You're a Buildings What?

Church At Crambe

I thought that I would try and explain what, exactly, I do as a Buildings Archaeologist. (That title is slowly growing on me, I must admit.) When I first came to York, even I didn't know what exactly I'd be doing, but now that I have a better grasp on things, here's a quick and dirty introduction to my course.

Buildings archaeology uses many different sources to understand a building; they don't just rely on the fabric of a building to tell the whole story. Documentary evidence is an important part of tracing a building's history and use, but an archaeological record is also necessary. Last week with my Building Surveying group, we went to Crambe, a tiny little village 30 minutes from York. The center of the village is this church, which upon first glance is easily read, but the longer you look at this building, the less it makes sense. I've drawn arrows to some of the more interesting points of the building.

1) The stone here is of two different colours. This could just be due to weathering, but it may also be a later addition or repair.

2)The window tracery (the mullions, or bars, holding the glass in place) is know as "Perpendicular" style, which gives an approximate date of the 15th century for the tower.

3) Evidence of a change in roof pitch, after the tower was added.

4+5) It's hard to tell from this picture, but the section of the wall with arrow 5 has been inset from the rest of the wall of the church. Also notice that the coursing of the brick is much more even than it is lower down the wall, except where it's broken by the grotesque (#4).

6)An early window--quite small and lancet shaped would indicate that this section of the was probably built around the 12th century. But the stone used is *not* 12th century--it's probably a 19th century restoration (as see by the 'newness' of the stone, and regular chisel marks, which you can't see on this picture).

So what we can see from this section alone is that there were multiple building phases on this building--12th century style windows, 15th century tower, possible later additions and Victorian restorations. But there's also a lot of the building that doesn't make sense. Why is that grotesque in the middle of the wall? It looks flat on top--as if a roof were supposed to rest on it. But was the roof of this church ever that low?

And why is that section of the wall inset? Why does the coursing look so regular compared to the rest of the wall?

If we look at the rest of the wall, it gets more interesting:

7)Why on earth is there this course of large stones so high up on the wall? Is this a hint at a previous (lower) roof line? But why didn't the builders use smaller stones?

8)It's clear that this roof has been replaced relatively recently, but these dentils on the overhang were actually the frame of the roof--and would have exerted enormous pressure on the walls below. In the earlier roof, there were no crossbeams providing extra support--the walls were really bearing the load of the roof.

9) This window is even earlier than 12th century. It could be Norman (so 11th century) but the hoodstone appears to have a Saxon carving on it, making it 10th century or eariler!

10) But right next to the Saxon window is a Gothic style window, with stained glass that is Victorian. Hmmmm.

11)The south door of this church has been bricked in, but you can still see the lintel.

So just along one wall, we have tonnes of questions! How old is this church, really? Does it have Saxon beginnings, but was continuously added on as the village grew and became richer? When was the roof raised? How many times was it raised? Why did the church lose its south door? Did people stop using it? (One theory we have for that is that the orientation of the village gradually shifted, and people exclusively used the west door, so there was no need for a south door).

And the ultimate question is how much of this wall is original, and how much of it is a Victorian restoration. It looks like a hodgepodge of styles, and continual expansion, but I think there was actually a lot of rebuilding of original fabric, as well. As I mentioned, the (quite heavy) roof was supported almost entire by the walls, which eventually bowed out with time. I think that as part of their restoration scheme (including replacing the windows and adding the chancery at the east end) the Victorians may have rebuilt the inset section of the nave, and that strange grotesque was their own particular decoration flourish. It might have come from the original church, or from somewhere else (there's a ruined abbey quite close by, and much of the stone had previously been...liberated for this church).

So as you can see, from just a visual survey we can gain a lot of information about a building. And remember, this is only one wall! The north wall has some interesting, politically charged graffiti, and stones that might have come from a Roman building, now unknown.

Hopefully as we survey the building more fully, and reference documentary evidence, we'll finally start to understand just what the heck is going on here. From there, we can make more informed decisions about how the town wants to conserve and manage the building. Does the roof need to have additional support (we can see that it's already had a detrimental effect in the past), should we be concerned with the way these different stone types might weather next to each other? Are there any stone in particular that should be monitored or examined in greater detail?

So there. That's what I do. It's pretty awesome.

Harrogate Trail

Sorry once again about the lack of blogging. It's Formative essay week here in the Archaeology department, so everyone is furiously writing papers and haunting the Key Texts section of the library, waiting to pounce on the books as they come back in four hour shifts.

I had the majority of my papers done before the weekend, but I'm stuck on the conclusion for one, and wrestling with a new and unfamiliar referencing style which is wreaking havoc with my word count. Alas. These papers don't even count toward our final grades, but they do give us a chance to see what our professors are expecting of us, and I really want to do well on them.

The reason I was such a 'swot' (as one fellow hiker termed me), was because there was yet another hike that I went on this weekend, and I wanted to get my papers done before hand. This was my third such hike, so I had to formally become a member of the Ramblers Society. Isn't that great?? I'm a bona fide Rambler now!

We did the first half of the Harrogate trail this weekend. It was 11 miles, through mud and grass, and I loved it.so.much. It was absolutely pouring when we started, and it wasn't until after lunch that it stopped raining. I was wearing waterproof-ish stuff, so I started reasonably dry, but my bag got pretty wet. And of course, we were hiking through fields and stuff, so I had mud up to my knees by the end of the day. I'm pretty sure that, had I attempted to go to the pub with the rest of the group instead of catching the train, I would have had to sit outside. We were all that muddy, though, and only one person fell! Talk about impressive.

The highlight of the day was definitely lunch time. We went to a ruined castle, and because it was still raining, we all huddled in the window alcoves lining the great hall, or camped in the fireplace. It was pretty great. The surrounding area had lots of exposed rock features, and some ambitious aristocrat decided it would be a great idea to use one of the larger rocks as one of the walls of this castle. I mean, why not? It saves you the trouble of moving a bunch of stones and mortaring them together into a structurally sound wall, right? And then, to get even more ambitious, he added a second level to his hall, using this large rock as the base of that. Pretty impressive, I think.

So Saturday was Guy Fawkes night, but I was pretty exhausted. At first we had planned on going out, but come nine o'clock, I was knackered so I...listened to the fireworks instead of going out to see them. Lame, I know.

And next weekend is the second half of this trail. I'll get a badge for completing both parts! I'm really excited about that!

(But now I have to return to my paper writing. Tonight, I swear I'll upload some photos. Cross my heart.)