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Four 14th-Century Building Contracts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Howard Colvin
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Extract

The history of English medieval architecture is so well explored a subject that it is easy to forget how much we do not know about the buildings of medieval England. What survives is only a part of what once existed, and the accepted story might be materially different if (to give only three examples) Winchcombe Abbey had been preserved instead of Gloucester, Oseney instead of St. Frideswide's, Oxford, Nottingham Castle instead of Windsor. We shall never know whether the surviving sample is truly representative, and there are many problems in the history of English Gothic whose solutions lie buried in the ruins of our dissolved abbeys and demolished palaces. Chief among the latter was the palace of Westminster, for five centuries the principal residence of cur medieval kings and the centre of their government. All that now remains of its many and often magnificent buildings are the great hall, the crypt of St. Stephen's Chapel, and the Jewel Tower, the last now admirably restored and displayed by the Ancient Monuments Department of the Ministry of Works.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 2 , 1959 , pp. 19 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1959

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References

1 For help in transcribing these documents I am greatly indebted to Dr. Pierre Chaplais, Reader in Diplomatic in the University of Oxford.

2 Cal. Pat. Rolls 1348–50, p. 270.

3 See the plan of medieval Westminster by Majorie Honeybourne in Journal of the British Archaeological Association, N.S. xxxviii (1932), p.316

4 A payment of £50 to John of Ramsey for building this tower is entered on the account of the clerk of the works for 1343–4 (P.R.O., E 101/469/6). The upper and lower chambers in novo turello inter novam cameram Regis et Tames’ are referred to in the enrolment of the account for 1344–5 (E 372/196, m.39).

5 Cal. Pat. Rolls 1343–5, p.24.

6 Cal. Close Rolls 1341–3, p. 530; 1343–6, p. 233; 1349–54, pp. 275, 562, 614; 1360–4, p. 514.

7 Cf. nos. 4, 33, 50.

8 Cal. Pat. Rolls 1343–5, p. 158.

9 Calendar of the Letter-Books of the City of London, ed. Sharpe, Letter-Book E (1903), p. 56.

10 Bayley, J., History of the Tower of London i (1821), Appendix, p. ii Google Scholar. I owe this reference to Mr. J. H. Harvey.

11 P.R.O., Issue Rolls E 403/324, 326, 327, 328.