THE PAST IN RUINS - Blakeney Guildhall

English Heritage themselves seem unsure about this ruin. What exactly are the origins of it? They call it a 'guildhall', but does this create a mistaken impression that as a building it was much more important than is perhaps appropriate. This could easily be a simple undercroft of a merchants house or a monastic Cellarers Chequer of some kind? The history hasn't really give you an awful lot to go on. 

The Guildhall is sited to one side of Mariner's Hill. a large man made mound, which has served as both a look out and a beacon point for guiding ships into the harbour.  The mound itself is a bit of a local curio, with an unclear sense of when it was constructed. That the 'guildhall' cuts into the side of it might indicate that the hill predates it. And stylistically the building is 15th century. A few hundred yards further to the left is the entrance to the former site of a Carmelite Friary. 

For what was, and still is, a gaggle of small former fisherman's cottages around a narrow tidal port, the 'guildhall' is probably it's most significant surviving medieval construction after the parish church. Tucked behind one of the main streets in Blakeney. The English Heritage signpost directing you to it, was so rusted it's given up it's post. The building hasn't been open to the public on a daily basis since COVID. It is an overlooked and slightly dingy looking building from the outside. Though in 2026, it appears to be regularly accessible again.

You enter down some rough steps, relatively short but steep. You can see, once you are in, that though this is poorly lit, it is a quite impressively built crypt like building. This wasn't knocked up carelessly. It would have been relatively expensive to have constructed, beneath what must have been a substantial building above it. There are indicators in the walls of entrances, staircases and blocked up windows. The floor has been roughly paved with flint and brick cobbles, but a lot of it is compacted with dirt these days. The columns are very typical of the late medieval, octagonal in profile, branching out into simple, but elegant brick arches and transcepts. 

The question that really comes to mind is, did Blakeney really need a 'guidhall '?  You certainly see them in the much larger towns like Kings Lynn and Norwich. I know the North Norfolk coast was once a much more thriving sequence of competing shipping havens in medieval times. Cley just up the road, was by far the wealthier and busiest harbour on this length of coastline. They never had a 'guildhall', which makes the attribution of 'guildhall' to Blakeney somewhat questionable. 

It has traditionally been referred to as a 'guildhall', but that may be a local pretension, or for want of a better term. The strongesr suggestions are that this was originally built in the late 14th century simply as a wealthy local merchant's house. What is certain is that that house by the 15th century thebuilding had been adopted by a local group of Fish Merchants, not a 'guild' as such, but this might explain the 'guild' association. This undercroft was perhaps only ever used as a place for the storage of grain, fish and cloth. The living spaces up above, because they were not needed have not survived. That the undercroft has remained intact may be a testament to its continued usefulness as a place of storage over the past centuries. The building is an interesting anomaly none the less.

THE PAST IN RUINS - Helmsley Castle

 

The majority of castles in England have there origins in securing the territory after the Norman Conquest. As William the Conqueror began to methodically take control of  England. As ever with William his response to defiance was not subtle or proportionate, he mercilessly Harried The North. Literally burning and laying to waste areas that were rebelling against his fiefdom. Destroying villages, poisoning the earth so they couldn't immediately return and grow crops. The economic and cultural repercussions of this rippled on for decades, if not centuries.

Helmsley was gifted to William's half brother Robert, but there is little evidence of him building a castle. Robert and Robert's son, and his son in turn, all rebelled against the monarch of the time. After the third incident the family had the control of the Helmsley estate taken away from them. It was given to Walter Espec around 1122 and he invested huge amounts of time, money and patronage into the area. And with Walter the first castle with its wooden battlements and bailey is created. And during his lifetime he began constructing the stone version, which you see now. 

Helmsley Castle is quite favourably placed. It's on the route north to Durham and the Scottish Borders and the route west to York, the route east to Whitby. There were regular and sometimes quite serious pillaging raids of Scots this far south, so the castle did have a role as a focus for repelling and deterring them. But there was always an element of it providing merely the outward appearance of strength. A Norman Castle, in its prime, was also there to intimidate the local population too. A lot of what Helmsley Castle is, is just exterior show, to display superior status as much as military power.

If Helmsley Castle was ever really tested out as a medieval military stronghold is unclear. But, formidable as its moat and ramparts may look, it had weak points that further developments across them attempted to compensate for. Investigations of the moat indicate some of it had been clay lined, but this was limited and not across the whole of the moat. This makes it look like an early experiment that failed in making it watertight. The full depth of the moat was hence unable to hold water. That said the height, depth and sequence of the ramparts and battlements, built by the De Ros family who succeeded Espec, would in medieval times have made it no push over to capture. 

The De Ros family fell fowl of being on the wrong side in the War of the Roses. So the castle and its estates were bought by the Manners family. One of whom subsequently married the infamous toy boy lover of James 1, and rake on the make, Charles Villiers, Ist Duke of Buckingham. It was not until the Civil War with the increased strength of firepower from cannons and guns, that taking a castle such as at Helmsley became possible. It fell to a siege by Fairfax's New Model Army, surrendering in November 1644.  The Parliamentarian's made the castle inoperable as a defensive structure. The 2nd Duke of Buckingham, equally as much of a scoundrel as his father, fled the country until the Restoration returned to him his estates. But from then on the castle ruins were increasingly used as aesthetic adornments to a picturesque landscaped view. Particularly once Duncome Park was created in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The final change for Helmsley Castle came in 1932 when it was taken into state ownership. And slowly the ruins were excavated from centuries of neglect, the build up of metres of soil, rubble and refuse were removed to reveal the full foundational outline of what you see today.

THE PAST IN RUINS - Creake Abbey

In 13th century Italy there arose a Christian mendicant movement which moved the hermetic and monastic lifestyle directly into engagement with the flourishing renaissance towns and cities. To minister more effectively to the spiritual needs of this growing population shift. It happened in a haphazard and something of a spontaneous way, their was no founding individual who led by example to pre-define its ethos and mission, And so in 1243 a group of Tuscan hermits petitioned Pope Innocent IV to unite them under one coherent organisation. To do so he issued a Papal Bull which instructed they all should adopt the Rule & Way of the Blessed Augustine. This Rule was the simplest and hence the easiest to adhere to amongst the challenging circumstances of lay people and monks closely interacting. The Augustinian Canons founded in the 11th century, consequentially became the umbrella organisation that these semi-monastic institutions became absorbed into. Ministering to the outside world being a central part of their religious duties. 

The progressive development of Creake Abbey does to a degree mirror these wider developments in religious context. A small chapel St Mary of the Marshes was built by the De Nerford family in 1206. The site by the small River Burn was later turned by them into a Hospital dedicated to St Bartholemew  in 1217. This was elevated by Henry III to a Priory in 1225 and to an Abbey in 1231  From relatively early on these institutions were run under the auspices of the Augustinian Canons. Patronage from local wealthy families such as the De Nerford's and from Henry III allowed them to rapidly expand  the abbey's buildings and hence the services it could offer to the local populace. Becoming a vibrant place for a local market distributing fruit, bread, ale, meat and fish to the surrounding area.

By its height in the 14th Century there was still only six full time canons, but these were augmented by many junior canons, novices and lay brethren who essentially formed the practical and administrative wing of the abbey. Unlike many other monastic sites in Norfolk, Creake Abbey continued with its original function as a hospital right up til 1397. Nearly a century later in 1484 there was a catastrophic fire in the Abbey itself. This appears to have completely destroyed the Abbey's nave and left its chancel and side chapels with blocked up windows and arches, in urgent need of repair. The abbot wrote to the king, Richard III asking for financial help in restoring the Abbey. Funds were provided by 1491 and repairs were said to be well advanced and the north side of the quire already completed twelve years later. The nave was completely abandoned as a inviable structure, so the restorations, such as they were, were focused on making the main chancel and side chapels usable spaces again. You can see that some arches have been infilled and windows inserted.

Then in 1506 further tragedy struck. There was an outbreak of the mysterious medieval 'sweating sickness' in the Abbey and this completely wiped out the remaining monastic community. No further push to restore the Abbey appears to have been attempted. And by the following year the abbey site and estates were handed over, as they were, to the Lady Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII's mother, and through her eventually became owned by Christ's College, Cambridge.

Its hard to imagine that all this was going on the periphery, of what is even now a small quiet Norfolk village. But one has to remember that barely a few miles down the road are the Burnham villages. All very closely knit with each other, with a Carmelite Friary in Burnham Norton. This corner of West Norfolk in medieval times was filled with devout religious activity, funded by the many considerably wealthy landowners of the area. Who assured there place in heaven via pious acts of patronage of religious institutions.

Creake Abbey is then quite an unusual monastic ruin, in that it was in ruins and dissolved decades before the Dissolution of the Monasteries began in 1536. Undoubtedly subsequently robbed of some of its dressed stone. It was adapted, as these ruins often were, into becoming barns for storing hay, farm produce, machinery and livestock. Other outbuildings being incorporated into an enlarged manor farm close by. What you see today, is what was left of the abbey church post those two ruinous historical events. With the nave already gone, and the chancel barely half repaired and all the local villages already having their own parish churches well established. There was no local desire to adapt the remaining buildings into a church, as at Binham or Weybourne Priory. It also maybe that locals thought the sacredness of this site was just too tainted by the double disasters that had befallen it. These were both in there own way seen as a sign of God's judgement upon it as an institution.

THE PAST IN RUINS - Binham Priory

Benedictine monasteries were commonly built in the centre of larger towns and cities. Living cheek by jowl with their surrounding, more secular, community. You could say this was a central part of their pastoral mission. In the situation of smaller Norfolk settlements such as Binham and Wymondham, they performed a secondary role as local parish church. 

Medieval Parish Churches and Monasteries were socially stratified spaces. In a Church, the Chancel was for the priest, choir and, at a push dependent on power and status, nobility, whilst the nave was for everyone else, from merchants to peasants. Similarly within a monastery, the Chancel was for educated choir monks, the Nave for uneducated lay brothers. In Binham Priory, the nave was held equally in the possession of the village and the monastery. Which explains why after the Dissolution, both at Wymondham and Binham, the nave was allowed to continue being used as the Parish Church. 

In this particular instance Binham Priory's past, is not entirely in ruins. The Nave remains intact, with arcades of dog tooth carved nave arches, clerestory and trifolium. A huge wall of carved stone, one of the glories of English architecture. Displays the transition from solid Norman Romanesque at its base, to the loftiness of Early English architectural elevations at its zenith.

In Norwich and Ely, you can see how former Benedictine monasteries, with a less fatal desecration of their physical and spiritual fabric, could transition relatively easily into being a fully fledged Cathedral. In Binham, with less power, money and population, it's transition was smaller in scale, more of an improvised patchwork repair. You get the feeling the nave of Binham Priory survived by the skin of its teeth, into becoming The Priory Church of St Mary and the Holy Cross.

What is left, besides the nave, of the rest of Binham Priory, are low walls, the bare shells of rooms and outlines of cloisters, chapter house, warming rooms, dormitory and refectory spaces. The most substantial remains are the monolithic pillars that once supported the tower, which in their half eaten away form, resemble sculpted ice lollies. Some of Binham's wider monastic ground plan, tantilisingly, is still not excavated. Many of the supportive produce and food processing areas, have yet to be investigated within the monastic boundary. 

What we see of the Priory Church today represents a herculean effort, over many generations of Binham locals, to salvage and preserve the nave - for a long long time after the Dissolution's representatives had left. The Kings Comissioners completed their required work of clearing out the monks, removing roofs and lead, taking out windows, removing ritual silver ware. What the people of the parish chose to do with the nave thereafter, was niether in their remit, nor their concern. Unless, of course, Henry 8th or Thomas Cromwell were to make it so. 

The locals proceeded to block up the windows and archways, take out the broken limbs of tracery. Insert windows into walls, and quickly bodge together a low replacement roof. Creating a functioning parish church for themselves, initially quite makeshift in appearance. Engravings and paintings from the 18th century, show you Binham Priory, pretty near to what you see now. Though perhaps slightly crumblier around its edges and overgrown with 'picturesque' ivy and buddleia.

Binham Priory, a secondary house of St Albans Abbey, was founded in 1091 by Peter de Valoines. William the Conqueror, as his uncle, gave over the land to him. The Priory received a further royal endowment from Henry 1st in 1104. The De Valoines seem to have remained the patrons and protectors of the Priory right up until the Dissolution in 1539. There was an early charter stipulating that Binham Priory should never contain less than eight choir monks. Presumably because any less would've been considered no longer viable as a religious institution.

The time between 1091 and 1539, is actually a salutary tale of medieval corrupt practices by a sequence of venal Abbots. The sort that forged documents, so they could not be removed from office, whilst their monks subsisted on bran and water drawn from drain pipes. They sold off the Priory silver, wasted money on endless litigation. Plus, the usual scandalous behaviour that often provided the subject matter to fill the borders of medieval illuminated manuscripts. The clerics that Chaucer so rudely parodied. 

Richard de Parco 1227-1244, is the only Abbot who appears to have been honourable and diligent in his role as spiritual leader to the Priory. However, persistent financial impropriety over centuries had, in the longer term. a huge consequence in diminishing patronage and monks. So by 1539 there were six monks left and an annual income that had declined to £140.

Inside Binham Priory there are a couple of significant objects to notice. These convey, both a sense of its communal continuity and necessary adaption to changed religious emphases.

There is a fine example of a Perpendicular style 15th century font. Portraying the Seven Sacrements, plus the Baptism of Christ, around its eight panels. That this survives in its original location, demonstrates how much the nave was both at the centre, and at the service, of the local population, well before the monasteries Dissolution.

The other object is a repurposing of the old medieval rood screen, after it was dismantled. Some of the remaining screen panels have been incorporated into a side pew. At some point those panels was painted white, and in gothic calligraphic letters religious verses were inscribed over the top. The seeming triumphe of religious language over religious imagery.  However, if you look closely, over time some of the surface paint has worn away and in places medieval faces and decorative guilding are now peeking out. The rich medieval world contained beneath the puritanical bold black text quotations from Cranmer's Bible of 1539. 

These artifacts encapsulate something of the essential nature of Binham Priory, salvaged and repaired, yet still bearing all of the scars of that past sacrilege, even as it proudly holds its head high in the present.

THE PAST IN RUINS - Whitby Abbey

The ruins of Whitby Abbey dramatically crown the headland and loom over the harbour. This distinctive building, with its gaunt silhouette, marked a safe haven for those at sea, a recognisable, brooding institution, and a place of religious contemplation and mission. One that became the background to a gothic romantic novel. A place now luridly floodlit on Halloween. The Abbey and its ruins, in human imaginations, have been many things to many people. 

When you consider where the abbey is positioned, you wonder what possessed them to build it there. Severely exposed to the fiercest of storms and thunderous winds. These days the weathering scars ever deeper into its ancient stonework. Originally the headland is thought to have been much larger, sitting higher in relation to the Abbey, which sheltered in its protective shadow. It also was not originally alone up there, An early settlement, once clustered around the nascent abbey, like a shanty town.

For the ruins we now see, are not what was 

originally built here in the 7th and 8th centuries. That settlement, called Streaneshalch ( Streane's Headland ), was an Anglian community, with perhaps only a staithe in the harbour beneath. The religious community, though only a handful in number, had a small minster church. Records are sketchy of how substantial a building this was. Though it was once one of four such 'minsters' perched above river mouths along this coastline.

Oswiu King of Northumbria sent Abbess Hild to found the minster of St Peter in 657. It became under her tutelage a hub of learning and literacy. Producing Caedmon, the first person known to have written poetry in the English language. Abbess Hild was confident and charismatic, becoming an extremely effective, inspirational spiritual leader, of this double house monastic foundation, one for both monks and nuns. Her wise, calm and peaceable demeanour made her a much sought after advisor. Abbess Hild, was what made the minster at Streaneshalch famous across Europe. Which, no doubt, is why it was chosen as the site for a pivotal meeting of Christians in 664. 

This meeting, now retrospectively referred to as The Synod of Whitby, was called to resolve a longstanding clash of two religious cultures, over practice and authority. There were many areas of contention, but it mainly centered around the date of Easter. An Irish-Ionian date versus that of Catholic Rome. Which version was to have precedence? The Synod decided conclusively on Rome's. 

After Abbess Hild's death in 680, a considerable cult built up around the veneration of her. There was no official process of beatification in Anglo Saxon times, sainthood was a title bestowed upon individuals simply through the combination of common religious experience, devotion and the miraculous. She forged a huge spiritual reputation for the Abbey. That even in its future centuries, in its much larger Benedictine manifestation, it lived off, and often failed to live up to it.

Streaneshalch was built on a headland because that was easier to defend from attack by raiders. Then in 793 the Viking's infamously desecrated the religious community at Lindisfarne. It was only a matter of time before Streaneshalch would also become a target. In the 9th century the Anglian settlement and minster was so badly attacked, it had subsequently to be abandoned. A new town founded with the Danish name Whitby, began to thrive in the harbour beneath.

Whitby was, seemingly, without any notable religious presence on the headland for nearly a century. Until, post 1066, a Norman soldier called Reinfrid, journeying on his way northward, stopped off to visit whatever remained of the headland minster. He felt moved to become a monk, later returning as a hermit. By 1078 he'd accumulated enough followers to build a small priory. 

Any religious foundation required endowments, patronage and land, simply for its survival. Reinfrid wanted to keep the community small in number, and fought hard against the drive, by others, to build a fully fledged Benedictine monastery. This desire proved irresistible. Today, all we know about that larger monastery, is its size and outline. Its marked out in the grass of Whitby's ruins. This was built around 1109 in a simple Romanesque style, and appears to have had five side chapels in the form of apses.

Ambitions to always be building better, larger and in a more fashionable gothic architectural style, proved overwhelming for the egos of a series of medieval Abbots. All despite the monastery appearing to have been almost permanently overstretched financially. Abbot Benedict in the 12th century had to be forcibly removed for 'squandering' the Abbey's wealth. In 1320 a papal visitation found the abbey to be seriously in debt. With a far from diligent group of choir monks, who preferred hunting to applying themselves to devotional practice. Yet, merely ten years after that papal assessment, this self same monastery was embarking itself on a hugely expensive project to rebuild the entire Nave. This could only be done through the patronage of wealthy people such as the Percy family. The endeavour  nonetheless had to be abandoned half completed - the money ran out. 

Where they had reached by this point can be seen in the West Nave. There are a series of 13th century Early English lancet windows, which are followed by the recognisably elaborate tracery of later 14th century Decorated windows. It was a full hundred years later before sufficient funds could be raised to complete the nave project. Altogether it took 250 years to finish the Whitby Abbey we now see. The Nave, from the start, had been misaligned to the tower and presbytery, by about four degrees. Though this is not an uncommon occurance in large scale medieval stone buildings. One has to wonder what pressure those builders were under for so substantial an error to happen.

Other aspects of the monasteries finances were strained. Whitby Abbey was bequeathed 'burgage' over the town of Whitby by Henry 1st. This gave them the right to raise money through charges on the profits from the town's market, annual fairs, civil court and from its thriving fishing industry. 

This type of financial fleecing by the Benedictine abbey of its local townspeople was never popular. To require even begrudging support, it did required the Abbey to be spiritually exemplary. Because all Benedictine foundations lived within towns, everything about them was known, subject to prejudicial conjecture or scurilous rumour. In the straightened economy of the 14th century, when the feudal structure of England pretty much collapsed, onerous taxes from a Benedictine monastery, frequently became the final straw. Incensed locals, at best took legal redress, at worst they rioted.

The later history of the Abbey is very poorly documented. Though by the time of its dissolution in 1539, its known there were 22 monks rattling around its vast and chilly cloisters. Its level of patronage had so declined, the income it generated made it one of the poorest Benedictine houses in England.

The land, subsequent to the Dissolution, was leased to the Cholmley family. Initially they only lived there during the summer. Nonetheless, they set too and demolished most of the remaining monastery service buildings. The abbey itself was left untouched because it was such a distinctive landmark, which could be seen from the sea. And, no doubt, it also acted as this large physical windbreak.

During the era of the romantic ruin in the grounds of stately homes, the old abbots house  became fronted with a classically designed building, including an elegant courtyard. This house subsequently had its roof blown off in a storm on 1790. and was to fall into ruin thereafter. The remains of this are now used as the abbey's museum and shop.