Bernard, Erich, Milos Kruml, Martin Kupf and Liz Zimmermann (2014). Wiener Fenster. Gestaltung und Erhaltung. Werkstattbericht 140. Vienna. Brunner, Karl and Petra Schneider (eds) (2005). Umwelt Stadt. Geschichte des Natur- und Lebensraumes Wien. Vienna-Cologne-Weimar. Buchinger, Günther, Friedrich Dahm, Hans Hoffmann, Paul Mitchell, Barbara Obermayr, Michael Rainer, Barbara Riedl and Sylvia Schönolt (2014). ‘Ludwig van Beethoven in Wien. Malerische Ausstattungen in zwei Wohnungen des Komponisten als Zeugnis bürgerlicher Wohnkultur um 1800‘. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege 68/1+2: 194215. Buchinger, Günther, Hannes Hoffmann, Paul Mitchell and Doris Schön (2013). Bau- und Besitzergeschichte der Palais in der Herrengasse Nr. 19 und Nr. 21 – die Palais Batthyany und Trauttmansdorff, unpublished report to the developers, April 2013. Buchinger, Günther, Bruno Maldoner, Paul Mitchell and Doris Schön (2008). ‚Baugeschichte und Adaptierung des Urbanihauses, Wien I, Am Hof 12‘. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege 62/2+3: 170178. Buchinger, Günther, Paul Mitchell (2913). ‚Bau- und Besitzergeschichte des Hauses Wien 1., Annagasse 12‘. Fundberichte aus Österreich 52: D5557-D5585 (E-book supplement). Buchinger, Günther, Paul Mitchell and Doris Schön (2001). ‚Katalog des Projektes ‚Hausforschung in der Wiener Innenstadt‘. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege 56/4: 506-534. Buchinger, Günther, Paul Mitchell and Doris Schön (2006). ‚Wiener Renaissancepaläste – von der Bauforschung wieder ans Licht gebracht‘. Kunstgeschichte aktuell. Mitteilungen des Verbandes österreichischer Kunsthistorikerinnen und Kunsthistoriker 22/2: 6-8. Buchinger, Günther, Paul Mitchell and Doris Schön (2013). Bau- und Besitzergeschichte des Hauses Wien I., Grünangergasse 6, unpublished report to the developers, June 2013. Buchinger, Buchinger and Doris Schön (2002). ‚Das Haus Stampa – Zur Baugeschichte eines renaissancezeitlichen Bürgerhauses in Wien‘. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege 56/4: 499-505.

Nineteenth-century normality Vienna was early in the development of purpose-built apartment buildings in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Other central European cities appear to have followed suit later – Prague in the early nineteenth century (Scheufler 1984: 358-359), presumably influenced by the Imperial capital, and Berlin from the second quarter of that century onwards, for example (Klahr 2011). Indeed Elisabeth Lichtenberger estimated that around 85% of the population of the Vienna city centre lived in rented accommodation c. 1800. (Lichtenberger 1982: 250). Yet four fifths of all the Viennese lived in the suburbs at this time and these to a considerable extent in smallish houses occupied by extended families. (Lichtenberger 1982: 247-248). Apartment buildings first spread to the suburbs in large numbers in the early years of the nineteenth century (Klaar 1955/56: 191-193). The population of the city increased to almost 1,400,000 in 1890 and this increase was catered for by apartment buildings, which covered not only the traditional suburbs, but also the industrial areas formerly outside the city limits. These buildings can be grouped along social lines: into apartment buildings for the upper classes with extravagant foyers and staircases, not least along the Ringstraße; middle class buildings mostly in the former suburbs, with the apartments opening directly from the stairwell and 109

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era Daum, Johannes (1957). Das Wiener städtische Mietshaus in der Zeit von 1700-1859, PhD dissertation, Technical University of Vienna. Dehio – Handbuch, Wien 1. Bezirk – Innere Stadt, Bundesdenkmalamt (2003). (Federal Department of Monuments). Horn-Vienna. De Vries (1984). Jan, European Urbanization 1500-1800 London. Ehalt, Hubert Christian 1978. Ausdrucksformen absolutistischer Herrschaft. Dargestellt vor allem am Beispiel des Wiener Hofes unter Leopold I., Josef I., und Karl VI., PhD dissertation, Vienna University. Ehmer, Josef, ‚Volkszählungslisten als Quelle der Sozialgeschichte‘. Wiener Geschichtsblätter 35/3, 1980: 106-121. Franz, Rosemarie (1969). Der Kachelofen. Entstehung und Kunstgeschichtliche Entwicklung vom Mittelalter bis zum Ausgang des Klassizismus. Graz. Furrer, Daniel (2004). Wasserthron und Donnerbalken. Eine kleine Kulturgeschichte des stillen Örtchens Darmstadt. Gauss, Norbert (2003). ‚Die historische Entwicklung des Wohnhauses in Wien‘, Dehio – Handbuch, Wien 1. Bezirk – Innere Stadt: XLII-LV. Bundesdenkmalamt (Federal Department of Monuments) Horn-Vienna. Hicks, Dan and Audrey Horning (2006). ‘Historical archaeology and buildings’, The Cambridge Companion to Historical Archaeology, ed. D. Hicks and M.C. Beaudry: 273-292. Cambridge. Kallbrunner, Josef (1925). ‚Das Wiener Hofquartierwesen und die Massnahmen gegen die Quartiersnot im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert‘. Mitteilungen des Vereines für Geschichte der Stadt Wien 5: 24-36. Kaltenegger, Marina and Paul Mitchell (2002). ‚Zur Baugeschichte des Heiligenkreuzerhofes‘. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege 56/4: 377-401. Klaar, Adalbert (1955/56). ‚Die Umwandlung des Wiener Stadtbildes‘, Jahrbuch des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Wien 12: 182-197. Klahr, Douglas Mark (2011). ‘Luxury Apartments with a Tenement Heart’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 70/3: 290-307. Krause, Heike (2013). ‘Die mittelalterliche Stadtmauer von Wien. Versuche einer Rekonstruktion ihres Verlaufs‘, Stadt – Land – Burg. Festschrift für Sabine Felgenhauer-Schmiedt zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. C. Theune, G. Scharrer-Liška, E.H. Huber and T. Kühtreiber: 79-88. Rahden. Leicht-Eckardt, Elisabeth (1999). ‚Ausstattungsvarianten und Nutzungsformen von Küchen vom achtzehnten Jahrhundert bis heute‘, Die Küche: Zur Geschichte eines architektonischen, sozialen und imaginativen Raums, ed. E. Miklautz: 161-206. Vienna-Cologne-Weimar. Lichtenberger, Elisabeth 1977). Die Wiener Altstadt. Von der mittelalterlichen Bürgerstadt zur City. Vienna. Lichtenberger, Elisabeth (1982). ‚Wien – das sozioökologisch Modell einer barocken Residenz um

die Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts‘, Städtische Kultur in der Barockzeit, ed. W. Rausch: 235-260. Linz. Mattl-Wurm, Sylvia (1999). Wien vom Barock bis zur Aufklärung. Geschichte Wiens 4. Vienna. Mitchell, Paul (2009). ‘Bricks in the central part of Austria-Hungary. Key artefacts in historical archaeology’, Historische Archäologie 1, www.histarch. org, last accessed on August 21st, 2015. Mitchell, Paul (2013). ‘Vienna. The Architecture of Absolutism’, Historical Archaeology in Central Europe, Society for Historical Archaeology Special Publication 10, ed. N. Mehler: 365-378. Rockville. Mitchell, Paul (2013). ‚Ziegel als archäologische Artefakte: Technologie – Verwendung – Format – Datierung‘. Beiträge zur Mittelalterarchäologie in Österreich 29: 63-70. Mitchell, Paul (2015). ‚Rabensteig 3. Untersuchung eines Hauses im Herzen Wiens‘, Bauforschung und Denkmalpflege. Festschrift für Mario Schwarz, ed. G. Buchinger and F. Hueber: 239-258. Vienna-CologneWeimarp. Mitchell, Paul and Doris Schön (2002). ‚Zur Struktur und Datierung des Mauerwerks in Wien‘. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege 56/4: 462-473. Mittendorfer, Konstanze (1991). Biedermeier oder das Glück im Haus. Bauen und Wohnen in Wien und Berlin 1800-1850. Vienna. Putschögl, Martin (2012). ‚Der freie Markt ist nur ein kleiner Markt‘, www.derstandard.at, posted 21. September 21, 2012 and accessed on June 15, 2015. Scheufler, Vladimir (1984). ‘The Apartment Building In Prague Suburbs’. Urban Anthropology 13/4: 355-399. Schön, Doris (2003). ‚Von mittelalterlichen Mauern, renaissancezeitlichen Fenstern und barocken Fußböden. Bauforschung im Haus Wien 1, Judenplatz 8‘. Fundort Wien 6: 96-139. Schön, Doris (2013). ‚Parzellenstrukturen, Gebäudetypen und Überlegungen zur Städtebauentwicklung am Beispiel des spätmittelalterlichen Wiens‘. Beiträge zur Mittelalterarchäologie in Österreich 29: 193-200. Seeger, Ulrike (2004). Stadtpalais und Belvedere des Prinzen Eugen. Vienna-Cologne-Weimar. Spiesberger, Else (1980)> Das Freihaus Wien-Hamburg. Vocelka, Karl and Anita Traninger (eds) (2003). Wien. Geschichte einer Stadt. Band 2: Die frühneuzeitliche Residenz (16. bis 18. Jahrhundert). Vienna-CologneWeimar. Wagner-Rieger (1957). Renate, Das Wiener Bürgerhaus des Barock und Klassizismus. Vienna. Wandruska, Adam (1971). ‚Die Zweite Gesellschaft der Donaumonarchie‘. Adel in Österreich, ed. H. Siegert: 56-67. Vienna. Weigl, Andreas (2003/1). ‚Frühneuzeitliches Bevölkerungs-wachstum‘, Wien. Geschichte einer Stadt. Band 2: Die frühneuzeitliche Residenz (16. bis 18. Jahrhundert) 1, ed. K. Vocelka and A. Traninger: 09131. Vienna-Cologne-Weimar. 110

Paul Mitchell: The Development of the Apartment Building in 18th century Vienna Weigl, Andreas (2003/2). ‚Der Textil- und Bekleidungssektor und die Protoindustrialisierung‘, Wien. Geschichte einer Stadt. Band 2: Die frühneuzeitliche Residenz (16. bis 18. Jahrhundert), ed. K. Vocelka and A. Traninger: 169-183. Vienna-Cologne-Weimar.

Lord Wharncliffe (ed.) (1893). The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Volume 1. London. Winner, Gerhard (1955/56). ‚Die Verbauung der Wiener Klostergärten in josephinischer Zeit‘. Jahrbuch des Vereines für Geschichte der Stadt Wien 12: 145-152.

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Store Heddinge Church – a Mystery Solved? Leif Plith Lauritsen

Affiliation: Research Fellow and Curator at Museum Lolland-Falster from 2003 to present. email: [email protected] Abstract: Among Denmark’s many beautiful medieval churches, there are a number of unique and strange churches. Store Heddinge is among these and is probably one of the most mysterious ones. With the main churches octagonal nave and its mysterious floor plan in the chancel with interleaved spaces, the interpretations have been manifold. Primarily, two theories were debated. These two ideas are marked by the time they were made up in. It was a time when idealism and the wish to connect everything and every church to Crusades prevailed and a time which also focused on the possibility that churches could have served as defense churches or fortified churches. But there is nothing that points in that direction for these functions, and these functions do not explain the odd architectural details in the chancel. None of them explain the strange smaller curved corridor with the two smaller chambers. Lots of open questions and one above them all: Could this church be anything else than a fortified crusader church? The authors on sight studies of the church have pointed in another direction. The paper will explain the history of the church and how the author managed to solve the design and function of the church. It will be argued that the Sct. Catharina Church may have been planned as a pilgrims Church for Sct. Catharina and parts of the church had a function as storage for the church. Keywords: Romanesque, church, pilgrim, octagonal

Stevns area is characterised by quite a few limestone churches or churches with limestone features.

Introduction Among Denmark’s many beautiful medieval churches, there are a number of strange buildings that stand out from the rest for various reasons. One of these churches is Store Heddinge Church, which is found in Præstø county. It has long puzzled people and continues to spark speculations to this day.

The history of the market town of Store Heddinge stretches far back, and the town is mentioned in Kong Valdemars Jordebog (The Danish Census Book), where it is called Hædding (Hedding). (Danmarks kirker Præstø amt (Denmark’s churches, Præstø county), page 53) In the source, which is a taxation register started around 1230, the town is mentioned as crownlands, but it also appears on a list of the market towns of Zealand. (Danmarks kirker Præstø amt (Denmark’s churches, Præstø county), page 53)

The church is located in the small market town of Store Heddinge. The town is situated on the peninsula of Stevns, which is, despite its relatively close geographical proximity to the capital of Copenhagen, at some distance from central, modern arterial highways. The

The church is located on the northeastern edge of the medieval town. At the end of the Middle Ages (in Denmark the Middle Ages ends in 1536 ), there was a royal estate in the town. This estate was probably located directly to the north of the church on a former site of the royal estate with its mounds and surrounded moats. (Danmarks kirker Præstø amt (Denmark’s churches, Præstø county), page 53) It is presumed that the church was built at the king’s (King Valdemar II of Denmark, king from 1202 to 1241) instruction. In all probability, the church formed part of the royal complex with association to the royal estate. This assumption is supported by the fact that in 1466, the church was transferred to the auspices of Roskilde Cathedral, where Christian I had his burial vault built. (Diplomatarium Christierni I. pages 180 ff and Danmarks kirker Præstø amt, page 53)

Figure 1 The church of Store Heddinge, Photo Leif Plith Lauritsen

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Figure 2 Original 1 map. Up until around 1716 there was a manor / country house complex called Erikstorp on the site where the royal estate was formerly found.

Christian I  (February 1426  – 21 May 1481) was Scandinavian monarch under the Kalmar Union. King of Denmark from 1448-1481, also king of Norway from 1450 -1481 and of Sweden from 1457-1664. The dynasty he founded, the House of Oldenburg, has remained on the throne of Denmark until today.

the Byzantine Empires, with their strict Romanesque architectural inspired from both the Romans and the Arabic world. These traits make the structure of two of the church’s building elements stand out from the rest of the preserved Danish churches. The two elements in question are the church’s Romanesque octagonal nave and two-storey chancel. With its unique octagonal nave, Store Heddinge Church is the only church of its kind in Denmark, and the chancel, which is most important to this article, is notable for its two-storey structure. More about that later.

Today, the actual church consists of a chancel and a nave from the late Roman era (around 1200). During the late Gothic era (1400-1535), a west-facing tower was added. In modern times (from 1847-53), a vestry has been added to the east, a transept to the north, and a porch to the south. The church is known to have been damaged by lightning in the 1670s. It was during this disaster that the octagonal nave burnt and lost its original height. The original height can only be assumed based on the Map/drawing from around 1670. Here the map shows to drawings of the church. The bigger one has problems with the perspective and angle and therefor thee chancel looks to be higher than the Nave.

First, a brief focus on the church nave. The octagonal nave (Figure 4) must have been inspired by places as far away as Charlemagne’s palace chapel in Aachen or the later Ottmarsheim in Alsace (Figure 5). Inspiration closer to home could also include Georgenberg by Goslar (Figure 6), which dates back to the time after 1140. Danish tradition links this form of building not only to Charlemagne’s Palace chapel (Figure 7), but also to the Dome of the Rock (the mosque) in Jerusalem, and thus also to the crusades. This makes it relatively easy to find role models for the actual nave of the church. (Danmarks kirker Præstø amt (Denmark’s churches, Præstø county), page 54). It is the polygon nave that binds these churches together. The central church buildings are typically tied to churches with political status ether for the king ore the church in general.

The smaller one which is seen form a different angle seems more correct. Here the nave and chancel (12,5 meters high) are equally high. (Figure 3b) The nave had a central part that was still higher, almost a tower like octagonal central building standing on 8 pillars (Danmarks kirker Præstø amt (Denmark’s churches, Præstø county), page 59). When you look at the church, the most noticeable thing is the strange Romanesque chalk ashlar building from ca. 1200. The central church building has architectural traits that can be related to both the Carolingian and

Today the only original parts of the nave are the outer walls in their reduced height. No original openings are visible, but from the Resen map (figure 3a) it is possible 114

Leif Plith Lauritsen: Store Heddinge Church – a Mystery Solved

A

B

Figure 3a Store Heddinge and the church on Resens map from the 1670’s, before the lightning strike. Note how the nave seems low. B) Zoom in on the smaller drawing. Note how the nave and chancel seems to have the same height, and the tall octagonal central building.

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Figure 4 Plan view of the church showing the octagonal nave and the chancel with its two floors and intermingled rooms between the floors.

The chancel, on the other hand, is a completely different matter. It is much more difficult to find a clear source of inspiration for the beautiful, distinctive building that makes up this part of the church. It is a surprisingly tall, square building with a peculiar plan solution. The building is impressive due to its style-conscious appearance. (Figure 8) the walls are 12,5 meters high. In west the chancel is connected to the nave. The three other sides of the building are characterized by the triple arched windows. Two set of three in the north and south wall and one in the east wall. This almost regal appearance and the very association to the king has caused many to attribute functions to the building that are normally associated with the crown. And this is definitely not unlikely. In general buildings with galleries, such as a triforiums, and wall-passages were key elements of high-status medieval architecture in Europa in the Romanesque and Gothic periods (Huitson 2014, p 48).

Figure 5 Plan view of Ottmarsheim in Alsace

to deduce that the nave had 8 pillars around the centre of the nave. On this rested 8 vaults and an octagonal tower with a with a high spire.

In principle, the building now stands as a two-storey chancel (Figure 9) with a number of small chambers interposed in between and around the two floors. 116

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Figure 6 - Plan view of Georgenberg by Goslar.

Figure 7 Plan view of Charlemagne’s Palace chapel in Achen

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Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era At the bottom, there is a traditional chancel, albeit with an interior apse. However, at closer inspection, no less than three doors lead into the church stonework. To the west, between the nave and the chancel, two winding staircases both lead up to the same ambulatory. (Figure10) To the east, a wooden panel hides a door. This door leads to a small, but proper chamber. From the chamber, a narrow and tricky staircase leads up across the apse to another chamber. This latter chamber is popularly known as the chamber of Klintekongen (‘King of the Cliff ’s’ a mythical local ruler). (Figure11+ 12) It is uncertain what purpose these two chambers served. Perhaps it would not be fair to presume that their location in the chancel and around the apse indicates that some kind of church treasure was kept here? Maybe in the form of documents, textiles, church silver and relics, or maybe they were actually used for storing money?

Figure 8 The gable of the chancel seen form east. Photo Leif Plith Lauritsen

If instead, you follow one of the two winding staircases up to the next floor, you will discover that the floor distribution is a not uniform. Today, the staircase ends

Figure 9 Section of the building.

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Figure 10 One of the two winding staircases that lead up to the same ambulatory. Photo Leif Plith Lauritsen

Figure 12 The chamber of Klintekonge. Photo Leif Plith Lauritsen

in a small passage, which follows the outer wall all around the chancel to the staircase opposite in a socalled triforium passageway. Shortly after the staircase, there is a small niche in the passage wall. Such a niche is found in both the northern and the southern part of the passage. Light enters the passage via the two triple arched windows on either facade. (Figure 13) The northern passage features a door in the southern wall. Three steps lead up into a room located directly over the chancel. If you continue along the passage, you reach a door by the chancel end gable, which leads away from the passage. This is located in the western wall of the north-south-going passage. From here, three steps lead down to a lower-lying passage in the wall. Just opposite the door opening, there is a quite big and deep niche, shaped almost like a quarter dome. (Figure 14) On either side of the door, there are two smaller, square chamber-like rooms. There have been many interpretations of this mysterious plan solution for floors, interposed rooms etc. Two hypotheses have been discussed in particular.

Figure 11 “King of the Cliff ’s” a mythical local ruler. Photo Leif Plith Lauritsen

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Figure 14 The niche, Photo Leif Plith Lauritsen

Figure 13 The windows in the passage, Photo Leif Plith Lauritsen

Both are characterised by the time in which they were put forward. A time when the crusade mind set was predominant, and a time that also focused on the possibility of using churches as defence churches. Naturally, we have churches in Denmark that might be associated with the crusade ideas, both in appearance and in later fixtures and fittings, such as headstones with clear crusade motifs, as in churches of Vejerslev and Thise. In Denmark, we also have churches that might have served as defence churches such as the round churches on Bornholm, the church at Malling and the church of Karis, the last located only 15 km from Store Heddinge. However, this cannot form the basis for a generalisation, nor can it explain all unclear architectural traits as being either ordinary church architecture traits or parts of a defence architecture.

2.

As mentioned above, Store Heddinge Church is marked by two schools of interpretation. Below are brief descriptions and comments on both. 1.

The first hypothesis relates to the king Valdemar II. as the builder of the church and the crusade ideas. According to this hypothesis, the upper floor of the building was used as a meeting room for the king and his men. Here, they would have planned future crusades against the 120

heathen Wends (Slavonic tribes who lived on the northern cost of nowadays Germany) who raided the southern islands of Denmark. In that case, the room above the chancel would also have served as a meeting room, as a district hall. However, there is no clear evidence in favour of this function, except for the fact that there is a room whose function is unknown. The other hypothesis is probably the most prevalent, and it is vaguely related to the first one. This focuses on the idea that a church can serve as a defence church. The ambulatory and the windows are seen as typical defence elements, not unlike other centralised churches, for example the round churches of skt Olsker on the Island of Bornholm. Here the central church is three stores high. The upper on has embrasures and the possibility of building a wooden gallery on the outside. (Figure 15a + 15b (rekonstruktion)). Several of these have pronounced defence-related details among others the round churches on Bornholm. (Winberg, J. (1986) p. 58-62) Another element, which may indicate a defence work, is the interpretation that the chancel has had a flat roof above the ambulatory in the wall. The high crests of the wall could have served as breastwork or battlement from were soldiers ore common people could defend the church and them self. However, evidence for this flat roof is scarce. Finally, completely new observations, described later in this article, speak against the idea that the chancel would have been finished in such a way.

Leif Plith Lauritsen: Store Heddinge Church – a Mystery Solved

Figure 16 The room above the chancel. Note the “embrasure” in the right side of the photo. Photo Leif Plith Lauritsen

It is practically impossible to miss the columns in the triple arched window directly opposite the ‘embrasure’. Finally, one might ask what purpose the two small niches would have served, if the ambulatory were supposed to be of a defensive character. (This is drawn incorrectly on the plan view (fig 4. Se in the top right corner). Possibly an illustrative interpretation influenced by the underlying thesis.) But if neither of the two hypotheses holds water, then what? What evidence do we have that shows the intended function of the building? The solution or what? During one of my recent visits to the church, I suddenly spotted several details that I had not connected to each other on previous visits at the church. This made me consider the building’s function anew, and I have continued working on an explanatory model based on my most recent observations. I joined forces with Martin Jürgensen and Thomas Berthelsen from the National Museum of Denmark’s department for Denmark’s churches. They are both working with churches and specializing in church interior design and use (Martin) and the building history and architecture (Thomas). We examined the building together, and they both agree with my observations. Together we developed the hypothesis described below, and we believe finally made sense of the upper parts of the chancel.

Figure 15 The Round Church Olsker on the island Bornholm (Denmark). Photo a) and reconstructions sketch b) both by Leif Plith Lauritsen

This means that several elements oppose the idea of the church serving as a defence church. For instance, it is quite simply not possible to shoot arrows from bows through the windows in the ambulatory. In practical terms, the ambulatory is too narrow for an archer to draw back the string of his bow in there. Furthermore, the archer would be far too exposed to incoming arrows, and even crossbows would be difficult to fire in the limited space. The so-called embrasure suffers from some purely functional construction issues. (Figure 16)

The foundation for the new understanding of the chancel was laid one day in mid-October 2012 when I was showing the church to an acquaintance. I was looking at the two niches – one of them blocked up at some stage (any dates for this activity -) – which are at either end of the triforium passageway, and I thought 121

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Figure 17 The Niche and the two intermingled rooms on the plan view. Note the angel on the southern jamb in the doorway that leads from the triforum. Drawing: Leif Plith Lauritsen

to myself, ‘What is the significance of two such niches if one thinks in terms of liturgy?’

leads to two small chambers hidden in the thick wall. Right opposite the door, there is a large, relatively deep and flat niche. The two chambers are positioned north and south of the niche, respectively.

It is conspicuous that the niche is located in this exact place, where you come up to the passageway and then leave it again. The thought that visitors would be met by something value-laden in relation to their errand in the triforium passageway is obvious. It is highly likely that a statue of a saint would have been placed here, or maybe a small holy water stoup. It is hard to imagine that the niche would have served any other purpose.

In the northern chamber, which appears least finished, the surface of the stones are relative rough whereas the stones in the southern chamber has a smoother surface. Here in the south chamber, you will one also notes the remains of a small podium at thr east wall, and to the west, a small shaft leading up to the chamber above the church’s chancel with unknown purpose.

The next challenge is the many windows in the triforium passageway, which are also conspicuous due to their large number. The positioning of the windows serves no defence-related purpose. They are too large, and the passageway is not deep enough for drawing a bow, for instance. They provide no protection and have no embrasure characteristics. Their most obvious purpose, in relation to the structure and position of the windows, must have been to provide light and offer people walking along the passageway an opportunity to look out. One additional function may have been that the people who are inside or passing through the passageway could be watched from the outside.

In order to find a possible interpretation of this architectural unit, you need to look closer at the individual parts, that is, 1) the door opening, 2) the niche, and finally, 3) the two chambers. 1.

As you walk along the triforium passageway, you reach the eastern end of the chancel. Here, you can take a couple of steps down through a door opening in the western wall to reach a curved passage. This passage 122

Offhand, the doorframe does not seem important. It is a doorframe, presumably designed to frame and support a door. Maybe that is why people have not previously attached importance to it in their attempts to understand the building and its peculiar architecture with the triforium passageway and its many strange chambers. However, the doorframe offers a significant clue to our understanding of the architecture. The clue is the interior design of the frame. The northern jamb has an ordinary rabbet. But if you look at the southern jamb, you will see that this

Leif Plith Lauritsen: Store Heddinge Church – a Mystery Solved

2.

3.

is rabbeted at an angle larger than the normal 90 degrees, and not just a bit larger but around 135 degrees (Figure 17). Angled rabbeting of doorframes is not unheard of in church buildings, but it is far from common. It always serves a specific purpose, that is, to make it possible to open the door as widely as possible. But why open this door as much as possible? This is where the niche opposite the door comes into the story. The niche, which has previously only been explained as an attempt at making the wall and the arch above the apse lighter (Danmarks kirker Præstø amt (Denmark’s churches, Præstø county), page 56) is the next clue that may help understand the architecture. Is it possible that the niche served a different or an additional function, and that it was not intended solely as relief as previously believed? It must have been intended to contain something that was meant to be seen. For instance, a reliquary containing the purported or actual physical remains of saints, such as bones or pieces of clothing etc. But why place the relic here in a room over the alter. This is one of the most sacred if not the most sacred place in the church. In the medieval period there was a tradition og housing relics in the alter table ore on a beam above the alter (Huitson 2014, p 48). So this niche, a watchingspace (Huitson 2014, p 74), that is placed directly over the alter is a very sacred place, ideal location for a reliquary. Having a reliquary placed in a watching-space in a triforium is seen in more churches all over Europe. One of the most famous early medieval watching-spaces in a gallery/triforium is Charlemagne’s reputed throne, placed at Charlemagne’s octagon palace chapel in Achen (Huitson 2014, p 75). If this is true, the door needs to be as open as wide as possible, so that people passing by in the triforium passageway would be able to see as much of the reliquary as possible. This would mean that the triforium passageway was intended to serve as a procession passage that would lead people past the reliquary. The windows thus served several purposes. Their primary purpose was to provide light in the passage, and they would most definitely also have served to ensure that people who were on a pilgrimage to see the relic could be seen by people waiting outside, and in turn that they could look out on the many that would be waiting outside to get in. The two chambers (Figure 17) probably served two different purposes. The northern, that is left les finished with rough walls was probably a

storage room, for example, for liturgical objects and clothing. There are no signs in the room of fittings supporting wooden panels ether. All in all the camber looks like a lumber room. Whereas the southern chamber with the small podium, which could serve as a Communion table, and with the smother walls could have been a small chapel, particularly suitable for use by for example, clergymen or high-ranking people, such as noblemen, the king and others. The usage of this smaller chambers is only my hypotheses, but it seems possible as we know from other churches that cambers in cathedrals, and in fewer cases in parish churches, that these smaller cambers can have multiple functions (Huitson 2014, p 61-74). The two niches at the beginning and the end of the procession/triforium passageway have thereby found their purpose. They could have contained either a saint figurine or a holy water stoup, which the pilgrims could have used as they passed by. The last pieces in the puzzle What now remains is to consider the question of ‘what purpose the room above the chancel served?’. When I visited the church with my two colleagues from the National Museum of Denmark’s department for Denmark’s churches, we examined the room closely and discovered the following: From the winding staircase, there used to be access to a door in the middle of the chancel’s western gable end. As it stands now, this door leads into the room above the chancel. However, when we looked closer at the restoration of the wall that took place in the 1890s, we discovered that this door had actually led to a staircase under an arched ceiling. (Figure18) This means that this room was or could have been, or could have been intended to be split into two floors/ lofts, each with its own entrance. Is this perhaps an entrance to two different authorities’ storage lofts? (Figure 19) For instance, one storage floor for the church and one for the king? This is not a common division of the usage, but the building is not common in general. If we stick with the idea of the storage option, and avoid being seduced by the sexy idea about a defence church, this observation is also of consequence to the nearby Lille Heddinge Church.( Danmarks kirker Præstø amt (Denmark’s churches, Præstø county), page 453-454). This is another, in its roots Romanesque church, where an extra floor has traditionally been associated with the concept of defence works. (Trap Danmark, 4th edition, 123

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Figure 18 The storage space above the chancel, with the two doorways as they are today. The one right from the triforium and the one in the middle from the winding staircase. Note the remains of the stairs leading from the dog in the middle og the room upwards to the left. Photo Leif Plith Lauritsen

Figure 20 The church in sunlight , Photo Leif Plith Lauritsen

Præstø county, page 380). It’s a relative small church, the Romanesque nave measures only around 11x8 meters but is built with surprisingly high walls. The naves wall’s measures all of 8.5 metres in height. The conspicuous height has previously been explained as necessary defence works. However, the only thing that speaks in favour of the church being a defence church is the height of the walls. No preserved embrasure or crenelation has been found. It therefore makes much better sense to interpret Lille Heddinge Church as another church with a storage room. In terms of dating, there can be no doubt that the inspiration for this particular feature (the storage room) may have come from Store Heddinge. Conclusion Store Heddinge is still among Denmark’s many beautiful medieval churches, but maybe not so strange and definitely not so mysterious any more - if my hypotheses are true. Thou out this paper I have argued that the church of Store Heddinge originally was built as an octagonal central church inspired by, among others churches, the palace chapel in Achen. Evidently there are similarities to the chapel in Achen. Primarily the octagonal nave and the two-storey high chancel with the triforium and the watching-space. The watching-space was properly made as a place for a reliquary, and maybe this relic was tied to the same saint as the church was consecrated to – Sct. Catharina. If so the Sct. Catharina Church may have been planned as a pilgrims Church for Sct. Catharina. Sct Catharina is one of the ‘Fourteen Holy Helpers’. Her patronage is

Figure 19 Drawing of the reconstructed staircase with arched ceiling and the same drawing with the division flor set in to the drawing, Leif Plith Lauritsen

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Leif Plith Lauritsen: Store Heddinge Church – a Mystery Solved the protection from ‘sudden death’ and so it would be obvious to prey to her before a travel ore a crusade.

mysteries. Maybe waiting for you to come and solve some of the other mysteries.

Furthermore, a pilgrims Church will receive a lot of gifts which must be stored somewhere. The Church in Store Heddinge had to functions, one as Pilgrims Church and one as a parish Church. Maybe we can find the reason for the division of the storage space in to two lofts in theses to functions of the Church. One loft/storage for the parish Churchs tithe and one for the gifts to the part og the church that had a function as Pilgrims Church.

References Cited

The fire in 1670’s and many additions and renovations of the church has made it difficult to see a clear picture of this unique church’s original form and function. But perhaps a part of the riddle is now solved.

Nielsen, n., Skautrup, P. and Englstoft P. (eds) (1955). Trap Danmark, 4th edition, Præstø county, 5th edition, G.E.C. Gads Forlag. Jensen, C. A. and Hermansen, V. (eds) (1933). Danmarks kirker Præstø amt (Denmark’s churches, Præstø county). G.E.C. Gads Forlag.

Huitson, T. (2014). Stairway to Heaven. The function og Mediveal Upper Spaces. Oxford: Oxbow. Winberg, J. (1986). Bornholms kirker i en ældre middelalder. Hikuin 12: 45-66. Encyclopedias:

In any case, the church is there, so beautifully placed in the centre of the cemetery ... waiting for visitors, and waiting with all its solved and unsolved puzzles and

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Creating a Choreographed Space: English Anglo-Norman Keeps in the Twelfth Century Katherine Weikert

Department of History, University of Winchester, SO22 4NR, UK email: [email protected] Phone 044 7565 894418 Abstract: Stone keeps signify a notable part of Anglo-Norman building campaigns, placing symbolic marks over the landscape and providing a structure for groups to congregate and live. In this paper, the technique of access analysis is applied to Anglo-Norman castle keeps of England ca 1100–1250. Results indicate a progression of spaces for keeps to be experienced in specific ways with routes culminating at spatially and socially high-level spaces. The research shows that applying spatial analysis to keeps demonstrates another social element to consider when studying these buildings, including highlighting the importance of gallery and mural spaces in castle keeps. Keywords: Anglo-Norman Castles, Spatial Analysis, Castellology, Anglo-Norman England

resource, not tied to one single idea of architecture (2014), whilst Richard Hulme has noted that ‘the story of castles is this history of those who lived in and built them.’ (2007-8: 223)

Introduction Castellology has long fluctuated between studies varying back and forth between militaristic and social interpretations, sometimes quite vigorous in their assertions against each other (cf. Platt 2007: 83102; Creighton and Liddiard 2008: 161-9). Although historiographically-speaking the field has been more dominated by militaristic studies, alternative views of the castle have been placed in the field for decades, including Charles Coulson’s seminal works on the castle as a status symbol (1979: 73-90; 1994: 86-137; 1996: 171207), which Colin Platt claims to have ‘hijacked’ the direction of castle studies (2007: 83).

Amongst various other ways that castles have begun to be reassessed, spatial analysis remains relative neglected in favour of currently-popular landscape assessments. However, spatial studies of buildings have much to offer castle studies in terms of a social interpretation. Viewing buildings as an indication of their spatial meanings, not just the architectural meanings, can provide yet another window to see society and the people within these spaces. Nevertheless, studies in this direction are thus far limited to select works in various publication, utilizing a variety of methodologies. Arguably, Patrick Falkner’s early works exploring spatial aspects of domestic planning in medieval buildings have not yet found their wider audience 1958: 150-83; 1963: 215-35), although dynamic and progressive works have been advanced since the earlier years of study. Graham Fairclough advanced Falkner’s ideas, introducing Falkner’s spatial works to a new generation of castellologists (1992: 348-66). Leonie V. Hicks’ work in castle spaces in Normandy remains an important work in demonstrating the usefulness of spatial studies in castles (2009: 52-69), and Philip Dixon and Pamela Marshall’s assessment of the visual signals of space at Hedingham Castle also open important areas of spatial and visual works in castle studies (1993: 1623).1 Following Fairclough’s methodology, Philip Dixon’s work in functional analysis of eleventh- and twelfthcentury keeps also provided a different way of viewing and interpreting the castle structure by considering the use of rooms (2008: 243-75). Charles Ryder has partially

Indeed within the last several decades the pendulum has swung back and forth, alternating between types of assessment and interpretation, and recently more rounded work has been appearing in the landscape of castle studies, assessing the buildings’ practical, military and social aspects in a more holistic manner (cf, Higham 2010: 1-13). The revisionism of Coulson’s work alongside the influence of scholars such as Roberta Gilchrist (1994), Matthew Johnson (2002), Robert Liddiard (2005) and Oliver Creighton (2009) has led to more assessment of castles based upon evidences such as distribution, landscape, architecture, textual references and other factors, currently being seen in research projects throughout the UK and perhaps reflective of emerging trends in castle studies (amongst others, Hulme 2007-8; Horrocks 2013; Cowan 2014; Swallow 2015). After many years of neglect of the human side of buildings in context, this more-rounded approach has also led to welcome and commensurate ideas not just about the buildings also the people within them: Kim Cowan, for example, concludes that the castle was, in contemporary eyes, a multifunctional

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My thanks for Leonie Hicks for bringing this work to my attention.

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era combined functional and spatial analysis in considering newel stairs in castles (2011). Amanda Richardson’s work in gender and space in palaces also demonstrates varying ways that space can be read with layering methodology to find even further social meanings to space (2003a: 131-65; 2003b: 373-84).

in England and Normandy with 80 extant at the time of publication). Portchester Castle, for example, was utilized and altered in various ways from its initial late-eleventh century build as a castle through the Napoleonic wars, when the keep was used for prisoners of war (Cunliffe and Munby 1985; Cunliffe 1994). In general the keep consisted of a square tower of multiple storeys, built in several phases, containing sets of rooms on the interior. In some, butnot all of these cases, the familiar stone keep was a replacement of a previous wooden tower, and though a motte was not always an element of these replacement towers, the keeps were usually sited in locations notable for their control or overlooking of communication and access routes, and indeed their defensible locations.

In fact, Richardson’s works remains one of the few in medieval studies to utilize the methodology of access analysis, originally advanced by Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson (1985). This theory and methodology maintains that the ordering of space is the primary purpose of a building, and the building itself only a means to that end (Hillier and Hanson 1985: 1). Beyond this, an ordering of space is in essence an attempt to order the people within the space, and so buildings therefore convey social relationships through their interior structuring (Hillier and Hanson 1985: 1-18; 154-5). Therefore, all buildings demark relationships between visitors and inhabitants, and as these relationships change, the structures themselves are also altered (Hillier and Hanson 1985: 154-5; Whyte 2006: 153; Richardson 2013a; Richardson 2013b). These are the complexities that are lived spaces and societies: buildings controlled space, but agents altered their meanings. A building, or a place, is not solely the thing itself but represents ‘a set of relations between things’ (Lefebvre 1991: 81-2).

Of these sites, a number remain in southern England that retain the majority of their Anglo-Norman form, despite their numerous post-Anglo-Norman alterations. These sites include Rochester (Kent), Portchester (Hampshire) and Dover (Kent) Castles and London’s White Tower, all of which will be examined here, alongside the keep at Conisbrough Castle (South Yorkshire), the latter providing a different architectural form of castle keep that also benefits from spatial and access analysis. In addition to this, the royal castles of Rochester, Portchester, Dover and the White Tower in comparison to a baronial castle of Conisbrough can also provide an interesting lens for analysis. The sites have been analysed through a combination of desk-based assessments of archaeological sources, access analysis and site visits.

It is from this theoretical and disciplinary background that this chapter arises. Growing initially from a study of English domestic sites c. 900–c. 1200 (Weikert 2013; Weikert 2014: 96-120), this research views a selection of castle keeps in Anglo-Norman England through the lens of spatial analysis, demonstrating the pertinence and the dynamism of making societal interpretations from reading the space via access analysis. Examining the keeps via access analysis demonstrates the social importance of progress through the spaces of the keep in order to advance into high-status areas, showing the importance of the movement through the building to show or maintain one’s own status as a part of a social, visual act. Beyond this, access analysis demonstrates the high-level social significance of gallery spaces in keeps as a place both to see and be seen as part of a visual display of status. Research that allows for the viewing of the society within these buildings, as well as the buildings themselves, greatly enhances our ability to conceptualize and contextualise the castle in AngloNorman England.

Methodology: access analysis In determining the social value of buildings’ space, Hillier and Hanson proposed a methodology which divorced the spaces from their physical structures and instead studied the space itself in order to show intangible aspects of the buildings such as exclusivity, access and transit routes, investment, power and internal relationships, underlining the importance of the relationships between users of the spaces and the users themselves (Hillier and Hanson 1985 for all following information on reading access analysis). In reading an access analysis diagram by this methodology, diagrams are read from the bottom to the top, starting at the crossed circle. The crossed circle represents the ‘carrier space,’ which is the space that contains the building or the premise. This is a flexible space and can be taken from any point; in the case of all the keeps below, the carrier space is simply the exterior of the keep, beginning at the point of the exterior stair entry, as opposed to the exterior of the whole castle complex.

The Anglo-Norman keep in southern England The ‘traditional’ Anglo-Norman keep is recognizable across the Anglo-Norman realm, with a concentration of sites in southern England in castles sites that were used, reused and adapted over a long period of time (Dixon 2008 identified 200 Anglo-Norman castle sites 128

Katherine Weikert: Creating a Choreographed Space From all of the newels on three sides of the Tower, access was given to a series of mural passages, including one that led to the gallery above that chapel that was outfitted with Romanesque windows ‘indicative of the importance attached to this route at an early date’ (Harris 2008: 84).

Each circle in diagram represents a space of the building. Circles that are blank are considered useable spaces; in modern terms, spaces like bedrooms, kitchens, etc. Circles that are filled in are transitional spaces, e.g. places like stairs, hallways that exist to channel a person between other spaces. Each line represents a point of access between the two spaces.

Based upon an architectural analysis of the White Tower c. 1100 (Brown 1978; Impey 2008; Harris 2008), before the build of the forebuilding (Impey 2008: 5), the White Tower contains a very clear ‘axis of honour’ which ends in the space of the first floor chapel, the chapel mural gallery or the western mural spaces. However, these spaces, all on interior distributed rings, were only accessible if one first reached the stairs and were granted access beyond the point of the eastern room of the entrance floor. In other words, whilst access was restricted quite possibly beyond the large entrance room to begin with, access beyond this space was largely distributed through a series of newels and murals, and potentially received a great amount of footfall. The distributed spaces include immense permeability between the two upper rooms and the chapel, demonstrating a certain amount of permissible flow between the rooms. Although position of power

Spaces represented on ‘ringed’ routes on the diagrams are called distributed spaces. These are spaces meant to be occupied by both inhabitants and visitors of the building, though with implications of control that can be read from the spaces as there may be checkpoints or controls between the spaces. Spaces on ‘trees,’ e.g. on dead-end lines, are nondistributed spaces and are the space of the inhabitants of the building alone. Access analysis also indicates levels of prestige and privacy. Areas on nondistributed spaces are read as more ‘private’ than distributed ones. Additionally, the higher a space is from the carrier space, the more difficult it is to access, indicating the possible level of prestige to the space although the circumstance of rooms such as garderobes, which almost invariably appear at top levels of access analysis, require further study (unfortunately outside the scope of this paper) in this light of this framework. Access analysis also recognizes positions of power, generally speaking the useable space that is the highest distributed space. In addition, ‘[axes] of honour’ (Fairclough 1992: 354) can be perceived in straight-line paths leading to prestige spaces. The White Tower Perhaps the most famous of the castles in England, the White Tower was first raised by William the Conqueror and subsequently finished in its Norman form by his son, William Rufus. The building in this period, in two distinct phases, ran from c. 1075 to 1100 (Impey 2008: 1). According to recent analysis of the building afforded by the movement of the collection of the Royal Armouries in the late 1990s, the tower was entered via external steps directly into the entry floor west room, which in turn offered double access points to the east room. From this point one could enter the lower level chapel and, beyond this, the sacristy, or take the newel stair in the northeast corner either up or down one floor to the ground-level store and service rooms. Going up into the next level room, one was shepherded through a passage directly into the western room. From the western room, a series of access points led to two newels stairs in the southwest and northwest corners, into a passage leading to the upper chapel, or into the eastern room, where access to the chapel was additionally offered.

Figure 1: Access analysis, White Tower. Image by the author.

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Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era can be read in the upper chapel, it is worth noting that the chapel gallery as well as the eastern room of the upper floor are a single level below the chapel, also on distributed space, as is the mural gallery provided with decorated Romanesque windows leading into the chapel gallery. Clearly these spaces are intended for viewing and presentation, with a particular passage provided for high-status people to make an entrance at the chapel gallery: a visual impact allowed for by the multiple systems of access. Visually speaking, the gaze of the occupants could function in both directions here: those in the chapel could be passive recipients of the gaze of those above them in the gallery, but also could one could also display themselves within the gallery space, recipients of a gaze from below. In both spaces, one could be viewed or be the viewer, and as both are in relative positions of power, this function of being viewed or being the viewer would depend on the circumstance and the persons involved, as well as other factors such as different times of day or year. Both scenarios of being viewed or being the viewer are possible, demonstrating again the flexibility of spaces.

was comprised of a ground floor with three floors and garret space above, with primary exterior access on the first floor via a set of forebuildings and interior access between the floors via a newel stair in the southwest corner and internal wooden steps. Access to the keep was via an L-shaped stairwell to the first floor. From this stair one could have accessed either the first floor space of the north forebuilding, the chapel, or the south room of the keep itself. From the first floor south room access was given to a passage and latrines, the first floor north room and a newel stair in the southwest corner connecting the first floor with the ground and second floors. From this point access takes an interesting turn, as the spaces of the first and second floor north and south rooms seem to indicate an element of choreography to the interior spaces (Liddiard 2005: 51). The door jamb in the spine wall between the second floor north and south rooms indicate a primary directional flow from the room on the north to the room on the south; however, the only known contemporary access point set in stone to the second floor is in the newel stair on the south of the building. With no other access point to the second floor north room written in stone, it becomes necessary to envision an additional access point between the first and second floor north rooms, possibly similar to the wooden stair recreated in the current interpretation of Portchester Castle. Truss marks certainly are extant in the spine wall in the first floor north room to indicate this possibility.

Portchester Castle The late eleventh century marked the abandonment of the pre—Conquest thegnly site inside the Roman walls at Portchester and the beginning of building a castle in the northwest corner of the enclosure. Most of the building works in the inner bailey did not take place until the reign of Henry I though it is probable that William Mauduit, a royal chamberlain and tenant—in— chief of several Hampshire estates (Morris various dates; Mason 2004), began building in the area of what would become the inner bailey by the Domesday reference to a ‘halla’ in 1086 (Golding 1989: 14), probably a ground floor hall and first floor chamber block which predated the slightly later keep.

The southwest newel also reached the third floor spaces: a south room well—lit by a pair of double light windows and a window seat on the west wall, and a north room with large window seats on the opposing east and west walls along with access to latrines. From the newel stair from the first floor, access was also given to the ground floor spaces of the keep and, further, the ground floor space of the chapel.

The custodianship of Portchester exchanged hands several times in the twelfth century between the Mauduit and Pont de l’Arche families, with the king also directly holding the castle in a period in the early part of the century (Cunliffe and Munby 1985: 2). In 1189-92 the constableship of Portchester was purchased by the new bishop of Winchester, Godfrey de Lucy (Venables and Turner 2004). Regular references in the Pipe Rolls indicate that minor repair works were underway at Portchester in the late twelfth century, though the costs recorded do not indicate major building works by that time Cunliffe and Munby 1985: 2-3).

The highlight of the access analysis from c. 1130–70 is the large ring between the spaces of the first and second floors of the keep: 1 south, 1 north, 2 south and 2 north. The spaces seen which were meant to provide a place for interaction between visitors and inhabitants were limited to an interesting pattern of access through the first floor south of the keep and moving in a designed direction into the first floor north, second floor north and finally second floor south rooms. The design of access was here deliberately planned in these spaces, with an ‘axis of honour’ (Fairclough 1992: 354) culminating in the second floor north space though progress through the spaces might be expected into the second floor south room. The access analysis here indicates a controlled, designed way of accessing the first and second floor spaces of the keep due to the dual

The castle structures grew significantly in the twelfth century. These major works were clustered in the period of Pont de l’Arche and the restoration of the Mauduit chamberlainships in the middle of the century, c. 1130– 70. In its fullest form in the twelfth century, the keep 130

Katherine Weikert: Creating a Choreographed Space Rochester Castle keep is currently a shell of a building but contains enough remaining systems of access, demonstrated in door jambs, to result in an access analysis. The keep, the ‘most outstanding feature’ (Brown 1986: 32) at the castle, has a basement at ground floor level and three floors above it. The third floor windows still carry architectural ornamentation, whilst the second floor carried a gallery surrounding its upper level. As with Portchester, a spine wall divides the space into two rooms at each level, with a well embedded in the centre of this wall. On the second floor, the ‘principal floor’ (Brown 1986: 25, 41-2), this spine wall is transformed into an arcade with richly decorated scalloped capitals and chevron decoration. Access analysis at Rochester shows the same interior ringed circuit as at Portchester, but a slightly more complicated one with the culmination both in the gallery of the second floor and or the second floor south room. There is also a demonstration of the permeability of the first floor north and south rooms, which exist both on a ring consisting of the two spaces alongside

Figure 2: Access analysis, Portchester Castle keep. Image by the author.

systems of access between the floors. The well-lit third floor spaces alone retained a modicum of exclusivity. Rochester Castle The keep at Rochester Castle was raised after c. 1127, when the castle was granted by King Henry I to William de Corbeil, archbishop of Canterbury, and his successors (John of Worcester ed. Thorpe 18489: ii:85; Gervase of Canterbury ed. Stubbs 1880: 382) . Though there was a castle already on site, it was noted that ‘...castellum quod est in civitate Roffensi, ubi idom archiepiscopo [William de Corbeil] turrim egregiam aedificavit.’(Gervase of Canterbury ed. Stubbs 1880: 382) The ‘turrim egregiam’ is logically and generally assumed to be the keep at Rochester Castle (Brown 1986: 9; Barlow 2004; Port 2008: 32). The castle remained in the hands of the archbishops of Canterbury throughout the twelfth century, though the king was responsible for its maintenance and upkeep (Brown 1986: 9) and at times maintained a closer hold on it, such as during the civil war in the mid-twelfth century when William of Ypres maintained custodianship of the castle when Robert of Gloucester was imprisoned there (Clark 1884: 442; Eales 2004).

Figure 3: Access analysis, Rochester Castle keep. Image by the author.

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Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era ground floor rooms but additionally on a ring includes the prestigious upper gallery and second floor south room. The ring between the first floor and ground floor spaces demonstrates a service access between the storage spaces on the ground floor and the more prestigious spaces in the upper floors. The position of power, however, is occupied by the gallery above the second floor; this was clearly a space to see and be seen in a progression through the keep’s spaces. More on gallery spaces throughout keeps will be discussed below.

rooms as well as in the mural spaces off both rooms, providing larger and smaller spaces for the purposes of ceremony, display and business. The use of spaces vastly depended on the business at hand, and despite modern naming of rooms the actual use of the space would depend on the user, not the observer; these uses could also easily be shifted by a simple shifting of furniture or décor (Quiney 1999: 24-46). In this case at Dover, the high prestige and high traffic spaces of the second floor rooms would be shifting spaces filled with selected guests of high status as well as the servants accessing the spaces via the system of spiral stairs.

Dover Castle

Equally important at Dover, and echoing the spaces at Rochester, are the mural spaces, rooms built into the thickness of the outer walls, above the second floor. On access analysis, these spaces are most directly accessed via the dual newel stairs but equally are accessible through the second floor spaces. These mural spaces, although not itself on the ‘axis of honour,’ is of an equal level of height as the second floor main rooms and again on distributed space, likely to receive a certain amount of footfall. Its physical location overlooking the second floor is also telling. Although the majority of the mural space does not have a direct view over the two main second floor rooms, instead accessing mural rooms in the walls (Brindle 2012: 16, 20-1), there are at least two viewing points from the mural providing a more gallery-esque view over both main rooms. These viewing points over the high end of both rooms provided a space to literally overlook the business and happenings in these rooms, a height advantage allowing viewing access to the whole of the rooms (barring any moveable furnishings that could be used to create internal spaces), and also a place to be seen by those in the room below. Additional mural spaces in these walls at this level would allow for enclosed spaces both spatially and physically private: with no thoroughfare through them, these were dead ends and entry would have only been by those with reason to be in them.

The keep at Dover Castle was raised by Henry II in the 1180s at great expense, and represents the latest, largest, most expensive and most elaborate of the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman keeps (Brown 1985: 26; Brindle 2012: 12). This site had previously seen Iron Age settlement, a Roman lighthouse and the AngloSaxon church of St Mary in Castro and burh, referred to in the Worcester Chronicle for 1052 as a ‘castelle’ (Cubbin 1996: 70). Whatever this particular structure, it is not the building we see today rising over the white cliffs, though there was clearly a long tradition of settlement, both social and martial, at the site. Indeed the construction of Dover Castle in the 1180s represented a conscious reference to the past, intended as an ‘ancestral statement’ in which Henry II looked to the tower-keeps of his grandfather, Henry I (Brindle 2012: 12). Representative of this elaborate space, Dover Castle represents the most complicated space of the keeps in this chapter due to the system of access that places the primary exterior entry on the second floor, followed by a dual system of internal access via two newel stairs on opposing corners reaching all levels of the keep. In addition to this there are a number of mural rooms embedded in the walls at all levels, sometimes leading to other spaces and, at times, dead ends.

Changing forms: Yorkshire)

In analysis, the complication of the plan is reflected in the extraordinary number of distributed spaces to the keep, even when allowing for the small loops that take place via the systems of newel stairs and landings. Only latrines, the occasional mural room, the ground floor spaces and the spaces of the upper and lower chapels appear on nondistributed spaces. Although the space is complicated by its internal arrangements, a clear ‘axis of honour’ (Fairclough 1992: 354) can be perceived exactly where it might be expected: in the long series of entry spaces up the spaces of the forebuilding, including a crucial point where the physical access would be either explicitly restricted or allowed via the drawbridge. This ‘axis of honour’ culminates in a series of distributed spaces between the second floor main

Conisbrough

Castle

(South

The noted circular, buttressed keep at Conisbrough Castle represents a variant from the rectangular towers discussed above. Conisbrough was built by Hamelin de Warren, earl of Surrey and half-brother of Henry II, in the 1170s-80s (Keefe 2004; Brindle and Sadraei 2015: 3, 6, 27-8), roughly contemporaneously to Henry’s building at Dover. Hamelin, though a staunch supporter of his half-brother, seemed to be somewhat out of the inner circle of the royal court, and instead fostered the de Warren holdings, acquired by his marriage to the heiress Isabel de Warenne. His focus on his Yorkshire estates, such as at Conisbrough, has been seen as ‘an opportunity to leave his own fresh mark in a family of 132

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Figure 4: Access analysis, Dover Castle keep. Image by the author.

prodigious builders’ as well as part of an attraction to ‘the thriving northern economy.’ (Keefe 2004) Indeed the fresh multimedia interpretation at the ‘statement castle’ (Heritage Lottery Fund 2014) touts the royal connections, drawing a parallel between Hamelin’s Conisbrough and Henry II’s Orford Castle. Brindle and Sadraei also specifically link the form to those of the castles of the counts of Blois and the kings of France (Brindle and Sanraei 2015: 11), highlighting Hamelin’s continental connections and social ambitions.

diagram), where the well was accessed, and storage on a ground floor room below, reached from the entrance chamber. Stairs imbedded in the wall wind to a small barrel-vaulted landing before entering a doorway to the second floor ‘great chamber’ (2nd floor room on the diagram). This room contained a large decorated fireplace, a seated alcove window in the thick walls (overlooking the estate’s mills and deer park), a small font and access to a garderobe. Access beyond this room is from stairs directly opposite the entry; stairs again imbedded into the wall reach another small barrelvaulted landing and then the third-floor ‘bedchamber’ (3rd floor room). This room too contained a decorated

This keep consists of a first floor entry to vestibule and entrance chamber beyond (1st floor room on the 133

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era fireplace and seated window alcove (this, overlooking the town of Conisbrough and the eighth-century church of St Peter), access to a garderobe, a small font, a chapel and a small sacristy off the chapel. Access beyond this room, to the rooftop, is again via stairs opposite the entry. The roof area contained walks and the tops of the thick buttresses, some of which housed water cisterns, baking ovens and a dovecot (Johnson 1984: 180).

or down via the way the person would have just come. This system of access also results in an access analysis that is unsurprisingly filled with trees rather than rings; almost all areas in the keep are in a line through a single route, accessed through one another, resulting in higher and higher spaces on the access analysis, and allegedly more private space the further travelled from the exterior.

Differing from the other keeps examined in this chapter, Conisbrough distinguishes itself not only by its circular form but, more importantly, by its single system of access throughout the keep. A single stairwell connects all the floors to each other, as opposed to dual systems of access, and so unusually, a person needing access to an upper floor or required to exit a space would have to cross the room in order to go either up or down (Brindle and Sadraei 2015: 8): up via the next stairwell,

In this circumstance, adding the architectural elements of the keep, where they remain, in the consideration of the access analysis allows for a much more nuanced interpretation than ‘the higher spaces were more private.’ The viewsheds from these high-status rooms can indicate use or prestige. In addition to this, all of the door jambs in both the second-floor ‘great chamber’ and the third-floor ‘bedchamber’ indicate a primary directional flow out of the space, not into the space. This can add much to consider about the practical and symbolic use to these spaces. First, the viewsheds from these two high-status rooms display very different viewpoints. The window-seat alcove on the second floor would have looked out over the estate’s deer park and mill. Both imply the owner’s ability to control resources as well as those who would use the resource (Holt 1988: 36-53; Lucas 2011: 329-30): in the case of the deer park, Hamelin himself and his highstatus guests; for the mill, those from the surrounding area who would need to grind their grain. Both features, embedded within the landscape, are marks designating the estate as one with great social status (Holt 1988: 37-8; Gardiner 2007: 172; Creighton 2009: 57). Creating this view from the ‘great chamber’ allowed a viewing of the estate’s property, assets and inherent elite status, possibly a pointed reminder to those in the room who might be conducting business at a high or a low level. The window-seat alcove on the third floor provided a view of the village on Conisbrough and its church of St Peter’s. The church and village are both on a hill opposite the castle, with a small valley between them physically separating the high keep from the church on a high point in the village. Each, in essence, had a vantage point of the other. St Peter’s was in existence as early as the eighth century and has been suggested as a minster church (Hey 2003); the pre-Conquest Conisbrough indeed held a large soke through the course of the eleventh century (Hadley 2000: 141-2, 143). Hamelin and the church were seemingly unconnected, and in many ways the cross-vantage points of the two important buildings echoes that in many English towns, with the secular and sacred authorities reminding the other of their existence through the proximity and views of each other via the churches or cathedrals and the castles or manor houses. Certainly this view as well would have reminded the occupants of the third-floor ‘bedchamber’ of their duties to the church and village,

Figure 5: Access analysis, Conisbrough Castle keep. Image by the author.

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Katherine Weikert: Creating a Choreographed Space a sudden entrance. These roles would have been even more selective in their timing when considering that the roof spaces, with wall-walks, cisterns and baking ovens, was too only accessed via the spaces of the keep. Second, the door jambs opening outwards from both the second- and third-floor rooms indicate a symbolic privacy to the space as well as a spatial one. Doors which open outwards not only physically open the space, they also do not physical intrude on the space, unlike doors that enter inwards. The doors particularly in the landing spaces of the second-and third-floor rooms likely could have remained blocked and open during key points of the day when entrance was less fraught with issues of privacy. But when closed, not only is the space physically cut off from the rest of the keep, creating (in essence) a self-contained unit, the door frame appearing on the interior of the room symbolically implies a closed-off space, a space that is to be exited, not to be entered. These rooms were symbolically enclosed spaces. Conclusions

and on a more personal level reminded them of their obligations to the church, spiritual and physical.

Keeps signify a strong part of an Anglo-Norman building campaign, placing symbolic marks over a landscape experiencing a shift in power and authority. These buildings were also, quite simply, places in which groups of people would congregate and live. Though traditionally militarized in their interpretations, castles can be simply another type of domestic housing culture seen in the Anglo-Norman realm in the central Middle Ages, as well as a space meant for choreography and display of people and power. Castle keeps also represent a shifting of space, moving from the mostly one— storeyed, horizontal domestic spaces seen previously to multi—storeyed vertical spaces containing similar social spaces within one building (Weikert 2013, though also see Liddiard 2005; Shapland 2008 and Shapland 2012).

In addition to the views offered from these spaces, access to both of the second- and third- floor spaces were, by social necessity, somewhat limited, but the practical aspect of doors which opened outwards, into the landing spaces, might require doormen in these small spaces in order for the guests to be announced and received. This emphasises the importance of the access point between the second and third floor spaces, where a person would control access both up into the third-floor space as well as down from the third-floor space. Both roles were crucial: the third-floor space was a more selective space for visitors, so this person would have been careful in his allowing of entrances. However the second-floor space would have been a space for business and other delicate procedures, and the doorman would have needed to limit access from the third-floor space at times inappropriate for

The varying patterns at all of these keep spaces, particularly the keeps with multiple forms of interior access, represent choreographed spaces (Liddiard 2005: 51). The keeps contain clear progressions through spaces indicating routes through the keep for the high-status visitors to the places. At all keeps save Conisbrough, whose construction gave its spaces a differing meaning, visitors would process through a series of transitional, ceremonial and distributed spaces, culminating their visit in a physically high and socially high status space such as the second floor rooms at Dover and Portchester, or the gallery spaces at Rochester, the White Tower and also possibly Dover. These keeps contained multiple systems of access to the rooms, quite reasonably to aid in the defence of the spaces or allow service access, but also allowing for access on circular routes, creating spaces with

Figure 6: Access analysis of Rochester Castle with viewsheds from the gallery illustrated with arrows. Image by the author.

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Figure 7: Access analysis of Dover Castle with viewsheds from the gallery illustrated with arrows. Image by the author.

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Katherine Weikert: Creating a Choreographed Space high prestige as well as high footfall. Features such as fireplaces, strategically placed windows and window seats to allow both light and views, and decorative stonework add to the layers of analysis. Visual signals such as in the remaining stonework at such as at Conisbrough and Rochester and in the moveable goods such as currently interpreted at Dover (Brindle 2012: 18-19) would further indicate the social meaning of these high-status spaces.

ranking nobles or foreign emissaries. After all, why make a display if no one can see it? Such displays ‘had to be witnessed in a quasi-public manner’ else the display was meaningless (Hicks 2009: 59). Galleries provided potentially high-trafficked spaces for an audience to a display enacted below. Conversely, the positioning of the galleries also afforded an opportunity to be viewed from below; the openings in the gallery provided a frame in which one could be positioned for ideal viewing. The passageway at the White Tower into the chapel gallery, richly provided with decorated windows, gave a comfortably high-status passage through which one could make their way from the large room below to make a grand entrance at the chapel gallery level. This also is especially apparent in the remains at Dover, where the large arched openings above the second floor rooms in the ‘gable’ ends of the countersunk roof are ideally positioned at the hierarchical high end of the rooms, as well as large enough for a visual tableau to be framed and presented to an audience below. Indeed the interpretation of the ‘king’s hall’ notes the planning as a ‘setting for ceremonies,’ including this overlooking opening, but fails to take in account that fact that, from this vantage point, one could not only see but be seen.

These keeps indicate that they were meant to be progressed through and experienced in particular ways (Dixon and Marshall 1993: 19-23; Liddiard 2005: 52). Other keeps in southern England may show the same results, and we may plausibly project these interpretations on keeps with similar forms: Canterbury Castle, for example, does not have enough standing fabric to do a full analysis of the spaces, but the remaining fabric with indications of similar spine walls and multiple points of newel stair access through the floors would indicate a progression through spaces as do the other keeps here studied (Renn 1982: 70-88). This is not a particularly English phenomenon, and similar results should also be expected at keeps with similar forms throughout the Anglo-Norman realm, such as at Falaise and Caen in Normandy, Carrickfergus in Northern Ireland, and the castelli Adrano, Paternó and Motta Sant’Anastasia, Sicily, to name but a few examples.

The example of gallery spaces can also be suggested in other castles regardless if the access analysis is similar or not. Canterbury, again, would be a likely space with an access analysis that echoes Portchester, Rochester, Dover and the White Tower, but beyond that the mural gallery spaces interpreted by Renn would place this symbolic space at this keep as well (1982: 80). An access analysis of Hedingham Castle, with its one system of newel stairs between the spaces and a ‘great hall’ space that was not divided by a cross-wall, more resembles that of Conisbrough with its continued upward motion. Crucially, again this space presents a gallery above the second floor ‘great hall,’ and one that includes large, regular arched openings overlooking the floor below it. Dixon has also considered the galleries at Norwich, overlooking the hall, chamber and chapel, as ‘conceived as an extension to the royal apartments, rather than an intrusion into it.’ (2008: 249)

Another aspect of the social meanings of space that access analysis brings to light is the previously littleconsidered gallery space: in some keeps it functions as a high status, visually meaningful place important for display and interaction. At the White Tower, Rochester and possibly Dover, both the availability of, and access to, gallery spaces overlooking the main high status rooms indicate visually and spatially important highstatus spaces that have been neglected in modern scholarship, possibly because of the reduced physicality of these spaces compared to great rooms that demand the attention of the scholar when considering the building’s physicality as opposed to its spaces. But spatial and access analysis, removing the physicality of the spaces, provides new meaning to galleries. As opposed to being a marginalized space, this space provided visual impact from both its own space and from the space below. At the White Tower, Rochester and possibly Dover, it was possible to be a spectator to high-status people from both above and below. Those in these rooms with an overlooking gallery, during important moments of display or even mere presence, were the subject of a gaze of an audience from above, and so creating a particular image or message for the audience. These moments could include the regular matters of state, of ceremony or feasting (or of liturgical importance, as in the case of the White Tower’s chapel gallery), crown-wearing, or the reception of other high-

The social meaning of the gallery space can be extrapolated in many directions. The first and clearest is that this was a potentially high-status space, meant for those who were allowed past various checkpoints in order to reach it. Secondly these galleries offered a visual impact in that those in the space were either meant to see or be seen, and of course, possibly both at the same time. Whilst this upper floor space would make a visual impact on those below if used for a visual statement by those such as the king or the lord of the castle, equally this space could be intended for those attempting to display their own access to authority by a display of their very self in these spaces. In other 137

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era words, a courtier displaying himself at this level shows the ability to access high-status, important spaces, and doubly impact his own social authority by being seen in a gallery above a king. Finally, and overall, this space played an important part of the viewsheds in upper levels of castle keeps in terms of displaying and maintaining social cache and authority. These spaces should be recognized as important ones in a society that maintained social authority by display, and the greater importance of the gallery recognized throughout keeps.

Coulson, Charles (1994) Freedom to Crenellate by License: An Historiographic Revision. Nottingham Medieval Studies XXXVIII: 86-137. Coulson, Charles (1996). Cultural Realities and Reappraisals in English Castle-Study. Journal of Medieval History 22.2: 171-207. Cowan, Kim (2014). Defining the Castle through TwelfthCentury Chronicles. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Hertford College, Oxford University. Creighton, Oliver (2009). Designs Upon the Land: Elite Landscapes of the Middle Ages. Woodbridge: Boydell. Creighton, Oliver, and Liddiard, Robert (2008). Fighting Yesterday’s Battle: Beyond War or Status in Castle Studies. Medieval Archaeology 52: 161-9. Cubbin, G.P. (ed.) (1996). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Volume 6, Manuscript D. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cunliffe, Barry (1994). Excavations at Portchester Castle, Volume V: Post Medieval 1609-1819. London: Society of Antiquaries. Cunliffe, Barry, and Julian Munby (1985). Excavations at Portchester Castle, Volume IV: Medieval, The Inner Bailey. London: Society of Antiquaries. Dixon, Philip (2008). The Influence of the White Tower on the Great Towers of the Twelfth Century. In Impey, Edward (ed.), The White Tower: 243-75. New Haven: Yale University Press. Dixon, Philip, and Marshall, Pamela (1992) The Great Tower at Hedingham Castle: A Reassessment. Fortress 18: 16-23. Eales, Richard (2004). William of Ypres, styled count of Flanders (d. 1164/5). In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Oxford, online edition, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/29465, accessed 4 Aug 2015. Fairclough, Graham (1992). Meaningful Constructions– Spatial and Functional Analysis of Medieval Buildings. Antiquity 66.251: 348-66. Falkner, Patrick A. (1958) ‘Domestic Planning in the 12th through the 14th Centuries. Archaeological Journal 115: 150-83. Falkner, Patrick A. (1963). Castle Planning in the 14th Century. Archaeological Journal 120: 215-35. Gardiner, Mark (2007). The Origins and Persistence of the Manor House in England. In Gardiner, Mark, and Rippon, Stephen (eds), Medieval Landscapes, Landscape History After Hoskins 2: 170-82. Macclesfield: Windgather Press. Gervase of Canterbury. The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, Stubbs, William (ed.) (1880), vol. 2. London: Longmans. Gilchrist, Roberta (1994). Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women. London: Routledge. Golding, B.J. (1989) An Introduction to the Hampshire Domesday. In Williams, A. and Erskine, R.W.H. (eds), The Hampshire Domesday: 1-27. London: Alecto Historical Editions.

Overall, spatial and access analysis demonstrates that keep spaces were ‘specifically engineered’ (Liddiard 2005: 52) for social purposes, not only military ones; they were ‘the product of a complex of the needs of ceremony and display.’ (Dixon 2008: 275) There is still much to learn about society from these buildings, and much that remains unexplored in the role that spatial planning and structuring played in the structuring of society. In utilizing spatial analysis on Anglo-Norman keeps, one can see spatial indications of social authority by means of seclusion, viewsheds and display, including a crucial notion of the gallery space as an important ceremonial or display space. Thus by applying ideas of spatial theory and analysis, these buildings demonstrate that there are still ways to think about, and learn about, castles and society in the Anglo-Norman world. Acknowledgements My thanks to Leonie Hicks, Ash Lenton, Amanda Richardson, Simon Roffey and Rachel Swallow for useful discussion and comments on this article. All remaining errors are my own. References Cited Barlow, Frank (2004). Corbeil, William de (d. 1136). In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Oxford, online edition, http:// www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/6284, accessed 10 January 2013. Brindle, Steven (2012). Dover Castle. Revised 2nd edition. London: English Heritage. Brindle, Steven, and Agnieszka Sadraei (2015). Conisbrough Castle. London: English Heritage. Brown, R. Allen (1978). Architectural Description. In Charlton, John (ed.), The Tower of London: its Buildings and Institutions. London: HMSO: 38-54. Brown, R. Allen (1986). Rochester Castle. 2nd edition. London: English Heritage. Brown, R. Allen (1985). Dover Castle. 4th edition. London: English Heritage. Clark, George T. (1884). Mediaeval Military Architecture in England, vol. II. London: Wyman and Sons. Coulson, Charles (1979). Structural Symbolism in Medieval Castle Architecture. Journal of the British Archaeological Association CXXXII: 73-90. 138

Katherine Weikert: Creating a Choreographed Space Hadley, D.M (2000). The Northern Danelaw: Its Social Structure c. 800-1100, Studies in the Early History of Britain. London: Leicester University Press. Harris, Roland B. (2008). The Structural History of the White Tower, 1066-2000. In Impey, Edward (ed.) The White Tower: 29-94. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hey, David (2003). Medieval South Yorkshire. Ashbourne: Landmark. Heritage Lottery Fund (2014). ‘Conisbrough Castle Reopens Its Doors,’ 3 June 2014, https://www.hlf. org.uk/about-us/media-centre/press-releases/ conisbrough-castle-reopens-its-doors, accessed 6 August 2015. Hicks, Leonie V. (2009). Magnificent Entrances and Undignified Exits: Chronicling the Symbolism of Castle Space in Normandy. Journal of Medieval History 35.1: 52-69. Higham, Robert (2010). Castle Studies in Transition: A Forty Year Reflection. Archaeological Journal 167: 1-13. Hillier, Bill, and Hanson, Julienne (1985). The Social Logic of Space. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holt, R. (1988). The Mills of Medieval England. Oxford: Blackwell. Horrocks, John Robert (2013) The Early Norman Castles of the North of England. Unpublished MRes dissertation, University of Central Lancashire. Hulme, Richard (2007-8). Twelfth-Century Great Towers – The Case for the Defence. Castle Studies Group Journal 21: 209-29. Impey, Edward (2008). Summary History of the Tower of London. In Impey, Edward (ed.) The White Tower: 1-28. New Haven: Yale University Press. John of Worcester. Chronicon ex Chronicis, Thrope, Benjamin (ed.) (1848-9), 2 vols. London: Sumptibus Societatis. Johnson, Matthew (2002). Behind the Castle Gate: From Medieval to Renaissance. London: Routledge. Johnson, Stephen (1984). Conisbrough Castle. London: HMSO. Lefebvre, Henri (1991). The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Lucas, Adam (2011). Wind, Water, Work: Ancient and Medieval Milling Technology. Leiden: Brill. Keefe, Thomas K. (2004). Warenne, Hamelin de, earl of Surrey (d. 1202). In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/28732, accessed 5 Aug 2015. Liddiard, Robert (2005). Castles in Context. Macclesfield: Windgather Press. Mason, Emma (2004). Mauduit, William (c. 1090-c. 1158). In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, http:// www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47251, accessed 8 November 2011.

Morris, John, ed. (1975). Domesday Book Hampshire. Stroud: Philimore and Co. Platt, Colin (2007). Revisionism in Castle Studies: A Caution. Medieval Archaeology 51: 83-102. Port, Graham (2008). Rochester Castle, 4th edition. London: English Heritage. Quiney, Anthony (1999). Hall or Chamber? That is the Question. The Use of Rooms in Post-Conquest Houses. Architectural History 42: 24-46. Renn, D.F. (1982). Canterbury Castle in the Early Middle Ages. In Bennett, Paul, Frere, S.S. and Stow, Sally (eds), Excavations at Canterbury Castle, The Archaeology of Kent 1: 70-88. Maidstone: Canterbury Archaeological Trust. Richardson, Amanda (2013a). Gender and Space in English Royal Palaces c. 1160–c. 1547: A Study in Access Analysis and Imagery. Medieval Archaeology 47: 131-65. (2013b). Corridors of Power: A Case Study in Access Analysis from Medieval England. Antiquity 77.296: 373-84. Ryder, Charles (2011). The Spiral Stair or Vice: Its Origins, Role and Meaning in Medieval Stone Castles. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Liverpool. Shapland, Michael (2008). St. Mary’s Broughton, Lincolnshire: A Thegnly Tower-Nave in the Late Anglo-Saxon Landscape. Archaeological Journal 165.1: 471-519. Shapland, Michael (2012). In Unveiled Greatness Stands: The Lordly Tower-Nave Church of St Mary Bishophill Junior, York. Church Archaeology 14: 1-14. Swallow, Rachel (2015). Cheshire Castles in Context. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chester. Venables, Edmund, and Turner, Ralph V. (2004). Lucy, Godfrey de (d. 1204). In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Oxford, http:// www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/17148, accessed 1 March 2013. Weikert, Katherine (2013). Gender and Social Visibility, Landholding and Authority in Southern England during the Central Middle Ages. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Winchester. Weikert, Katherine (2014). Place and Prestige: Enacting and Displaying Authority in English Domestic Spaces during the Central Middles Ages. In Stull, Scott (ed.) From West to East: Current Approaches in Medieval Archaeology: 96-120. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press. Whyte, William (2006). How Do Buildings Mean? Some Issues of Interpretation in the History of Architecture. History and Theory 45: 153-77.

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A Convict History: The Tale of Two Asylums Susan Piddock

Research Associate, Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, 49 Old Honeypot Rd, Port Noarlunga, 5167, South Australia email: [email protected] Abstract: Du Cunzo has argued that: ‘Every aspect of the environment that people have purposely shaped according to cultural plans comprises material culture’. Nineteenth century lunatic asylums in Australia which are the focus of this study are examples of buildings that are very much material culture in this context. In this study the buildings and their use (i.e. the rooms and spaces provided) form the material culture which can be examined to understand attitudes towards the insane, and in particular towards the convict insane of the penal colonies of Tasmania and Western Australia. Keywords: lunatic asylum, Western Australia, Tasmania

the rhetoric of care and the reality of day to day life within the asylums.

Introduction At the heart of archaeology is the belief that human thoughts and behaviour affect the material world that surrounds us. Houses are often not just places with roofs to protect us from the weather and animals, and dinner services are used not just to hold food and drink while we consume it. As material culture they express ideas about ourselves and how we appear to others in our society, of the actual circumstances of our lives and those we wish to portray to others. By considering buildings such as lunatic asylums as material culture they can speak to us and reflect a reality that may not be found in written documents. Du Cunzo has argued that: ‘Every aspect of the environment that people have purposely shaped according to cultural plans comprises material culture’ (Du Cunzo 2011: 16). Whether these plans are intentional, or unconsciously grew out of beliefs held by the individuals involved in the creation or modification of the material culture, depends on the material culture in question and the circumstances of its creation and use. Nineteenth century lunatic asylums in Australia which are the focus of this study are examples of buildings that are very much material culture in this context.

The Rise of the Lunatic Asylum The nineteenth century in England and Europe saw the rise of the institution as a means to control and modify the behaviour of individuals within society. Problematic behaviours could be corrected through the application of an appropriate regime within a specific setting. Workhouses were designed to test whether a person was genuinely in need of poor relief (harsh conditions and task work would sort the genuine from the lazy), Magdalen asylums sought to reform women by allowing ‘unhappy females who have been seduced from the paths of virtue’ to return to a ‘life of rectitude’, and the new prisons were used to punish criminals and reform them (Finer 1952: 76; Du Cunzo 1995: 17-18; Foucault 1977). These institutions sought to modify the behaviour of the inmates and release back into society people who manifested acceptable behaviour – acceptable as defined by society. Lunatic asylums were to have a similar purpose. They were to be curative places where the insane would be returned to sanity through the application of moral therapy, and by removing the individual from circumstances that might be causing or worsening their insanity (Piddock 2007: 43). Once considered sane the patient would be released back into society, or if they were deemed chronic and unlikely to be cured they were to remain within the walls of the asylum until death.

In this study the buildings and their use (i.e. the rooms and spaces provided) form the material culture which can be examined to understand attitudes towards the insane, and in particular towards the convict insane of the penal colonies of Tasmania and Western Australia. This study will ask what was life like for the inmates and did the presence of convicts among the insane affect the provisions made for them in both colonies. As will be discussed the provision of an appropriate environment was central to the cure of the insane in the nineteenth century, and the actual built environments provided in both colonies can reveal much about the gap between

The late eighteenth century in England and Europe had seen a fundamental shift in how the insane were perceived. Skultans has characterised this shift as: ‘the emergence of therapeutic optimism and faith in the possibility of cure’ (Skultans 1979: 56). No longer were the insane considered unreasoning animals, they could 141

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era be reasoned with by the treating doctor who would guide them back to sanity (for a history of this shift see Porter 1987). This new moral treatment focused on using the finer feelings of the afflicted to bring them back to sanity, by focusing on the will and powers of self-restraint (Skultans 1979: 58) . The keys to moral treatment as practised by Philippe Pinel, one of the leaders of the new re-envisaging of the insane and their treatment, were: the kind treatment of patients; the removal of all things that may irritate the patient from their surroundings; the classification of patients based on their illness and stage of recovery; and treatment specifically suited to the patient. Patients should be provided with some kind of work to occupy their mind during their convalescence and allowed freedoms such as walking in the gardens. They should never be unnecessarily restrained or struck, and a reasonable diet should be provided (Pinel 1806: 176, 204). The treating doctor had a pivotal role as he used all of the means at his disposal, including reasoning and talking to the patient, to bring them back to sanity by addressing the particular ideas of the individual Pinel 1806: 221-224). In practice a cure was brought about through therapeutic discussion combined with a system of rewards and punishments, a regime of daily activities, classification and the provision of an appropriate environment (see Samuel Tuke 1813: 131138). The lunatic asylum or private madhouse was to provide this environment.

including doctors treating the insane, to publish books and articles describing what asylums should be if they were to provide a curative environment and/or reasonable living environment (Piddock 2007: 49-76; 2016). However it was to be revelations of the abuse of the insane in England that was to lend impetus to the building of new lunatic asylums. This also provided the opportunity for ideas about the built environment of the asylum to be put into practice. Social changes, including an increasing focus on humanism, saw the rise of an interest in social reform in English society. Philanthropic groups were established with a wide range of interests, and it was members of these groups who began the task of inspecting existing madhouses and charity hospitals where the insane were kept. They found widespread abuse of the insane including extensive physical restraint and primitive living conditions (Harrison 1966: 356-7, 359; Jones 199: 34; Porter 1987: 16). It was these revelations of existing abuse that led to the establishment of the 1807 Select Committee of the House of Commons which was charged with considering the State of Criminal and Pauper Lunatics in England and Wales. In response to their report the English Parliament passed the County Asylums Act (48 Geo. III, c. 96) in 1808. This Act recommended the voluntary building of new lunatic asylums for the pauper insane (Jones 1993: 36-37; Parry-Jones 1972: 14). Further revelations of the continuing abuse of the insane before subsequent Select Committees, and the failure of the voluntary building program saw the passing of the Lunatic Act of 1845 (8 and 9 Vict., c. 100 and c. 126) which made the building of lunatic asylums in the various English counties compulsory. Within twelve years there were 33 county asylums and four borough asylums in existence with a further four planned (Article 5 1844: 430-2: Eleventh Report of the Commissioners 1857: 14).

Accompanying the development of moral treatment was a second movement that focused on the removal of restraints in the management of the insane. Like moral treatment, the non-restraint movement focused on the nature of the insane, believing they were capable of responding to the provision of clean wards and beds, good food, and proper clothing by exhibiting control of their behaviour. Occupations such as exercise outside, the provision of distracting amusements and religious consolation, and some form of work such as housework, gardening and sewing, could also be provided to break the monotony of daily life in an asylum (Connolly 1856: 57-60). Patients were to be classified based on the type of insanity they were suffering from and treated with kindness which would lead to calm and ordered wards (Connolly 1856: 55). Inappropriate behaviour would be treated with seclusion in a bedroom or padded room rather than the use of physical restraints. Recovering patients would be allowed to demonstrate their return to sanity by behaving appropriately. This would see their transfer from the chaos of the refractory ward to the quieter convalescent or chronic wards. Failure to behave appropriately would see a return to the refractory ward (Digby 1985: 67-69, 74).

It is against this background of the building new county asylums for the pauper insane and the vision of a curative asylum (where moral treatment and nonrestraint could be practiced) that the construction of lunatic asylums for the convict and colonial insane of Western Australia and Tasmania can be seen. A Hospital for the Convict Insane Van Diemen’s Land, an island off the southern coast of Australia, was occupied to forestall French interest in the area and was from the beginning a penal settlement. On January 4th 1803 David Collins was commissioned the first Lt. Governor of a colony to consist of convicts, marines (to guard the convicts) and free settlers (Townsley 1991: 3). The Town of Hobart was established on the southern coast of the island on Sullivan Cove in 1804 and was to become the Island’s capital. Social

These movements focussed new attention on the lunatic asylum and its design. This in turn led authors, 142

Susan Piddock: A Convict History: The Tale of Two Asylums turbulence in England after the French Wars and the rise of industrialisation saw an influx of tradesmen, small merchants, and yeoman farmers taking up land in the new colony leading to a rapidly increasing population, growing from four thousand, three hundred in 1820 to seven thousand, one hundred and eightyfive in 1821. Initially the number of convicts sent to the island was small, only five hundred were sent out between 1810 and 1817, but by 1821 this had increased to four thousand three hundred and eighty convicts (Townsley 1991: 7). By 1853 when transportation ended some seventy-five thousand male and female convicts had served time in the colony (see http://www.utas. edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/C/ Convicts.htm). In 1856 Van Diemen’s Land was given its own constitution and changed its name to Tasmania.

Figure 1. The dividing invalid building between the two quadrangles, New Norfolk Hospital for the Insane. Photograph by S. Piddock

The new Convict Invalid Establishment in New Norfolk was opened sometime in late 1830 or early 1831. The town of New Norfolk was located on the River Derwent twenty-two miles from Hobart. The original plan for the Establishment included accommodation for sixty invalid convicts, space for ten lunatics, and accommodation for the Medical Superintendent and occasional patients (Colonial Secretary’s Letters, Tasmania, 17th Dec 1828: 21-3, Feb 4th 1829: 37). At some point this plan was modified and the building when completed lacked a dedicated lunatic ward. In June 1831 Governor Arthur asked Dr Robert Officer, the District Surgeon in charge of the Convict Invalid Establishment, to prepare a plan for a new building to house lunatics. Arthur also appointed a board of three military officers, J. Logan, J. Briggs and J. Russell to consider the best means of providing medical assistance to insane persons or sick paupers. The Board recommended that the building should be: ‘sufficiently large and well-enclosed’ to allow ‘restraint and moral discipline’ to be practiced, allowing for ‘their comfort and security’ or the ‘prospect of their being ultimately cured.’ (Colonial Secretary’s Letters, Tasmania, 21st Nov 1831: 137-8).

Figure 2. The right hand corner of the invalid hospital with the store in the centre flanked by wards rooms. Photograph by S. Piddock

From the notations on Roger Kelsall’s ground plan and elevations of the lunatic asylum and invalid hospital at New Norfolk, Tasmania drawn in 1836 it can be seen that the lower left arm of the front quadrangle (southern side) housed a dead room (Morgue), a room for washing, and two wards with a store in the top left corner of the dividing building. The section dividing the hospital from the lunatic asylum (western side) consisted of two wards, a kitchen, and then two more wards. Interestingly the only access point between the two parts of the complex was through the kitchen. In the right corner was another store (Figure 2) then in the right arm (northern side) were three wards and a room for the keeper. The keeper was an attendant directly working with the inmates. The lunatic asylum building on the left side (southern side) used by the women was composed of two unidentified rooms, then six pairs of cells, and then a ward. The rear left handed corner housed a store, while the rear building line was occupied by a washhouse and kitchen. Then came the

The New Norfolk Invalid Hospital and Lunatic Asylum opened in 1832 and was funded by the English government as it was primarily intended to house convict lunatics. One of the few surviving plans of the whole Hospital complex dating to 1836 by Roger Kelsall, who was a Royal Engineer and Clerk of Works in charge of the Ordnance Department in Van Diemen’s Land, shows it to be composed of two quadrangles with the invalids occupying the lower one and the lunatics the upper one. The buildings formed an H shape with a building between the top arms of the H enclosing the yards for male and female lunatics (separated by a dividing wall). The invalids building formed the East wall of the rear quadrangle (Figure 1) while the lower section of the H shape was left open. 143

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era Superintendent’s living rooms (three on the ground floor) and on the adjoining right male side (northern side) was a kitchen and a store in the back right corner. The Superintendent was in charge of the Asylum and its daily management, including the medical care of the lunatics. Like the female side the right side of the courtyard was given over to a ward then seven paired cells and finally a second ward.

Within months of taking over the Hospital the Commissioners ordered repairs to the value of £1, 209 8s (or £70, 786 18s in modern values). Their first task was the replacement of the cells, in particular the wooden ones which were infested with vermin, and the construction of verandas to provide shade and living space. The second priority was the construction of separate accommodation for those of a superior rank both male and female Quoted in Gowlland 1981: 50-1). A consideration of the Roger Kelsall’s plan against a plan dated to 1863 held by the National Records Office, Kew (Plan of a Lunatic Asylum showing named rooms. MR1/1760) shows some significant changes had been made to the Hospital. A lodge had been added at the front gate (1861), the cottage for men of a ‘superior rank’ had been built adjacent to the back courtyard (1858-9), and the women were now housed in two new buildings. It is not clear whether the women were moved out of the main buildings before the transfer of control of the Hospital but the large number of patients in 1836 may have prompted building work to accommodate the women by the Imperial Government. The refractory ward was certainly in existence in 1860 when it was modified, and some additions for the women were in plan form in 1859 (Townsley 1991: 98-100; New Norfolk Hospital Correspondence Book 14/9/1858, 2/2/1859, 1/2/1859). By 1861 the washhouse had moved from the main building to outside the rear courtyard where it was accessible from the women’s buildings, and a new day room and kitchen had been built for the female division along with a cottage for the Matron, situated between the women’s buildings. The old washhouse and women’s kitchen had now been given over to wards.

While there were only twenty lunatics listed in 1833 by the next year the number had risen to one hundred and thirty-six and to three hundred (including three children) in early 1836 (Gowlland 1981: 24, 25, 26). This rise was likely due to there finally being a place to care for the insane and the individuals most likely came from throughout the island and possibly, as was to occur in Western Australia, a less than rigorous selection of convicts saw more mentally ill coming to the colony. Dr Officer in a letter to the Colonial Surgeon dated 27th June 1836 indicated the need for additional buildings, particularly as it was impossible to achieve any classification among the lunatics based on their malady or constitution of mind: ‘under such circumstances, the chance of recovery is greatly lessened and their domestic comforts (a most necessary part in their treatment), sadly diminished’ (Colonial Secretary’s Letters, Tasmania 1/811/17340). Kelsall’s plan demonstrates the intention to add further wards to the male and female sides, and additional staff rooms but they were never built. With Transportation coming to an end the New Norfolk Hospital administration was given over to the Tasmania government on October 18th 1855 with a Board of Commissioners given charge of the New Norfolk Hospital. By this time the whole building complex had been given over entirely to the accommodation of lunatics. The Commissioners were to find much wrong with the hospital:

In the main building the ‘idiot’ boys were being accommodated in the old superintendent’s rooms in 1862 (this nineteenth century term covered those intellectually challenged and those having epilepsy). The superintendent was now living in rented accommodation across from the Hospital. Report of the Joint Committee on the Accommodation of the Hospital for the Insane 1859, p. 3). While the kitchen on the men’s side was described as being a kitchen purely for use of the ‘idiot’ boys. This would suggest that it offered limited cooking facilities. The paired cells and two wards of the right (northern) arm of the rear building had been replaced with a series of rooms opening onto a 12ft. wide corridor (Annual Report of the Commissioners for 1860). Like the male buildings the buildings for the women consisted of wards and cells with little practical living space. The ground floor of one of the women’s buildings (nearest the washhouse) had nine wards of various sizes and what was probably given their size eight cells. The first floor was probably given over to wards. Passage through the building required a long walk through various wards and part corridors until the veranda was built (202ft. long and 10ft. wide). There was no bathhouse and even

its condition is very far behind that of similar institutions in the Mother Country. The internal accommodation of the several buildings were small, badly constructed, ill ventilated, dark dismal, while the day rooms, so called, afforded very inadequate convenience for the purpose intended. The yards and grounds were subdivided by high walls and the spaces allotted for exercise and outdoor recreations were of the most limited character. (Quoted in Gowlland 1981: 50) The New Norfolk Commissioners over the next few decades were to request a range of physical changes to the fabric of the Hospital to try and improve conditions at the Hospital. They also requested completely new buildings. Some changes occurred and other requests fell on deaf ears (see Piddock 2003 Appendix D for a full history). 144

Susan Piddock: A Convict History: The Tale of Two Asylums as late as 1883 the toilets took the form of wooden tubs for the women (Annual Report of the Commissioners 1861; Royal Commission on the State of the Lunatic Asylums in Tasmania 1883: Q. 51-2).

until the day room was added. The yards were similarly lacking. The women were employed in doing the Hospital’s laundry and in sewing on the wards. Life in the Hospital was made worse by the lack of running hot and cold water, by a lack of bathing facilities and water closets (toilets) (Annual Report of the Commissioners for the Hospital 1863). Existing water closets were in the yards and the women were still using wooden tubs as toilets as late as 1882 (Royal Commission 1883: Q. 238, 251). This had to profoundly affect hygiene within the Hospital and the transmission of disease.

The women’s refractory ward was a separate building and consisted of twelve cells opening onto a corridor less than seven feet wide, a day room (added in 1862) and two nurse’s rooms Hospital for the Insane, New Norfolk. 6/8/1859 point 8). Attached to the buildings were a series of small yards, including four individual yards for four of the cells in the refractory building. In 1865 the old male kitchen was transformed into a bathroom for men. However the women were not provided with a bathhouse until 1871 when one was built by the male patients (Annual Report of the Commissioners for the Hospital 1871).The cottage for ladies of a ‘superior rank’ to match the gentlemen’s cottage was finally completed in 1869. Further additions included a new dormitory in the refractory women’s building (1879-80) and an extension of the gentlemen’s cottage (1881). The New Norfolk Hospital for the Insane was to remain little changed in any significant way until the twentieth century. However, there was to be lengthy considerations of the idea of beginning again with a new asylum near Hobart or the rebuilding of New Norfolk as to meet modern standards see Piddock 2003: Appendix D).

The New Norfolk Commissioners after they were given charge of the hospital did try and make daily life within its walls better. They arranged to have dance and music nights, walks beyond the walls and picnics. Divine service was held regularly and visiting entertainments by outside groups were allowed. The men were given access to drafts and dominoes, cricket and lawn tennis (Annual Report of the Commissioners 1883) From the available documentation it is clear that the doctors at New Norfolk were practicing moral treatment as far as they were able. However there was little opportunity to classify the patients as the design of the buildings allowed little separation of the classes beyond ordinary and refractory. Classification had been seen as an essential part of a curative regime and the Royal Commission on the State of the Lunatic Asylums in Tasmania in 1883 believed that this lack of classification was directly effecting the speed at which cures were achieved, but as Dr Coutie, the Assistant Medical Officer indicated, the buildings offered little opportunity to do things differently (Royal Commission 1883: Q934). Wards could not be closed off from each other, and there was not enough living spaces to separate groups of inmates. The history of the New Norfolk Hospital for the Insane was of a building ill-suited to its role as a curative asylum with piecemeal additions over time. Was the provisions made for the insane in Western Australia any better?

Life in the Hospital Life within the buildings that made up the hospital was unfailingly bleak. The days were spent within the very limited living spaces; the men’s lives were limited to the ward, the veranda and the small yards. There were no day rooms provided where games or reading maybe undertaken and it is unclear where the men ate. They may have eaten where they slept. It is possible that a ward was used as a day room at times. Certainly there were issues with overcrowding and any space was usually given over to sleeping spaces. The only change of scenery for the men was when they were employed in working around the Hospital, whether in building work, blacksmithing, painting or gardening (Annual Report of the Commissioners 1859).

Western Australia and the Convict Insane: The Fremantle Asylum Tasmania was established as a penal colony from its beginnings, Western Australia was not. While originally intended to be a penal settlement, it began life as a British Crown Colony in 1830 four years after the initial landing of colonists on the Swan River. The colony was similarly established to secure the west coast of Australia against possible incursion by the French who were also exploring the southern land. A small population - 4, 350 in 1844

The women’s lives were similarly limited. While the women’s building had a day room, the space where they could go outside was very limited being small yards with store-rooms taking up much of the space. The women had a fraction of the external living space of the men. In England women were employed as laundresses and in sewing so were seen as requiring less space (Conolly 1847: 78-9). The design of the women’s building resulted in no interior corridor, rather wards opened onto four narrow passages each containing a staircase to the upper floor. The refractory women’s building had a narrow corridor which was the only living space

(Battye 1924: 17), and the lack of labour to build the necessary infrastructure and develop the land for agriculture led the colonists to make a decision. They 145

Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era would become a penal settlement with the convicts providing the necessary labour to develop the colony. While the accompanying financial grants from the British Government for the care of the convicts and to support free emigration would boost the economy (see Battye 1924: 202-206 for details). In 1849 Western Australia was declared a penal settlement and went on to receive its first seventy five convicts in 1850. By May 1851 one thousand four hundred and sixty-nine male convicts had been sent out (Battye 1924: 213).

needed: ‘some isolated building where the approved appliances both of science and humanity in regard to mental diseases be put into operation’ (Ellis 1984: 16). In 1856 Captain Henderson, Comptroller-General of the Convict Establishment and a Royal Engineer who was visiting England, was asked to plead the case for a proper asylum with the English Colonial Office. With approval given to build a new lunatic asylum at Fremantle, an ocean port on the mouth of the Swan River, Captain Henderson was directed by Sir Henry Labouchère, the new Secretary of State for the Colonies, to collect information on lunatic asylums while in England and to draw up plans for the asylum (Ellis 1984: 16-17). While the new asylum plan was accepted there were to be further delays in its actual construction. Priority was given to completing the Convict Establishment and no provision was made in the Public Works Estimates for 1859-60 for the construction of the new asylum. Work finally began in 1861 and in July 1865 twenty-eight insane men and seventeen insane women moved into the new Fremantle Lunatic Asylum. The Fremantle Lunatic Asylum remained an Imperial institution until 1886 when the management of all penal institutions was transferred to the Western Australia government. The costs of keeping the remaining convict insane were subsequently paid by the English Parliament to the Western Australian government until the convict’s death.

In 1858 there were five thousand three hundred and forty-one male convicts in the colony while the male free colonists numbered two thousand five hundred (Further Correspondence on the Subject of Convict Discipline and Transportation 1860: 14). While the colonists had requested that only able bodied convicts be sent out, a less than rigorous selection process saw men who were invalids or who had been in lunatic asylums in England arriving in Western Australia (Penal Servitude Acts Commission 1863: 68, 334) Others became insane during the voyage, while circumstances such as the heat of summer and drinking could also bring on insanity in those so predisposed noted the Surgeon Superintendent, Dr George Attfield (Further Correspondence 1860: 48). The harsh realities of life in a colony far removed from England could lead to insanity in both free men and women, and in ticketof-leave men (convicts who earned their freedom through hard work and good behaviour). However the Governor believed that insanity was more prevalent among convicts. A view supported by Dr Attfield who believed latent insanity led to criminal behaviour (Ellis 1984: 16; Correspondence on the Subject of Convict Discipline and Transportation to the Australia Colonies 1854-1856: 481; Further Correspondence 1860: 29, 52, 97). These insane convicts and the colonial insane had to be cared for.

The lunatic asylum, when it opened, consisted of one large building with wards on the ground and first floor, and male and female dining rooms on the ground floor. The asylum was divided into male and female sides with the division created by twin staircases in the middle of the building (located behind the chimney like pilaster on the extreme left of Figure 3). It is possible that there were walls blocking access between the male and female sections at one point which required the provision of two staircases next to each other. The larger rooms were located at each end of the building with the space between these rooms given over to smaller wards or possibly single rooms. All these rooms were in the front of the building and opened on to a single rear corridor on both floors.

With the arrival of the convicts work had focussed on building a permanent Convict Establishment (a prison). The convicts meanwhile were accommodated temporarily at Captain Scott’s premises, and a temporary asylum operated here. However only those colonial insane men who could be subjected to the same harsh routine as insane convicts could be held here, the rest were kept in the Perth lockup (Ellis 1984: 11). Colonial women who were insane were meanwhile being kept in the basement of the hospital (Ellis 1984: 11)

Across from the rooms on the ground floor on the male side were two buildings that formed extensions off the main building. The first housed eight cells and the second extension provided two rooms possibly for staff (Figure 4). The cells were enclosed by their own exercise court, while the male exercise yard extended out behind these buildings.

The Governor Charles Fitzgerald (who was in charge of the colony from 1848 to 1855) wrote to George Grey, the then Secretary of State for the colonies asking for funding to build an invalid depot for the convicts which would include a separate enclosure for lunatics, but it became clear that a separate lunatic asylum was

On the female side similar extensions housed a possible staff room and a padded cell in one building. The next attached building had a possible staff room and two further cells with an adjoining large female ward 146

Susan Piddock: A Convict History: The Tale of Two Asylums The building remained relatively unchanged over the decades, and in 1884, two years before its transfer to the colonial government, the asylum was listed as having: eight dormitories, a dining room, eight cells, two offices on the male side and two dormitories, a large day room, a dining room, two cells, three rooms for the Matron (usually a sitting room and bedrooms), washhouses, stores in the female section. To the rear of the main building were a yard containing: cookhouse, with coppers, &c., washhouse, shower baths, dead house, and c.; Quarters for officer in charge which adjoined the main building which included four rooms, and a kitchen (Correspondence respecting the transfer to the colony of the Imperial Convict Establishment 1884: 6).

Figure 3. Fremantle Lunatic Asylum showing the original building (left and centre of image) and the 1896 extension (right side of image). Photograph by S. Piddock

The limited female accommodation reflected the lower numbers of female lunatics; in 1883 there were 36 women compared to seventy-two male lunatics – thirty-two convicts and forty colonial men (Report of the Select Committee of the Legislative Council appointed to inquire into the proposed Transfer of the Lunatic Asylum at Fremantle from Imperial to the Colonial Government). The women remained in this limited accommodation until 1896 when a new female section with wards of various sizes, a large dining room and a set of rooms for the matron was opened. This formed an L-shape extension to the asylum (Figure 5). The only other addition was a male ward over the cells in the male section which had been built in 1887 (Report upon the Lunatic Asylum at Fremantle for the year 1887 by the Surgeon Superintendent). The absence of plans showing the original layout and subsequent additions to the asylum make it difficult to determine exact room use, and passing references in nineteenth century documentary evidence is the only guide to the rooms provided and their use over time.

Figure 4. View of Fremantle Asylum showing the second extension to the rear of main building and the latter addition of the male dormitory over the men’s cells. The two doors on the left were the access points to the original male and female yards. Photograph by S. Piddock

completing the ground floor. Above the women’s cells and the large ward and dormitory was another ward on the first floor reflecting different provisions for men and women, as the matching first floor ward over the male refractory cells was not built until 1887. Both male and female sides had matching provisions on the first floor – two smaller rooms and one large room in the front of the building. Behind the female section on the ground floor was the bathhouse and kitchen. Somewhere in the building was a women’s day room in addition to the dining room; however it is not clear which room this would be. It seems likely that it would have been on the ground floor.

Figure 5. Fremantle Lunatic Asylum showing the 1896 extensions with a part of a ward extending the main façade on the left, the female dining room with double hipped roof (centre) and the Matron’s rooms on the right.

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Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era Life in the Asylum

women patients so daily life was very restricted for both sexes (Annual Report upon the Lunatic Asylum 1890).

Life was bleak within the walls of the Fremantle Asylum. While Captain Henderson had been told to look at English asylums before designing Fremantle, there is no evidence that he adopted any aspect of the English lunatic asylums (see Piddock 2007: 77-93 for a discussion of English asylum design) English asylums favoured long corridors of sleeping rooms staggered or set at right angles to each other. They had wide corridors, sometimes day rooms as well, plus rooms for the attendants, bathrooms, and water closets often on each ward or at the intersection of two wards. They all offered some sort of classification. Fremantle had one building featuring rooms of varying size that opened onto a single corridor and the building was not symmetrical beyond the façade. Space was further restricted by the placement of small buildings attached to the corridor. The restricted space meant classification was impossible.

A Convict Legacy Both the New Norfolk Hospital for the Insane and the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum began life as convict institutions and this is reflected in their similar built provisions and their layouts. They were built to be like prisons because they were to house convicts- men and women in the case of Tasmania and men in Western Australia. Dr Barnett, who worked with the patients at Fremantle from 1872 until his death in 1897, believed the fundamental problem with his asylum lay in the fact it had been built as a branch of the Imperial Prison: Built, fitted, and furnished as part of a Prison, with everything planned in the barest, inexpensive, cheerless, and workhouse-like style. (Annual Report upon the Lunatic Asylum 1890)

Dr Barnett, the Colonial Surgeon for Fremantle who was given charge of the Lunatic Asylum in 1872 was unable to separate the curable from the incurable. Those suffering temporary insanity he indicated in his report needed quite, rest, and appropriate treatment, instead they lived and dined with: ‘incurable congenital idiots and noisy maniacs’ (Annual Report upon the Lunatic Asylum 1886). In his annual reports to the Western Australian government he repeatedly drew attention to the problems of classifying patients. The possibility of providing some form of work or amusements to break the days up was hindered by the lack of space to classify the patients. The violent patients destroyed the musical instruments bought for the patients. While the use of tools to pursue any activities such as mat making and gardening also represented a danger to staff and the other patients. There was little to pass the time, in later years the grounds were used for cricket, a skittle alley and Eton Fives court, and books, periodicals, newspapers, cards and dominos were introduced (Annual Report upon the Lunatic Asylum 1892). The planned addition of a large dining room offered space for entertainments and Dr Barnett wished for a larger grant so he could provide entertainments and to go beyond providing cards and books for the patients (Annual Report upon the Lunatic Asylum 1890). Even the airing court lacked possibilities to occupy the mind as they were not ‘picturesque’ suggesting they were not laid out as gardens or had trees to offer shade (Annual Report upon the Lunatic Asylum 1898).

While in Tasmania in response to criticism of conditions at the New Norfolk Hospital the President of the Commissioners, E. S. P. Bedford, noted that: A place of confinement for Lunatics, including many of a dangerous character, must from the necessity of security, ever partake to some extent of the nature of a prison-house. (Hospital for the Insane, New Norfolk Return to an order of the Council. No. 10, 1859) Both places in fact shared a history of being used for a different type of patient than those they were originally intended to house. They became homes to the colonial patient who was far different from the convict patient in the eyes of colonial society. At New Norfolk a Gentlemen’s and Ladies Cottages had been built in response to the need to provide better living conditions for the educated who expected a different standard of living and had friends and relatives who could pay for them. But there was also concern that those unable to pay but who were free of ‘moral taint’ were being mixed with the convicts, or as the New Norfolk Commissioners expressed it women of ‘virtuous’ character were being mixed with those of ‘notorious careers’ (Hospital for the Insane, New Norfolk Return to an order of the Council No. 10, 1859; Annual Report of the Commissioners for the Hospital for the Insane at New Norfolk for 1863). There was no way of separating the patients along lines which reflected neither their social class nor mental condition.

Dr Barnett, who spent twenty-five years in charge of the Fremantle Asylum, found things were very different in England where he found cheerful rooms with flowers and birds to provide visual relief. In contrast the dining rooms and day rooms which provided living spaces at Fremantle were also used as sleeping places for the

At the much smaller Fremantle Asylum any classification was difficult and in 1882 Dr Barnett argued that the provision of a ‘suite of rooms’ (possibly like at New Norfolk as a cottage) for patients whose friends 148

Susan Piddock: A Convict History: The Tale of Two Asylums would pay for ‘maintenance and medical supervision’ would offset the costs of the proposed additions for public patients that was need urgently (Report upon the Lunatic Asylum at Fremantle for the year 1884). The only alternative for these paying patients was for them to be sent to other colonies and England for treatment as they could not be admitted to Fremantle (Report upon the Lunatic Asylum at Fremantle for the year 1885). That no other provisions were made in neither Tasmania nor Western Australia, for those not considered convicts or of convict origins, reflects the ongoing division in both colonies over the costs of building a new asylum or taking the cheaper route of using existing buildings and re-arranging them.

Conolly, J. (1856). Treatment of the Insane Without Mechanical Restraints. Folkstone: Dawsons of Pall Mall. Crowley, F. K. (1966). FitzGerald, Charles (1791–1887). Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, accessed on July 13th 2016 at http://adb.anu.edu.au/ biography/fitzgerald-charles-2047/text2535 De Cunzo, L. (1995). Reform, Respite, Ritual: An Archaeology of Institutions; the Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, 1800-1850. Historical Archaeology 29 (3): 1-168 De Cunzo, L. (2011). Comments on ‘Historical Archaeology Adrift/ A Forum. Historical Archaeology, 35 (2): 14-19. Digby, A. (1985). Madness, Morality and Medicine. A Study of the York Retreat 1796-1914 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ellis, A. S. (1984). Eloquent Testimony. University of Western Australia Press, Western Australia. Finer S. E., (1952). The Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick. London: Methuen. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin Books. Fremantle Art Centre History. Accessed 20/09 2015 at http://fac.org.au/history Gowlland, R. W. (1981). Troubled Asylum. The Society for the Study of Intellectual Disability, Tasmania. Great Britain Parliament (1857). Eleventh Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy to the Lord Chancellor. British Parliamentary Papers. Shannon: Irish University Press. Great Britain Parliament (1860). Further Correspondence on the Subject of Convict Discipline and Transportation (In continuation of Papers presented 1859). British Parliamentary Papers. Shannon: Irish University Press. Great Britain Parliament (c. 1968). Penal Servitude Acts Commission, 1863. British Parliamentary Papers Vol. 5. G.E. Eyre and W. Spottiswoode, for London: H.M.S.O. Great Britain Parliament (1968-1971). Correspondence on the Subject of Convict Discipline and Transportation to the Australia Colonies 18541856. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty. British Parliamentary Papers. Shannon: Irish University Press. Ground plan and elevations of the lunatic asylum and invalid hospital at New Norfolk, Tasmania, showing proposed additions. (1836). Item MPH1/92 extracted from W44/188 Folio 104. Held by the National Archives, Kew, England. Harrison, B. (1966). Philanthropy and the Victorians. Victorian Studies 9(4): 353-74. Jones, K. (1993). Asylums and After. London: The Athlone Press. Legislative Council of Tasmania (1859). Report of the Joint Committee on the Accommodation of the

In both places there was an expectation that the death of the convicts would solve the existing problems. Dr Barnett believed that with the deaths of the convicts the Fremantle Asylum would become a colonial institution. Then with appropriate funding he could re-arrange the asylum, bringing it up to the standard of conditions found in the ordinary county asylums in England whose inmates had ‘comforts undreamed of by their fellow-sufferers here’ (Report upon the Lunatic Asylum at Fremantle for the year 1890). The lack of improvements he believed was a continuous injustice to the insane of the colony. In the end neither asylum was to fundamentally change in the nineteenth century. By looking at the material culture of the two institutions for the insane, in the rooms and spaces provided, it has been possible to highlight the bleakness of life at these places and to the reveal the inheritance of a convict past. While both Drs Attfield and Barnett wished to practice a moral treatment, the buildings they were given to work with failed to even provide a reasonable living environment. References Cited Article 5 (1844). ‘Report of the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy to the Lord Chancellor’. Quarterly Review, Vol. LXXIV, No. CXLVIII, pp.416-447 Battye, J, S. (1924). Western Australia. A History from its Discovery to the Inauguration of the Commonwealth. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, University of Tasmania (2006). Companion to Tasmanian History, Convicts. Accessed 31/08/2015 at http://www. utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_ history/C/Convicts.htm Colonial Secretary’s Letters 1/83/1838. Held by the State Archives of Tasmania, Hobart. Conolly, J. (1847). The Construction and Government of Lunatic Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane. London: Dawsons of Pall Mall.

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Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era Hospital for the Insane. Parliamentary Papers of the Legislative Council No. 91 Hobart. Legislative Council of Tasmania (1860). Annual Report of the Commissioners for the Hospital for the Insane at New Norfolk for 1859. Parliamentary Papers of the Legislative Council. Hobart. Legislative Council of Tasmania (1861). Annual Report of the Commissioners for the Hospital for the Insane at New Norfolk for 1860. Parliamentary Papers of the Legislative Council. Hobart. Legislative Council of Tasmania (1862). Annual Report of the Commissioners for the Hospital for the Insane at New Norfolk for 1861. Parliamentary Papers of the Legislative Council. Hobart. Legislative Council of Tasmania (1864). Annual Report of the Commissioners for the Hospital for the Insane at New Norfolk for 1863. Parliamentary Papers of the Legislative Council. Hobart. Legislative Council of Tasmania (1872). Annual Report of the Commissioners for the Hospital for the Insane at New Norfolk for 1871. Parliamentary Papers of the Legislative Council. Hobart. Legislative Council of Tasmania (1884). Annual Report of the Commissioners for the Hospital for the Insane at New Norfolk for 1882. Parliamentary Papers of the Legislative Council. Hobart. National Archives of England Currency Converter. Accessed July 11th 2016 at: http://www. nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency/results.asp#mid New Norfolk Hospital Correspondence Book, HSD 45/1. Held by the State Archives of Tasmania No Author (1967). Kelsall, Roger (1792–1861). Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Accessed 13 July 2016 at http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/kelsallroger-2292/text2957 Parry-Jones, W. L. (1972). The Trade in Lunacy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Piddock, S. (2003). A Space of Their Own: Nineteenth Century Lunatic Asylums in England, South Australia and Tasmania’, upublished doctoral disseration, Flinders University of South Australia Piddock, S. (2007). A Space of Their Own. The Archaeology of Nineteenth Century Lunatic Asylums in Britain, South Australia and Tasmania. New York: Springer. Piddock, S. (2016). A Place for Convicts: The Fremantle Lunatic Asylum, Western Australia and John Conolly’s ‘Ideal’ Asylum’. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 20(4) Sept. (in press) Pinel, P. H. (1806) A Treatise on Insanity. London: Messers, Cadell and Davies (English version translated by D. Davis, M.D.) Plan of a Lunatic Asylum showing named rooms. Item MR1/1760 Held by the National Archives, Kew, England. Porter, R.(1981-2). Was there a moral therapy in the eighteenth century? Lychos: 12-26 Porter, R. (1987) Mind Forg’d Manacles. London: The Athlone Press.

Skultans, V. (1979). English Madness. Ideas on Insanity 1580-1880. London: Routledge and K. Paul. Tasmanian Parliament. (1859). Hospital for the Insane, New Norfolk. Return to an Order of the Council. Parliamentary Papers of the Legislative Council, No. 10, Hobart. Tasmanian Parliament. (1883). Royal Commission on the State of the Lunatic Asylums in Tasmania. Report of the Commissioners. Parliamentary Papers of Legislative Council. Hobart. Townsley, W. A. (1991). Tasmania From Colony to Statehood 1830-1945. St. David’s Park Publishing. Hobart. Tuke, S. (1813). Description of The Retreat. London: Isaac Pierce. Western Australian Parliament (1883). Report of the Select Committee of the Legislative Council appointed to inquire into the proposed Transfer of the Lunatic Asylum at Fremantle from Imperial to the Colonial Government. Parliamentary Papers of Western Australia, A13. Perth. Western Australian Parliament (1884). Correspondence respecting the transfer to the colony of the Imperial Convict Establishment. Parliamentary Papers of Western Australian Parliament, No. 22. Perth. Western Australian Parliament (1885). Report upon the Lunatic Asylum at Fremantle for the year 1884 by the Surgeon Superintendent. Parliamentary Papers of Western Australia. Perth. Western Australian Parliament (1886). Report upon the Lunatic Asylum at Fremantle for the year 1885 by the Surgeon Superintendent. Parliamentary Papers of Western Australia. Perth. Western Australian Parliament (1887). Report upon the Lunatic Asylum at Fremantle for the year 1886 by the Surgeon Superintendent. Parliamentary Papers of Western Australia, No. 16. Perth. Western Australian Parliament (1888). Report upon the Lunatic Asylum at Fremantle for the year 1887 by the Surgeon Superintendent. Parliamentary Papers of the Western Australia, No. 15. Perth. Western Australian Parliament (1890). Report upon the Lunatic Asylum at Fremantle for the year 1889 by the Surgeon Superintendent. Parliamentary Papers of the Western Australia No. 8. Perth. Western Australian Parliament (1891). Report upon the Lunatic Asylum at Fremantle for the year 1890 by the Surgeon Superintendent. Parliamentary Papers of the Western Australia, No. 35. Perth. Western Australian Parliament (1893). Report upon the Lunatic Asylum at Fremantle for the year 1892 by the Surgeon Superintendent. Parliamentary Papers of the Western Australia, No. 10. Perth. Western Australian Parliament (1898). Report upon the Lunatic Asylum at Fremantle for the year 1897 by the Superintending Medical Officer. Parliamentary Papers of the Western Australia, No. 8. Perth.

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