similarly-scaled and dressed Hildenley limestone, butwith coursed rubble stonewalls between. The bedding mortar of thesewalls is earth – sometimes just earth (always sub-soil), sometimes of earth tempered with quicklime, themortar hot-mixed.
THE town of Malton was burned by order of Thurstan, Archbishop of York, in 1138, in retribution for its Lord, Eustace Fitzjohn, having allied with King David of Scotland in Mathilda’s cause against Stephen. A close ally of Henry I, Eustace Fitzjohn had been given Malton Castle by the King around 1120. He also controlled Alnwick and Bamburgh castles, and built the former of stone from the beginning of his tenure. There is no reason to suppose that he did not immediately build in stone on theMalton Castle site, nor to imagine that stonewas not his material of choice for the building of New Malton after 1138,work which may be taken to have begun around 1140, after Eustace’s recovery fromwounds received at the Battle of the Standard two years earlier.
THE geology of Malton’s vaults themselves tends to reflect that of the walls – oolitic limestone most often, but frequently Hildenley limestone, utilising the more slatty upper beds from the quarries, though each voussoir has been dressed. The vaults beneath number 43 Yorkersgate and beneath the Lodge, are of calcareous sandstone, however, reflecting the geology of the exteriormasonry of the buildings they occupy. Those beneath the Lodge date from 1604.Other vaults – such as that beneath thewest range of York House, as elsewhere in Yorkersgate – are of brick over limestone walls, but the thickness of these bricks is nowhere above two inches, and these bricks may be considered to be of early, and local, manufacture, from the historic brickyards ofNorton. Given Malton and Norton’s river
connectionwithHull, there is little reason to suppose that brick-making, carried out locally in the Roman period, was not revived as early in the town as it had been inHull and Beverley, and certainly by the 14th century. Themortar of the vaults is, typically,
a hot-mixed limemortar of limestone aggregate and quicklime. Lime mortar flattened between a timber centring and the soffits of the vault voussoirs is commonly found still in situ, and even the grain of the timber that formed the upper surface of the centring may
be observed, aswell as, in places, the impression of the planks themselves. Some of the vaults have been earth
and/or lime-plastered in the past, but the general pattern seems to have been that they were limewashed after the pointing (or otherwise) of the earth-builtwallswith lime mortar. Original earth plasters, with lime finish coat – the typical pattern of internal plastering locally until the mid-18th century –may have been lost from the
undercrofts in the past and been displaced by limewash. This took place as the status of the undercrofts declined and they came to be viewed as what they are today – just cellars – and much less used. Most of the undercrofts have
windows, nowbelow ground. Typically, thesewere beneath segmental or semi-circular arches, applied or formed of the vault itself, and usually sit high in thewallwith horizontally- and
Facing page, New Malton circa 1728, a detail from a painting of the town by John Settrington (Fitzwilliam Collection). The town was laid out following destruction by fire in the middle ages. It is thus one of Britain’s oldest formally designed towns
This page (from top), medieval vaults visited and recorded by the Malton Buildings Group include that under Forsyth House on Market Place; beneath the Talbot Hotel; and under the Cross Keys pub
vertically-splayed reveals. Some of the windows retain dressed stone surrounds to their outside faces, though these are now concealed by the ground. Some of the vaults on the upper level of theMarket Placemaywell have opened on to the streets – that beneath Forsyth House has a central pilaster thatmay rather have been a columnwhen built, with an open shop front to either side, now infilled.
MOST of the vaulted spaces along the south side of Yorkersgate–the buildings sitting atop a natural incline due to a geological fault and escarpment,which descends to the River Derwent–were partially below ground,withwindows, on their north side. However, the topography allowed for doorways to their south side into which the vaults could be entered froma ground level, which was the same or very similar to their floor level. Some of these entrances have survived at this level, whilst others now have later stairs, ground levels having been built up. Some, at least, retainwinding,
though not newel stone stairswithin which rise to the stone building above. All of the materials of these vaulted
undercrofts is of immediately local Cornerstone, Vol 32, No 2 2011 71
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88