Labyrinthe

Some spaces are demarcated as being special. For me, a labyrinthe is one such special space, symbolising a journey or pilgrimage. Not a maze with dead ends; rather, a journey with an end point - a very different thing.

This afternoon I took some time for myself and ambled down to Norwich Cathedral cloister, below the blue sky and caress of sun. I stood facing the labyrinthe in the garth, and took time to slow down. I sought out a sanctuary - a symbolic space where I could unclutter my thoughts and distance myself from my petty concerns. Sometimes, as the old saying goes, solvitur ambulando (it is solved by walking)...

For me, walking this space is akin to a Tai Chi form: focusing my mind solely on the movement as I move through the 'ritual' of the labyrinthe helps to bring about a state of mental calm and clarity. Afterwards, I sat down in the cloister, face bathed in sunlight, and wrote down some of the reflections I'd had prior to 'losing' myself in the nowness of the journey...

Private time in special places can be a very rewarding and creative experience.

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Remember, You Are Part of the Story too...

My strength is my weakness. I am an enthusiast, but with this comes a danger; a danger that I will bombard audiences and batter their senses. There's a danger that I will 'talk over' the special places, when I should be facilitating sensitive responses to these spaces. However, whilst recognising these potential pitfalls, I still see this passion and energy of mine as an asset. Harnessed in the right way, it can be infectious.

Good interpretation requires an honest self-audit. Our uniqueness - unscripted and spontaneous - is a massive part of 'the story'. The other day I was listening to a young man describing the way he used to visit the site of a Roman town, virtually every day. Without any self-consciousness he went on to describe the way that Nature came to accept his presence there. In the sultry summer evenings he would be the only human presence, whilst Little Owls stood like sentinals on the fence posts, swooping occasionally to catch insects on the wing. It was magical.
"This should be part of the story you tell when talking about Roman history," I suggested - and I meant it!

In my own work, it is not unusual for me, in a change of tone, to describe how I found out what it is I'm talking about. For instance, once, when describing the tragic devastation of a community in the 1666 plague, I was able to recount how the handwriting of the Churchwarden recording the deaths , abruptly changed. A few lines further down, their name would appear alongside those ubiquitous letters, 'pla'. I described how I this made me feel; how the stories of dead generations touched me. This is bringing history alive.



My advice is this: dare to be yourself - use who you are. Don't be afraid of personalising the narrative and revealing who you are, and how you feel. In my experience, people respond positively to this human touch.

Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten - Arvo Part

The Mind & 'Voice' of Herbert de Losinga

As you may already be aware, I don't tend to concentrate my attentions on the 'great' and the 'good' of Norwich history; partly for the simple reason that they tend to get enough attention as it is. However, when I get the opportunity to read the letters of one of the great figures of Norwich history, dating from nearly 900 years ago, then I feel bound to investigate.

Today, I spent some time in the wonderful Norwich cathedral library reading through some of the letters of the first bishop of Norwich, Herbert de Losinga (Goulburn, E.M. & Symonds, H [1878]: 'The Letters and Sermons of Bishop Herbert de Losinga). I find it amazing that we are still able to access the mind of a man who has been dead for so very many years (d. 1119). It felt like a kind of mind-time portal. This is what literature can do! In part, this is because through these letters we see different facets to this man - including, perhaps, surprisingly human[e] qualities. I think that, in this, we also recognise his humanity, and are able to relate to him across all those years and all that cultural chasm

Here are some examples:
To two of his novices, with whom he regularly corresponds, he writes sternly,

'I reprove your indolent and sluggish want of exertion.'

However, he is also capable of warmth, and encourages young Otto and Willelm to, 'write to me therefore in poetry, frame verses, compose odes, sing in metre and rejoice the heart of your aged friend by cultivating the muses in every form. Henceforth I will sit as judge of your compositions and criticising your poems will prepare a palm for the conqueror, a punishment for the careless.'

We hear another side of de Losinga - the wrathful Lord of the church - when he writes about people who have been killing his dear in his park at Homersfield near Thetford:

'Meanwhile I excommunicate those who have broken into my park and killed my deer with that anathema wherewith God in His anger smiteth the souls of the wicked [...]. May the curse and excommunication rest upon them in their homes, in the ways and in the fields, in the woods and in the waters, and in all the places wheresoever they be found! May the flesh of those who have devoured my stag rot, as the flesh of Herod rotted...'

Finally, in what Oliver Rackham describes as the earliest known statement of woodland conservation in English history, de Losinga writes to William the Monk:

'As to making a present of Thorpe Wood [present day Mousehold Heath] to the sick, or any one else, I gave you no orders, nor do I give now, nor will I give any; for I appointed you the custodian of the wood, not the rooter up of it [my emphasis]. To the sick, when I come to Norwich, I will give as I did last year, not logs of wood, but pence [...] Guard the wood of the Holy Trinity, as you wish to be guarded by the Holy Trinity, and to continue in my favour.'

I can't recommend the cathedral library highly enough. It is a fabulous resource, with welcoming staff, so go see - and discover! - for yourself.

Andrew's Stone... Andrew's Story...

To really see something you need perspective. The best Interpreter's walk around their subject, thinking about angles and possibilities - not just facts. We are, after all, in the business of stretching minds, and encouraging and activating a sense of wonder from our interactions with others.

At the end of one of my previous entries on this blog (see HERE for original), I begin to explore the wonder-ful - and I use these words in hyphenated form, advisedly - possibilities inherent in the simple idea that objects and things in the real world of human cultural heritage are in some way shaped from within people's heads - their imaginations (or sometimes, in moments of epiphany, their dreams!). In the conception, they might not fully realise that interior 'vision', but, as we look around us we are, in a sense, looking and passing through mind-scapes of dead generations. We cannot know the mind of our contemporaries, or even our own minds fully - let alone those of long deceased folk; but we can, nevertheless, reach out and begin to feel for their presence. That is why, when I see the mason's mark in the form of the saltire cross, present at both Norwich castle and cathedral, my thought is, 'that's Andrew's work... it's in the shape he intended' - and I touch it.

I remember an English teacher of mine once explaining that, for her, literature was a form of time-travel; a kind of time-capsule transmitted - and in the reading, interpreted - in an exchange of minds between people who can never literally meet, but who are able to meet, virtually, through literature. Is that possibility true, also, of a carved stone? It's amazing enough to think that Andrew stood in the yard next to the Lodge and carved this stone; amazing that he was actually there and real... that he was the last person to place it here, perhaps - that it is still here 900 years on. At the same time, I can definitively state that, for Andrew, it was workaday activity. He probably took pride in what he did; especially being part of ventures which saw new kinds of buildings - power-projecting Empire Buildings - rising up above, presumably, awe-struck local inhabitants. Although he did as he was told by the Master Mason; although he was, a cog in the wheel, his stone was, and is, an expression of him - shaped as he saw it. And he, in turn, was an expression of what we now know as Norman culture and architecture. It's a peopled story...

In so many ways the chasm between the cultures of Norman and contemporary England is vast. I assume that much is lost in translation. But an absence of evidence should not render us mute as we seek to understand and interpret the past, for, as the maxim goes, absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. Although in our research we need to sort, sift and be critical and challenging, this should not lead us to disengage. We need to imagine, and be imaginative in our approaches. Like Cosmologist's in their field, we need to be artist and scientist, simultaneously.

Drowning Sorrows or Brewing Up the Beast...

'And a man once drunk with wine or strong drink rather resembles a brute beast than a Christian man. For do not his eyes begin to stare and to be red, fiery and foam at the mouth like a boar? Doth not his tongue falter and stammer in his mouth? Doth not his head seem as heavy as a millstone, he not being able to bear it up? Are not his wits and spirits, as it were, drowned? Is not his understanding altogether decayed? Do not his hands, and all his body vibrate, quaver and shake, as it were, with a quotidian fever?'

Such was the opinion of Philip Stubbes, writing in the later 1500's ('The Anatomy of Abuses', 1583). Certainly Dean Suckling of Norwich Cathedral would concur with this view...

2nd November 1616
'Dr Suckling, dean, did admonish Ellis Goodwyn, now dwelling within the precinct, having the office of blowing the organs [ie his job was to manually pump the organ bellows - thirsty work it seems!]. The said Ellis being upon the 25 October last so disguised with extraordinary drinking that he was for that and other abuse of himself then and there set in the stocks; that hereafter he should carry himself more soberly, under pain of loss of his said office of Organ Blower.'

Around the same time, the renowned writer, Thomas Nashe, warned of eight different states of drunkeness - the worst being the 'goat drunk', who, 'has no mind but lechery'...

1615
'Martha Cambridge accuse[s] Ben Wright: [that] you did come drunk into my house with your prick hanging out of your breeches like a horse and offered to break down the door when I was forced to shut it on you.'
[Transcription: David Tonge, M.A]

However, not every contemporary voice was united in condemnation of alcohol:

'Ale doth comfort the heavy and troubled mind; it will make a weeping widow laugh and forget sorrow for her deceased husband; [...] it is the warmest lining of a poor man's coat; it satiates and assuages hunger and cold; with a toast it is the poor man's comfort; the shepherd, mower, ploughman, and blacksmith's most esteemed purchase; it is the tinker's treasure, the pedlar's jewel, the beggar's joy; and the prisoner's loving nurse.' (Richard Younge, 'The Drunkard's Character', 1639.)

Perhaps, as one historian has commented, 'alcohol was the essential narcotic which anaesthetized men [sic.] against the strains of contemporary life' (Keith Thomas, 'Religion and the Decline of Magic', 1973).

Although we always have to handle the evidence carefully - misdemenours are 'captured' and rendered, perhaps disproportionately, visible by the surviving records -, it would seem that drinking and drunkeness were a central feature of life in Norwich during the Early Modern period. I've got some fantastic 'street level' stories from Tudor and Stuart Norwich, which illustrate some of the - all too recognisable! - scrapes that people found themselves in due to such excesses as described above.

Several years ago I told some of these stories - to great acclaim - during a one-off 'Norwich Tippling House Tour' I gave to a private party (it even included a one-man play - or skit - performed by my good self to the bewilderment/entertainment of the assembled crowd!). It's a shame that I have so much material like this gathering dust. After all, my former colleague, Dave Tong, and I worked very hard to bring this to the light of day.

However, I am glad to say that some of this material will be aired during a session I'm giving in the New Year, entitled, 'Disorderly Lives in Tudor & Stuart Norwich'. It's quite a story!

Booton Church

Great forces of history are all very well, but sometimes it is the spark of a single person's unique vision and imagination which changes things in surprising ways. I make this statement having visited the church at Booton twice over the last week. Located near Reepham in Norfolk, I just had to go back in order to confirm that what I thought I'd seen really was there - and it was!

What we have here is what might be described as an eccentric Victorian 'folly'; an eclectic jumble, tumbling from the brain of the Reverend Whitwell Elvin. Words really fail me on this one - go and see it for yourself!

Heckingham Church

A visitor emailed me asking about the location of the arch at the head of this blog. The answer is Heckingham; or, more particularly, Heckingham church, sister foundation to the more well known church at Hales. These two are archetypal examples of small rural Norman churches. Their riches were preserved by the poverty of their parish/parishes - they were never modernised and 'upgraded'. I am not alone in thinking that Heckingham is the more atmospheric of the two churches (see Simon Knott's wonderful site, and, in particular, his description of Heckingham).

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Isn't that arch - with its fabulous beaker mouldings, chevrons and various other Norman embellishments - absolutely fantastic. Here's a doorway which, if wood and stone could speak, would tell some tales. Nearly 900 years of life has passed this way. This passageway of 'hatching, matching and dispatching' is all about life and death, and its journeys and phases. So go get yourself an OS map and drive down some narrow lanes in south Norfolk and allow your mind to wonder as you stand in the doorway; allow yourself to become a small part of its story.