Building Power by Catherine Hokin

I've been having a lot of conversations recently about research, not just how much writers need to do but what type. Whatever the downsides of the web with its never-ending news feeds and all-too distracting social media, we are incredibly lucky to live in a time of such easy access to information. Like most of us I spent a lot of time buried in books but I can also be regularly found lost in articles and images on the internet and I'm beginning to think I couldn't survive without Pinterest. When you can, however, there's no substitute for getting out into the places you write about and letting your senses do the thinking. To this end I've spent a fair bit of time lately wandering the corridors of power, past and present, and one of my biggest takeaways? I really am rather small or, to put it another way, the architects of power did their job very well.

 Westminster Hall's Hammer Beam Roof Commissioned 1393

Architecture is used by political leaders to seduce, to impress and to intimidate. (The Edifice Complex, Deyan Sudjic).

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Westminster Hall, the starting point for my recent let's-get-away-from-the-desk meanderings. As most people are aware, very little of the medieval palace survives, most of the complex having been destroyed in the 1834 fire. Remarkably, however, given the fires, floods, bombs and death-watch beetles which had other ideas, the hammer beam roof commissioned by Richard II in 1393 remains intact. The hall itself was begun in 1097 but it was Richard who had the Norman pillars removed and the wooden arch (the largest medieval timber roof in Northern Europe) installed. It spans 60 feet and was incredibly dangerous to construct as the great beams, which together weigh over 600 tons, had to be hoisted to a height of over 90 feet. Crane up and you can see the carved angels and tracery work that was started but not finished and crane up again and there is Richard's white hart badge still edging the walls. It is a vast space, still filled with scuttling people clutching papers and quite a contrast to the labyrinth of corridors and tiny chambers that make up the back stage of the Palace - I was lucky enough to get that tour too - although that also retains a medieval feel, all shadowy corners and plots.

 Medieval shield painted onto the nave wall

I did even more craning up when I crossed the road to Westminster Abbey where you need an eagle eye to spot the fragments of medieval paintings and shields hidden among the main church's monuments. As you come in, and along the nave, there are a series of carved sheilds of arms, dating from 1245 and 1272 and commemorating the church's aristocratic benefactors, including Fulk Fitzwarren, William Ferrars, Earl of Derby, Roger de Mowbray and Hugo de Vere, Earl of Oxford. The shields are easy to miss among the huge marble sculptures now filling the walls and there is nothing on the audio tour about them but the guides are a happy fount of knowledge. As you continue round the Abbey, the medieval touches become easier to spot, culminating in the series of paintings of the Apocalypse in the Chapter House which date from 1375-1404 with a wonderful set of lower friezes from about a century later filled with amazing birds and animals. And you go past England's oldest door, from 1050, to get to it - it's like being given a never-ending box of chocolates.

 Richard 11

The Abbey is, of course, best known as the burial place of England's monarchs and the number, and beauty, of the tombs is quite overwhelming. For me, however, the most fascinating of the Abbey's monuments comes at the end - presented almost as an after-thought The huge portrait of Richard II is contemporary, commissioned by the King, and was painted in the 1390s by Andre Beauneveu. Restored and reframed in the nineteenth century, its vivid greens, crimsons and golds look freshly done and even the loss of some of the gilt work does not detract from the power it is meant to evoke. And power is what this painting is all about. Richard was devoted to Westminster Abbey and to St Edward the Confessor and he rebuilt the northern entrance and some bays of the nave but this painting was not simply an addition to the Abbey's riches - it was a reminder to an unruly London where power really lay. Like the Palace of Westminster, it is impossible not to feel tiny when you enter the Abbey and overawed. Add to that the hidden nature of much of the church's ceremonies during this period, performed behind the rood screen, and your insignificance grows. Standing next to the painting under the soaring ceiling and imagining it on display at the far end of the nave with Richard seated below it on an elevated throne, demanding his new title of Majesty, says everything you need to know about power and tyranny. It is impossible not to shiver.

 Citta Sul Mare, Sassetta

So Scotland to London and back home again and another group of buildings pointing to the heavens and shouting look up and fear me. Fourteenth century Tuscany was riven with politically charged violence and raids as city states, and their competing families, fought to control each other. One of the impacts of this can be seen in the ruined towers which still dot the landscape. These were used as homes and warehouses and were a very visible stamp of authority - the higher the tower, the more powerful the family. Built either from white albarese stone or reddish brick, they had crenellated tops, small Romanesque windows, narrow porticoes and - when a family built a number close together as they often did - holes to support movable connecting bridges. Stretching up to 180 feet, each floor had one room and floors were reached by winding stairs set into the walls or ladders. At the height of the building craze (pun intended), there were over 200 in Florence and Lucca and perhaps as many as 100 in Siena (the inspiration behind the contemporary Sassetta painting) and San Gimignano where the most preserved examples remain. And the sizes changed - as towers were seized they could be reduced or heightened depending on the message the new owner wished to transmit, a moving picture which puts me rather in mind of the opening of Game of Thrones.

 Tower of Hallbar & Me

The WIP will get me to Tuscany but, in the meantime, we have our own version of the Tuscan towers in Scotland, one of which, the Tower of Hallbar, is on my doorstep. Built between the fourteenth and sixteenth century, these tower house castles have some differences (including more elaboration) but largely follow the Tuscan pattern. Hallbar (which is privately owned and can now be rented) is 5 storeys high, has walls up to 1.6m thick and is very narrow. Each level originally had a single room, with a winding stair, built into the walls, wrapping around and linking the floors. At the basement level was a low-vaulted cellar. If you've any doubts about the scale of these things, that's me feeling very dwarfed by the door.

Nowadays we often associated high rises with the damage caused to working class communities or the horror of Grenfell. The new builds dominating our skylines, however, are increasingly once more becoming the preserve of the wealthy - we are again looking up at temples to power and greed but perhaps our shivering needs a different aspect. London's 95 storey Shard, owned by the Qatari royal family and the city's tallest building at 390.7m, currently has 10 of its multiple million pound apartments lying empty and is the target of protesters infuriated by such wasted space in a country in the grip of a housing crisis. The spectre of ghost towers - high rise homes built for the wealthy but standing empty - is becoming a real issue in the capital. The Observer newspaper recently revealed that builders are currently constructing towers in London containing 7,749 homes priced between £1m and £10m, and have planning rights to build another 18,712 high-end apartments and townhouses, despite concern over the number already standing half-empty and the lack of affordable housing. In 2016-2017 only 6,432 affordable homes were built.

When we look up now at the works of the mighty, it really is hard not to despair.

Medieval Masterchef by Catherine Hokin

As I mentioned in my last blog, I am currently spending a considerable amount of time in the fourteenth century. This has allowed me to indulge a number of obsessions, including the entymology of words and, my real love, food and the development of our culinary heritage.

These two things are very inter-connected. The arrival of the Norman French in the years post the Conquest brought many of our current words into use - in this context, curfew is particularly relevant coming as it does from the signal to bank the hearth fires at the end of the day and stemming from the Latin coverir (to cover) and feu (fire). It also heralded the start of a real explosion in culinary learning as eleventh century Michel Roux Juniors arrived to educate the palates of the English upper classes - I live in hope that there was an equivalent Monica Galetti terrifying young cooks from beneath her wimple.

The Forme of Cury c.1390

The interest in the culinary arts achieved its peak in the reign of Richard II and has come down to us in the form of a wonderful manuscript known as The Forme of Cury, with cury being the Middle English word for cookery.

This manuscript is not just a description of meals enjoyed, it is an instructional text: a series of recipes, 196 in total, put together in a parchment scroll by King Richard's cooks so that other cooks could learn their trade. Some of the recipes are for everyday use ('common meats for the household as they should be made, craftily and wholesomely') and some are for feasts. All are fascinating for the glimpses they give us of the incredible range of ingredients available to medieval cooks in wealthy households, the customs surrounding eating and the links drawn between food and other important contemporary disciplines - the introduction says that the work was given 'the approval and consent of the masters of medicine and of philosophy' who served at Richard's court.

 Medieval Feast

Everday meats and pottages are one thing, it is the feasts that fascinate me. The recipes are full of wonderful ingredients from olive oil and spices such as caraway and cardamom to more exotic food that even the most hipster twenty-first century restaurant would blanch (pun intended) at - cranes, curlews, herons and even seals and porpoises. Many of the dishes served required a huge array of techniques to prepare them, separating them out from the far less complex roast meats which had dominated in earlier times. By the end of the fourteenth century, meat would be presented in a wide variety of fashions: mortrews was a type of meatloaf with a base of minced pork and chicken which was boiled and then thickened with bread, spices and eggs and often served with a broth; raysols also used minced meat as the main ingredient (in this case pigs livers), with the addition of cheese and a saffron crust. The list of techniques for tackling meat alone read like something Jamie Oliver might employ with words such as stamp, meddle, smite and seethe littering the recipes. When you think about some of the centrepieces these kitchens produced - such as the cockatrice formed from the front of a capon and the back of a piglet stitched together or the peacocks brought to the table with their bodies and feathers reformed - you have to marvel at their ingenuity.

A Peacock Centrepiece

It wasn't just the savoury courses that were astounding. Many of us have heard of the sugar subtleties that heralded each course or acted as warners that the banquet was about to begin. I (perhaps because I am married to an American who was brought up with this tradition rather than the custard approach I knew) am fascinated by the brightly-coloured jellies which were used to encase everything from fish to fruit, which in turn were often gilded. Kate Colquhoun in her wonderful book Taste lists some of the colouring ingredients from blood and bark (reds and purples) through heliotrope (blue), almonds (white) and mint to the glorious and highly-prized saffron. A sea of heraldry for the table.

Feasts were an important part of the medieval calendar and we are currently in the middle of one of the key celebrations: Midsummer. Midsummer was the culmination of the spring festivals that heralded fertility, the hopes of a good harvest and the solstice. Its dates have shifted slightly: astronomically the longest day falls on the 20th/21st June but the 1752 calendar alignments fixed the date on June 24th, the Feast of John the Baptist. Whatever the date, Midsummer Eve has traditionally been celebrated with bonfires (originally burning animal bones, hence the name), cooking and decorating with flowers and herbs to entice the fairies and of course, food.

Lots of Midsummer recipes involve fruit and vegetables but I honestly think a celebration is not a celebration without cake. So, here is a recipe for fourteenth century Bryndons - small cakes in a sauce of wine, fruit and nuts -which I think captures the ingredients and the array of techniques our medieval cooks would have employed, even on small dishes. There is a a modern translation of the recipe at a wonderful website called A Boke of Gode Cookery. I really hope to see someone have a go at these on the Bake-Off, I feel Mary Berry would approve.

 Bryndons - admittedly not my attempt

Boil wine, honey, sandalwood, cloves, saffron, mace, cloves, minced dates, pine nuts, currants and a splash of vinegar. Add ground figs that have been boiled in wine and strained. Make thin cakes out of flour, saffron, sugar and water. Slice these thinly and fry in oil. Serve the cakes in a shallow dish, arranged on the boiled and cooled syrup, which should be runny and not stiff.

Accept star baker.

Discovering Medieval Oxford - by Ann Swinfen

I fell in love with Oxford when I was nine years old.

My mother and I had arrived in England to spend some months with the English half of my family, and my uncle was driving us north to the Midlands. I think I probably fell asleep, but when he stopped to let us stretch our legs for a while in the dark, I stepped out of the car into a wide, tree-lined street – no, it was more than a street, a long triangle, disappearing into the distance. Under a sky of moon and stars, strange buildings stood out, crenellated, turreted, like something from a medieval tale. Then from all over the town, bells began to ring.

It was Oxford. St Giles. And it was midnight.

St Giles with St John's College

What an introduction! Later, when I was lucky enough to go there as a student, the love deepened. Of course, there were all the usual things – wonderful friends, punting on the river, picnicking while watching cricket in the Parks, parties, singing in the Bach Choir, acting, glamorous balls. And incidentally, falling in love and marrying. Well, yes, there were lectures and tutorials to be squeezed in as well.

Underneath it all, however, that first impression remained strong, and grew even stronger whenever I thought of all those who had inhabited the same streets through the centuries. I remember one particular occasion when I was walking alone down tiny Magpie Lane in winter. Deep snow lay under foot. There was a single lamppost. In my memory it was one of the old gas ones, can that be right? One bar of gold light fell across the snow, and, in Merton chapel, someone was playing the organ. There wasn’t another soul to be seen. Yet I could feel all those people around me, especially those early scholars from the Middle Ages.

Magpie Lane

I’ve never believed in physical time travel, but there are certain spots in our lives when we make that emotional leap, and that was one of them for me. I wouldn’t claim I could see those medieval scholars, but I could certainly feel them.

It was inevitable, I suppose, that sooner or later I would have to write about medieval Oxford, and that is what I have been doing in recent months. However, I always love the research as well, and in this case it has been fascinating. First of all, my central character is a former student, now a bookseller, so I needed to know everything about book selling in the fourteenth century, parchment making, bookbinding. I made some curious discoveries.

Medieval Bookshop

It would be another century before the invention of printing replaced the handwritten book, but nevertheless booksellers did exist and in university towns they could be licensed to provide the peciae, sixteen-page extracts from essential texts. Students would hire and copy these, in order to have their own versions of the study texts, and the system provided booksellers (who were also stationers) with a regular income. The rental rates were controlled by the university. This was a wonderful and totally unexpected discovery. So that was how students acquired their textbooks in the fourteenth century!

Although the most luxurious decorated books were expensive, there was a brisk trade in secondhand books. Moreover, certain books were popular amongst the literate laity, such as books of hours and collections of traditional tales. This book ownership was more widespread than I had realised. There is even a recorded case of a vagrant stealing a book of hours belonging to a servant.

By this period paper had come into use, though parchment was the material of choice for the pages of books. Its production was demanding, but the liberal supply of flowing water all round Oxford was ideal for the purpose. And – glory be! – I discovered that out beyond the castle there was a Bookbinders Bridge!

Preparing Parchment

The university system had not yet taken on its later form, so that in 1353 (when my first story is set) undergraduate students were not admitted to the colleges. They lived in ‘halls’, or sometimes in town lodgings, and would only join a college if they proceeded to advanced study after completing the Trivium and Quadrivium. A hall was run by a Warden or Master, and there was a whole cluster of them in the northeast part of the walled town. Only one of these survives to this day, St Edmund Hall. Although in recent years it has become a full-blown college, it still proudly retains its title of ‘Hall’.

St Edmund Hall

However, the constant murderous fights between town and gown are well known. One of the earliest led to the flight of a group of scholars to the fens of Cambridgeshire to found Britain’s second university, but these bloody encounters continued into the fourteenth century with probably the worst occurring on St Scholastica’s Day in 1355, when there were so many deaths and injuries that the town (which had thought itself victorious) was severely penalised by the king. The fight started at the Swindlestock Tavern on Carfax, the central crossroads in Oxford. When I was a student, my bank stood on the spot (though it’s a different bank now).

All this trouble meant that the university decided that students needed to be better regulated and cared for. Merton began admitting undergraduates to college around the 1380s and other colleges followed suit, although official university halls continued to accommodate students as well.

The street plan of the walled town of Oxford has remained remarkably unchanged. Originally a fortified Saxon town, it was built around the crossroads of four streets: the High Street from the East Gate, Northgate Street from the North Gate, Fish Street from the South Gate, and Great Bailey (a post-Conquest name) originally from the West Gate, which was knocked down to make way for the Norman castle and replaced by a much smaller gate. All four streets met – and still meet – at Carfax.

Carfax

Three of these streets have changed their names. Fish Street is now St Aldate’s, Great Bailey is Queen Street, and Northgate has become the Cornmarket. The Guildhall was located in Fish Street, where the Town Hall now stands.

One of the best-known streets in Oxford today is the Broad, lined with magnificent buildings. I found it entertaining to discover that it lies over or at least near the old stinking Canditch, which surrounded part of the town, lying outside the town wall. There are still bits of the wall to be found, if you search. For my fourteenth century inhabitants, it formed the boundary of the town proper, although already the town was beginning to spread beyond the wall.

Of course, the period I have chosen is immediately after the Black Death, known at the time as the Great Pestilence, or simply the Death, when anything from a third to half the population perished. The university was hit hard, but it survived. More than that, it took advantage of tumbling values to acquire large amounts of property in the town. After the Death, the warren of small cottages to the north of St-Peter-in-the-East had become more and more squalid, inhabited by criminals and the worst sort of prostitutes. It was recognised as a place of danger and disease, and the neighbours heaved a sigh of relief when it was cleared away to make room for New College in 1379.

New College

From St Edmund Hall on High Street in the south, to Hart Hall, near the junction of Catte Street with the wall at the small Smith Gate in the north, ran a winding lane known at Hammer Hall Lane, after one of the many halls in the area. Nowadays the northern part in known as New College Lane, the southern part as Queen’s Lane.

New College Lane & Hertford Bridge

Only a handful of colleges existed at the time, and not all are still extant. The survivors include Merton, Queen’s, Oriel, University, Exeter, and Balliol. Gloucester became Worcester, Canterbury was replaced by Christ Church, much of Durham was taken over by St. John’s College and Trinity. Gloucester and Durham were Benedictine foundations. Hart Hall has become Hertford College (my husband’s college – the one with the bridge). You will not find the Hospital of St John, next to the bridge over the Cherwell. It has vanished under Magdalen College.

Originally, of course, the university was established to train men in holy orders, although the growth of a secular ‘civil service’ required by the king and the law courts created a demand for more and more educated men outside the church. As well as the colleges, Oxford was surrounded by ecclesiastical institutions: the Augustinian Friary, the Carmelite Friary, the Franciscan Friary, the Dominican Friary, St Frideswide’s Priory, Rewley Abbey, Osney Abbey, and a little way north of the town, Godstow Abbey (a nunnery), where Henry II’s mistress, Fair Rosamund, was buried. All came to an end with the Dissolution, but in the fourteenth century they were still flourishing.

Even now the maze of waterways formed by the many branches of the Thames and the Cherwell encompasses the town, and the water meadows, now as then, are at risk of flooding. All this water provided the driving power for at least five mills: Holywell, Blackfriars, Castle, and Trill, and across the water meadows to the east, King’s Mill.

Holywell Mill

A curious personal note. I wanted to use Holywell Mill in this first book. Something nagged at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t pin it down. I looked up a picture of the present Holywell Mill, built in 1888, architecturally in seventeenth-century style (no longer a working mill). The picture hit me like a thunderclap. As a first year student I cycled there once a week for a tutorial. My unpleasant fourteenth-century character, Miller Wooton, I’m glad to say, no longer lives there.

Ann Swinfen
http://www.annswinfen.com