provenance. Bricks and tiles from the southern flood-plains of the River Derwent;Malton oolitic limestone, aggregate and quicklime from quarries in and around the town itself; calcareous sandstone from quarries on York Road andOld Maltongate. Sub-soil for earth “from wastes on either side of the town” the gathering of which (and of stone) “for building and edification” formed the first right and privilege of the burgesses of New Malton, as set out in the surviving 15th-century version of the borough charter. The footings of the undercrofts themselves, as these were dug, also provided a source of sub-soil. Hildeneley limestone came the
furthest – from two-and-a-half miles away, along CastleHoward Road, the former Roman Road to York from Malton. The quarries were acquired by the Stricklands of Boynton in 1545, having previously belonged to the Gilbertine Malton Priory. A fine-grained, creamy-white stone of very high quality (not unlike Portland base-bed, readily carvable and geologically unique and scarce),Hildeneleywas used exclusively by the church and, later, by the Stricklands. Any old buildings, with vaulted undercrofts or otherwise, in Maltonmay be assumed to have been the creation of one or the other of these quarry owners.
T
here are vaults beneath the TalbotHotel – formerly the Strickland Hunting Lodge – which have precisely tooled pilasters typical of the early 18th century. These can be
attributed to the Strickland period, alongwithmuch of the building above ground. There are other pilasters, of very different character, also of Hildenley limestone, which may be medieval and associated with the Priory – thoughmost of the building above was built between 1672-1715 by Sir William Strickland. Other groined vaults, of similar
character to the latter, and of Hildenley limestone, survive in the town – beneath ForsythHouse, for example – and these, too,may be reasonably attributed to theGilbertines. The Priory was a significant owner of property within the borough and a key investor in construction in the town before its dissolution in 1539. D In her book Thirteenth Century
omestic Architecture in England,
Margaret Mead characterised a 13th-century urban undercroft thus:
72 Cornerstone, Vol 32, No 2 2011
“There remain a number of storage cellars, the ground floor of town houses, ofwhich the first floor, probably often timber-framed... has been rebuilt. These basements were cellars in bothmodern and medieval sense, being sunk some 6-10 feet below street level... and accessible from the latter by steps down from a doorway or hinged flap. “The windowswould also be at
ground level, placed high in the cellar walls and splayed downwards... a further staircasemay remain in the side walls, often blocked, leading to the destroyed upper floor... These cellars may have combined the functions of workroomand shop, or as storage spaces to a booth in the street in front. The family and apprentices would live in the rooms above.” Discussing the forms of medieval
vault in her later book, The English Medieval House,Mead identifies three
main types of vault or stone ceiling: the barrel vault... semi-circular in the 12th century, developing into the pointed form in the 13th century; the groined vault formed by the intersection of two barrel vaults, and the ribbed vault...” Mead then discusses the fact that the diagonal ribs of such vaults inevitably presented as ellipses and not as semi-circles, introducing potential weakness into the vault and leading, in her analysis, to the natural solution of the pointed, arched vault. She adds that “In 12th-century houses the round barrel vaults are plain”. With locally specific variables,
Mead’s are fair descriptions of most of Malton’s vaulted spaces. The most crucial variablewould be the topographical enabling of doorways to one side of the otherwise partly subterranean vaults in Malton, and the strong likelihood that the buildings above them were always of stone and that some may, therefore, remain, molested but not “destroyed”.
EVEN without Eustace Fitzjohn’s predilection for masonry construction – andwith the resources to do so being so plentiful and so close, occurring within feet of the surface throughout the site of the town – there would have been good reason to use stone for the construction ofNewMalton. There is no reason to assume that any medieval undercrofts that survive in the town previously lay under timber-framed houses, as elsewhere in England. The rural hinterland of Malton is replete with Anglian church towers,
showing that an accomplished masonry tradition existed locally even before it was given the impetus of the construction of the Castle and Priory church, and two other Norman churches in the town itself. Gradually dismembered between 1670 and especially by the Watson Wentworths after 1732, what survives of the Gilbertine Priory churchwas described
by George Gilbert Scott in 1877 as “a magnificent remain of one of the noblest periods of medieval art”. In the same way as the Priory’s extensive ownership and influence has left its cultural imprint upon a hinterland around the town, the influence of such craftsmanship– particularly the establishment of a rich stonemasonry tradition–cannot be ignored throughout the historic town.
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