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Architecture in the Landscape: The Great Rebuilding
- University of Pennsylvania Press
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LONGBRIDGE DEVERILL, WILTSHIRE ahead of those working under them, but also for their size and strength: they must, if pushed, be tough enough to control physically any or all of their men. A man like this wouldn't take kindly to having to get muddy to keep people in line. Second, and more important then as now, one had to be willing to get his hands dirty in order to administer effectively (or to get ahead, become rich, etc.). Two privileges that the abbot of Glastonbury and his tenants at Longbridge enjoyed during this period pertained to hunting and hanging. Theywere granted freedom from the penalty de expeditatione canum within the forest of Selwood. This was a penalty that the king's foresters were enjoined to inflict on all who presumed to hunt without privilege, which consisted in cutting out the ball, or soft part, of a dog's feet. Also Longbridge was granted a special situation in the Hundred Rolls and was what is known as a free manor, which made it not answerable to the normal administration, law, or jurisdiction ofthe surrounding area. The abbot possessed all authority of sheriffwithin the manor, including the rights of"pit and gallows:' This meant the power to take, try, and execute offenders against his rule. Such matters are not taken lightly and were fought for on at least one occasion when the abbot's bailiff and tenants drove off the adjacent lord ofWarminster's men who were attempting to use their gallows. For the next four hundred years, with the exception ofminor changes in skill or technique and the gradual increased acreage of land under cultivation, there were few changes in agriculture until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There was, however, a gradual and important rise in the number ofsheep that coincided with the creation of an international wool trade that changed life in many ways. Wiltshire was in the center of this surge, possessing enormous flocks of sheep. The abbeys of Glastonbury and Shaftesbury numbered their flocks in the tens of thousands. A clear indication that more than the village population was increasing at Longbridge is the steady increase in tax assessments and the transformation ofthe architecture. ARCHITECTURE IN THE LANDSCAPE: THE GREAT REBUILDING As the fifteenth century drew to a close, an increasing stream of money poured into the southwest of England from the great weaving, dyeing, and market centers of Antwerp, Malines, Bruges, Lille, and Delft. Sweeping social and physical changes began to take place, the most noticeable one of which was that of the Great Rebuilding. At first glance to an American walking about in England, the large number of old buildings - many of them hundreds ofyears old- gives an impression of almost complete and unbroken continuity with antiquity. It seems as if there must be representative buildings from every period. 101 CHAPTER THREE More careful examination shows that this is not the case. There are very few buildings of any sort from earlier than the fourteenth century. What is more interesting is that there are no domestic buildings at all remaining intact from before the end of the fifteenth century. The reason is fairly simple. For centuries the most common building materials for rural domestic (even church) buildings had been unbaked earth, timber, and thatch. Then as today, not only was it easier and cheaper to build with wood and mud than with stone, but also every acre ofwoodland cleared was more land for crops and livestock. Naturally such buildings tend to disintegrate over time, a process that accelerates rapidly when they are not occupied or kept in constant repair. They were also easily destroyed by fire, which, because of the almost total absence of chimneys, was very common. A great change or "rebuilding" began to gather momentum, however, as the pressure for more dwellings to house the increasing population joined new concepts of privacy filtering down from the upper classes and was made economically possible by a steady flow ofmoney into England for wool. First came the churches. Many smaller structures, as well as great and large establishments , were to be rebuilt. In the region around Longbridge, religious orders at Bath, Wells, Glastonbury, Winchester, and Salisbury had been involved in great building programs for generations. These great cathedrals, like the ambitious wool churches in the parishes of East Anglia, were direct expressions of wealth and piety executed with large quantities of local stone, partly accounting for their diversity and richness. More important to the general...