Churches built during the medieval period are a fortified facade
Walls and a roof with not much inside. They were built by gangs of masons and assorted craftsmen and labourers who travelled the country in an organised manor. Excuse the deliberate play on words because they also built fortified manor houses and cottages for the local lord and his yeomen and villeins.
Local lords who were at the time soldier bandits.
They needed a fortified house, church and village as quickly as possible.
Medieval, post conquest Britain was built to order. Like Wimpy castles, manor houses, cottages and churches. Any early mason secrets were as much secret about what was happening as trade secrets. There must have been organising bodies and systems and people. These bodies, systems and people will be in the background of events as history concentrates on Kings and Queens etc that you learned about at school.
Of course we concentrate on the History of Kings and queens - and still do. It stops us plebs figuring out what's really going on!
The main aim was to build a strongly fortified or semi-fortified external structure as quickly as possible and in as many places as possible. The internal structure came after the walls were built.
Churches had wooded pews, screens and other trappings made to a pattern by skilled carpenters the manor houses needed a wooden internal structure and furniture built quickly to a set pattern as much as possible.
Then came Thomas Cromwell and the dissolution of the monasteries and the land grab, corruption and money grubbing that came with it.
It took a while and it wasn't until Liz was queen that things really got going. During the period between Cromwell and Liz, masons became bricklayers, warrior bandits were replaced by white collar (white ruff), fraudsters and corruption. New men made fortunes.
Now came the Elizabethan manor house and country house all lovely and symmetrical.
Of course they were symmetrical, they were built as quickly as possible to a plan.
of Wimpey houses?
Instead of teams of masons building churches, there were teams of less skilled but highly paid bricklayers (and some stone layers) that built preplanned facades - outer walls Wimpey walls made to plans and made as easy as possible so that as many houses could be built as quickly as possible all over the county. There's no time to waste. "I've made me fortune one way of another, now I want me big house, garden and village to go with it."
If you were a hereditary noble oooh you could make some serious money. So long as you had a son to keep the title going - now you want daughters to marry off to the new men. Who were going to be enobled themselves almost on mass - especially from Charlie 2 onwards.
As the walls went up an internal timber frame was built. A timber framework was built inside the brick walls. It's brilliant. And well hidden. No wonder they were prone to catching fire.
This is the birth of the landed gentry who needed a new set of rules to live by. The birth of the squire and the gentleman. From military dress to a dress code that said I cannot possibly work dressed up so stupidly like this. Eric Hobsbawm describes the 'squirearchy' that ruled the counties of Britain - well England. Scotland and Ireland have a similar but harsher story.
This change happened across Europe and I wonder where it started. I don't think it was Britain.
Was what Mike Brown my history lecturer at Hull was getting at...
But they also needed social security. And so was born witch hunts and severe laws where a person could be hung on a public gibbet for the slightest misdemeanour.
This post feudal society still exists in the West and is exemplified by public schools, universities like Oxford and Cambridge (Harvard, Yale and the Ivy League). Along with Kings and Queens, Lords and ladies, other titles, silly honours and snobbery.
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Philip Arthur Smith
Those buildings still standing no matter what was the motivation and incentive..the shit they build now will be just stain on the landscape
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Graham Poulloin
agree they were well built and made to last, but they were built as quickly as possible in as many places as possible to a planned design. And the consumer demand of the expanding gentry paved the way for the industrial revolution that did happen in Britain.
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