Thornton Abbey, Lincolnshire: gatehouse

It’s natural to assume that our best historic buildings always were the best – that Chatsworth and Blenheim are among the finest English country houses, that Fountains, Rievaulx, Lindisfarne and Tintern are among the finest medieval abbeys.

That may be so, but not necessarily, because it’s hard to credit other great buildings that have vanished long ago and can now be judged only from contemporary illustrations or archaeological remains.

Thornton Abbey, in the very far north of Lincolnshire, is one such.  Its fourteenth-century gatehouse is huge – the biggest of all surviving monastic gatehouses in England – and particularly splendid, built of brick at an unusually early date.  It’s approached by a long barbican and was clearly designed to keep out unwelcome visitors.  Above the vaulted gateway are two substantial chambers, one above the other, and a warren of corridors and chambers, some of which would have been lavatories.  The roofline is shorn of its battlements, but the front still contains a number of lifesized statues.

This was the frontispiece of a powerful and influential institution.  When Thornton Abbey was dissolved in 1539 it was worth £591 0s 2¾d.

Yet when you walk through the gateway, there is little but fields to see.  The abbey church, of which only the foundations now remain, was 282 feet long.  All that remains is a section of the cloister and domestic range, with two splendid bays of the octagonal chapter house.  That tells us that this place was as impressive as the greatest surviving abbey ruins in England.

The church and most of the other structures had gone by the early seventeenth century, demolished by Sir Vincent Skinner, who “built a most stately house out of the same, on the west side of the abbey plot within the moat, which hall, when it was finished, fell quite down to the bare ground without any visible cause”.

Serves him right.

Thornton Abbey is an English Heritage property and is regularly open:  http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/thornton-abbey-and-gatehouse.  Unusually, it has its own railway station with a regular two-hourly service from Cleethorpes:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thornton_Abbey_railway_station.

Beverley Minster

Photo:  Harriet Buckthorp

One of the highlights of the Humber Heritage (September 17th-20th 2010) tour will be a roof-tour of Beverley Minster, one of the most beautiful churches in England.  The Minster came into being as a shrine of St John of Beverley, who was canonised in 1037, and rose from two disasters within a generation, the Great Fire of Beverley in 1188 and the collapse of the central tower around 1213.

You can stand outside the church and see exactly how it grew over the centuries:  the east end and transepts are mid-thirteenth century;  most of the nave is mid-fourteenth century but construction was interrupted by the Black Death in 1349 and the west front and towers date mainly from the fifteenth century.

It’s called a minster because, though never a monastery or a cathedral, it was run by a college of clergymen up to the time of the Reformation.  In Henry VIII’s reign it became simply a huge parish church, partly maintained by funds provided by Henry’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth I.

By the early eighteenth century maintenance had fallen back so much that the gable of the north transept leaned four feet outwards from the perpendicular.  That the church is still standing is to the credit of the architect William Thornton (c1670-1721) who, in 1719, built a huge timber scaffold against the leaning wall and screwed it back into the fabric of the building.

To appreciate the scale of the building, and to recognise the strength of Thornton’s work, it’s worth taking the roof tour, which involves a steep stair-climb but isn’t vertiginous, to look through the great rose window, to see how each wing of the building has distinctive roof-architecture, and to see close up the largest architectural treadwheel in England.

Thornton was understandably nervous about the stability of the central crossing, which had been a cause for concern for centuries, and which Nicholas Hawksmoor surmounted with a dome, now demolished.  From inside it’s clear that the stubby central tower is built of eighteenth-century brick, and incorporates a giant treadwheel that acted as a crane to bring materials to roof level.

It still works, and lifts the central boss from the crossing vault, providing a vertiginous and securely fenced view down on to the floor below.

It’s one of the most memorable experiences for miles around:  http://beverleyminster.org.uk/visit-us/tours.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2016 ‘Humber Heritage’ tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

St Peter’s Church, Barton-on-Humber

Barton-on-Humber is not Hull.

If King Edward I had not taken over the port of Wyke, where the River Hull drains into the northern shore of the Humber, in 1293 and turned it into Kingston-upon-Hull, Barton might be better known.

Nevertheless, the haven on the south bank of the Humber prospered gently through the centuries on the strength of its rich agricultural hinterland, alongside its downstream neighbour Grimsby, the great fishing port.  Maritime industries such as shipbuilding and rope-making continued well into the twentieth century, alongside other industries based on local products, such as brick-making and malting.

Following the excellent Barton-on-Humber Civic Society Town Guide reveals an attractive mix of prosperous eighteenth-century housing and dignified nineteenth-century public buildings.

But the real evidence of this town’s considerable antiquity is that, like Hull, it has two parish churches close together.  Indeed, until the early 1970s, both served the same parish.

St Mary’s, which remains the parish church, has fabric dating back to Norman times.  St Peter’s, however, has a tower that is unmistakably Saxon in style – with enormously thick walls and narrow internal arches, and exterior walls decorated with stripwork and triangular-headed windows – though its builders were more likely of Viking descent.  Two-thirds of the original church still stands, with a slightly later upper stage to the tower and a spacious medieval church repeatedly extended over the centuries.

Thomas Rickman (1776-1841), the architect who originated the terms ‘Norman’, ‘Early English’ and ‘Decorated’ to describe phases of gothic architecture, determined the chronological sequence of late Saxon and early Norman architecture on the principle of “structural stratification” visible in the tower of St Peter’s:  simply, the lower walls must be older than the upper stages, so if the top of the tower is recognisably Norman, the base must be earlier.

Since St Peter’s was deconsecrated it has been thoroughly investigated by English Heritage archaeologists, and now houses a fascinating exhibition of based on the examination of some 2,800 skeletons, most of which now rest in an ossuary on site while some, with intact coffins and grave goods, are shown as part of an unparalleled chronological account of the lives and deaths of Barton’s inhabitants entitled ‘Buried Lives‘.

Details of opening-times at St Peter’s Church, Barton-on-Humber, can be found at http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/st-peters-church-barton-upon-humber.

In addition to their updated Town Guide (2009), price £3.00, the Barton Civic Society offers a series of free downloadable walks at http://www.bartoncivicsociety.co.uk.

The 80-page, A4 handbook for the 2016 ‘Humber Heritage’ tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £10.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.