A recent trip to Normandy has opened my eyes to the ubiquity in the Pays d’Auge of well-preserved medieval half-timbered houses, and the persistence of this style of architecture even in contemporary construction. The overall effect is one of stepping back in time.
In this part of Normandy, the old style of building manor houses can clearly be seen. Often, they have defensive features such as a moat or a gatehouse. Larger houses are typically built around a central courtyard with a hall, kitchens and lodge, and there will be ancillary buildings: farmsteads, barns, dovecots and perhaps a chapel grouped nearby. The grander seigneuries or chateaux may have more elaborate fortifications such as the twelfth century stone walls surrounding a keep atop a motte with surrounding moat at the Chateau de Crevecoeur.
The fifteenth century dovecote at Chateau de Crevecoeur is a wonder to behold with 1,500 pigeonholes. (I imagine keeping it clean would have been one of the less pleasant jobs for the peasants!)
A more modest example of a medieval moated manor house is the late fifteenth century beautiful Manoir de Coupesarte. This amazingly well-preserved timber framed house has fairy-tale lookout turrets with candle snuffer roofs. It is built on stone and brick foundations and still surrounded by a moat. The complex of ancillary agricultural buildings is arranged around a nearby open courtyard. Looking at buildings like this provides a gateway to understanding how people once lived in the Middle Ages. In England, few houses of this kind have survived; I imagine that a wetter climate and pressure of population growth must have taken a toll. But there is at least one ancient house I can think of to compare…
Ightham Mote in Kent is one of the most complete small medieval manor houses in England. It was the setting for Anya Seton’s ‘Green Darkness’ (a time-slip set partly in the Tudor period and hugely popular in the 1970s). The buildings were originally timber then rebuilt in ragstone and brick in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. First built in the early fourteenth century (c1340), the manor is remarkable in that it still faces inward around its central courtyard and remains surrounded by a moat crossed by three bridges.
Ightham’s earliest recorded owner was Thomas Cawne who fought in France with Edward the Black Prince and was for a while captain of the fortress of Neubourg near Rouen in Normandy. He was rewarded with a knighthood and acquired Ightham in the 1360s. There’s a delightful irony here in that the Norman style of feudal manor house which developed in England following the Conquest of 1066 led to the building of Ightham which was bought by a soldier on the back of his rewards after fighting in Normandy!
