csg annual conference - april 2017 - markenfield hall · csg annual conference - april 2017 -...

116THE CASTLE STUDIES GROUP JOURNAL NO 29: 2015-16THE CASTLE STUDIES GROUP JOURNAL NO 31: 2017-18

Markenfield Hall. First-floor hall (left - ground level entrance). The north lodging, chapel and southlodging are to the east (right). Additional lodgings, running south along the east range originally hadexterior stairs to the first-floor apartments. Far left: Early 15th century kitchen is adjacent to andwest of the Great Hall.

Markenfield HallThe small settlement of Markenfield sits infields three miles south of Ripon, looking muchas it did when built in the early fourteenthcentury. It is mostly medieval and has beenbeautifully restored.The builder was John de Markenfield (d. before1323) one-time Chancellor to the hapless Ed-ward II. It received a licence to crenellate in1310, but it is felt that much rebuilding was inprocess before that date. The hall now wearsany obvious defences lightly, but needed somelevel of defensive cover to protect him from his(or the king’s) local enemies; it might properlybe called a ‘lightly fortified manor house’.The handsome guidebook, which reproducesthe original enrolment of the licence, (p.7) sug-gests that the gatehouse had a drawbridge overthe moat until the eighteenth century; there wasalso an outer moat. The present remains of

‘walk-ways, arrow-loop embrasures, and bat-tlements above, emphasise that when thepresent house was constructed c. 1310, (incor-porating parts of an earli r 1230s house) it wasbuilt with defense in mind - as it had to be: thecountry was on the brink of civil war betweenthe barons and the ineffective Edward II, andJohn de Markenfield was part of the royalhousehold and marked out as a hated king’sman.The house is now formed around a rectangularcourtyard circumscribed by the moat. TheGreat Hall is straight ahead (above), on thefirst floor, with the solar and lodging apart-ments to the east forming a compact L-shapedblock. The elegant spiral staircase is distin-guished by its distinctive steeple-like cap.Markenfield is a rare treasure in the hands ofdedicated custodians. It is the most completesurviving example of a medium sized four-teenth-century country house in England.

CSG Annual Conference - April 2017 - Markenfield Hall


Plan (from the guidebook) of how the medieval vaulting of thepresent house may have been arranged before before consid-erably dismantled in about 1570. The site of the original GreatHall (or chamber block) and its undercroft of the earlier 1230shouse is marked in red. The plan is based on the measuredsurvey by John Miller during the 1981-84 restoration.

The 1230s houseThe late Professor Andor Gomme worked over several yearsto establish precisely where the ‘second’ Markenfield Hall wasbuilt and how much of it had been incorporated into the third(c. 1310) Markenfield that exists today.

He concluded that the second Markenfield was built c. 1230.Its undercroft consisted of the three surviving vaulted or semi-vaulted ground floor rooms on the east side of the house andits Great Hall above was what is now part of the Chapel, thefour poster bedroom and the two rooms beyond. It was consid-erably smaller than the Markenfield that survives today butmany differences in style and proportion mark it out as earlythirteenth century work.

Andor Gomme’s posthumous summary analysis is presentedin The Medieval Great House’, 2011, pp. 109-124, but on hisown admission, ‘There is doubtless still much to be learntabout Markenfield: this account therefore is offered as a stag-ing post during work in progress’.



Floor plans by Priestly Shires.North to the right.From: ‘The Old Halls and Manor Housesof Yorkshire’ by Louis Ambler. 1913



Markenfield Hall. By William Twopenny, c. 1830s. View from the SW. British Museum ref:AN00142931_001_l. © Trustees of the British Museum. Note the gable-end windows of thebuilding terminating the west range - since removed to accommodate a fireplace and flue (below).BELOW: A similar viewpoint today.



ABOVE: The Tudor gatehouse which may have replaced an earlier gatehouse on the samefootprint. It contains a dovecot in the ground-floor west chamber (left). BELOW: The exterior ofthe west range (to the left of the gatehouse, looking south) - stables, brewhouses and services.



Markenfield. The east façade with the large chapel window. A narrow lancet window on the extremeright (north) possibly dates from the earlier hall/solar block (1230s) and remained incorporatedinto the new 1310 house (window altered later). BELOW: The NE corner with the lean-to latrineblock, Great Hall to the right with its flue and chimney stack (the latter probably inserted post 1310).



Markenfield - Great Hall and kitchen block from the north. A façade with many puzzles. Betweenthe LH garderobe block and the chimney is a blocked doorway, half built into the 14th centurywindow above it. What was its purpose? And why does the similar window to the right have anoblique roofline cutting right across it?



Markenfield - Great Hall and kitchen block from the north, by William Twopenny. c. 1830s. On thisside, the upper part of the roof-top parapet is missing, and without any arrow loops or crenels. Wasit always thus? The chimney stack is also missing, but there is one at the gable end..

BELOW: The wide segmental arched fireplace in the Great Hall, flush with the wall - a copy of theone that is now in the undercroft below (right) which was removed from the hall when the buildingbecame a farmhouse. Suggested date of the fireplace is the 1340s (guidebook p. 24), an earlyinnovation that was moving away from the tall pyramidal projecting hooded fireplace.



Markenfield Hall. Great Hall and east lodging block. From ‘Some Account of Domestic Architec-ture in England’, Vol. II, J. H. Parker 1853, opp. p. 230. Artist: William Twopenny.BELOW: A similar view today. Notice the change to the ground-floor entrance into the Great Hallundercroft, and the insertion of the long narrow late-Victorian window, replacing a square frame.



Markenfield Hall. The ‘Utility Room’ under the ‘Solar’ at the north end of Undercroft ‘B’. This appearsto be the earliest remaining set of two-bay quadripartite vaults (1230s), and was supported by a centralrow of columns or piers, similar to the cellarium at Fountains Abbey (see over and p. 127). Imagereproduced courtesy of Markenfieldhall.com.




Markenfield - Vault under the Solar. View of the semi-octagonal corbel capital in the Utilityroom. (Larder on Priestly Shire’s plan), in the northern part of space ‘B’.



Markenfield Hall - The quadripartite vaulting under the Solar. The Utility room. (Larder on PriestlyShire’s plan), in space ‘B’.BELOW left: One of the (two remaining?) freestanding central piers now virtually encased within adividing partition wall. Below right: The cellarium at Fountains Abbey (mid-late C12), not far fromMarkenfield, similar to Markenfield, but the ribs are taken down to the ground.



ABOVE: Left: Art nouveau window in the Great Hall c. 1900. Right: Twin-light c. 1300-1310 hallwindow with trefoil-headed lights and quatrefoils - facing the courtyard.BELOW: 1,2 The Great Hall looking west to the C15 kitchen range through the door in the gableend, 2, looking NE. Blocked late C13?/C14 window embrasure with tracery above. 3. Chapel witheast window. 4. The vaulted study.

1 2

34



The elegant east 14th century lodging block with semi-octagonal steeple-capped staircase turret.View from the courtyard. Altered from two floors to three floors with reorganised fenestration inabout 1550. Inset: Clockwise spiral staircase interiors - cut-slab risers and wide lights.



Bibliography

Gomme, Andor, 2011, ‘Markenfeld Hall,Yorkshire’ in Airs, M. and Barnwell, P. S.(eds), The Medieval Great House (Donington:Shaun Tyas), 109-124

Goodall, John, 2011, The English Castle 1066-1650 (Yale University Press), 233, 235

Curteis, Ian, n.d. c. 2010, Markenfield Hall(Windsor: Wilton) (official handbook)

Senior, J. C., 2009, The Markenfields of Marken-field Hall (Black Swan Books)

Gomme, Andor and Maguire, Alison, 2008, De-sign and plan in the country house: from castledonjons to Palladian boxes (Yale UniversityPress), 92-4

Salter, Mike, 2001, The Castles and TowerHouses of Yorkshire (Malvern: Folly Publica-tions), 59

Emery, Anthony, 1996, Greater MedievalHouses of England and Wales Vol. 1 NorthernEngland (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress), 363-7

Pettifer, A., 1995, English Castles, A guide bycounties (Woodbridge: Boydell Press), 306

Sykes, C. S., 1988, Ancient English Houses1240-1612 (London: Chatto & Windus)

King, D. J. C., 1983, Castellarium Anglicanum(London: Kraus) Vol., 533

Ryder, P. F., 1982 (paperback edn 1992), TheMedieval Buildings of Yorkshire (Ash GroveBook), 108-22

Le Patourel, H. E. Jean, 1973, The Moated Sitesof Yorkshire (The Society for Medieval Archae-ology Monograph Series 5), 125

Pevsner, N., 1967, revised by Enid Radcliffe,Buildings of England: Yorkshire: West Riding(London), 359-60

Wood, Margaret, 1965, The English MediaevalHouse (London: Bracken), 180 passim

Martin S. Briggs, 1953, The English farmhouse(The new heritage series), 29

Wood, E. S., 1946, Ancient Buildings of Harrogate

Illingworth, J. L., 1938 (republished 1970),Yorkshire’s Ruined Castles (Wakefield), 140-1

Tipping, H. A., 1921, English Homes, period 1Vol. 1 (London), 125-32

Ambler, L., 1913, The old halls and manorhouses of Yorkshire, with some examples ofother houses built before the year 1700 (Lon-don: Batsford), 45

Sparrow, W. Shaw, 1908, The English HouseHow to judge its periods and styles (London:Eveleigh Nash), 134-8

Mackenzie, J. D., 1896, Castles of England;their story and structure (New York: Mac-millan) Vol. 2, 235-6

Turner, T. H. and Parker, J. H., 1859, Someaccount of Domestic Architecture in England(Oxford) Vol. 3 Part 2, 406

Turner, T. H. and Parker, J. H., 1853, Someaccount of Domestic Architecture in England(Oxford) Vol. 2, 231-4

Periodical Articles

Goodall, J., 2008 June 18, ‘Markenfield Hall’Country Life 25, 116-21

2003, ‘Medieval Britain and Ireland in 2002’Medieval Archaeology Vol. 47, 292 No. 246

Miller, J. S., 1985, ‘Restoration Work atMarkenfield Hall 1981-1984’ Yorkshire Ar-chaeological Journal Vol. 57, 101-110

Worsley, Giles, 1985 Sept 19, ‘MarkenfieldHall North Yorkshire. The home of Lord andLady Grantley’ Country Life, 800-5

Harrington, C., 1953, The Dalesman Vol. 15.4

Hussey, 1940, Dec 28, ‘Markenfield Hall, York-shire’ Country Life, 566-701

Tipping, H. A., 1912 Feb 10, ‘Markenfield Hall,Yorkshire’ Country Life, 206-212

CD RomAspects of Markenfield 6: A story Told inStone: the pre-1310 house., Pr. Andor Gomme,Malcolm Hand (Ed).

csg annual conference - april 2017 - markenfield hall · csg annual conference - april 2017 -...

Documents