January 2003

Parish History Episode 21

The Normans in Houghton

The Conquest of England by King Sweyn of Denmark and his son Canute had not proved very destructive to the Kingdom. It had meant little more than the elimination of the native Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, and their replacement by Danish lords, with very little difference as far as the peasantry were concerned, beyond a change of masters. Denmark itself had been converted to Christianity during the century and a half between Halfdane and Sweyn, and the difference between the behaviour of the pagan Vikings and the pious Canute was plain for all to see.

But the events arising from the Conquest by Duke William of Normandy, leader of a host of baptised warriors of Norse descent, and patron of a new modem brand of Christianity associated arm the reforms of Cluny and of Hildebrand, were to prove as atrocious as the worst outrages committed by Ragnar and Halfdane. After his great victory at Hastings, in October of 1066, William spent a couple of months ravaging the South-Eastern shires, before occupying London in late December. He made arrangements for his own coronation as King of England in Westminster Abbey (newly completed by Edward the Confessor) on Christmas Day, but by the appointed dale his enthusiastic followers had sacked the city of London and had set it on fire, and the coronation had to be performed in a hurry, with the nostrils of the participants irritated by smoke from the houses burning in London.

At the New Year, William prepared for the subjugation of the rest of England. He had many adventurous knights in his retinue to whom he had promised land and wealth, and to accommodate them he declared that the existing landowners would be condemned to death for their “treason” in not opposing King Harold's usurpation of the English Crown, and would have their lands confiscated. However, the Anglo-Danish lords already in possession did not imagine that William would choose to alienate the whole country simply to recompense his greedy followers, and, assuming that he would have to work through the existing 'Establishment’ they quickly began to send in declarations of loyalty to the new King, and apologies for ever having supported the old one. This meant that William did not have to fight every step of the way in his Conquest of England.

But a lot of fighting would still be required. William's normal reply to such acts of submission by the Anglo-Danish proprietors was simply to issue them a free parson, without evoking the confiscation of their lands, so most of them withdrew their submission, and soon fighting was going on in most parts of England. William only needed to campaign in person in the course of suppressing the most serous “revolts" (for instance, that of Hereward the Wake), as the Norman knight who had been awarded an estate could usually be left to gain it for himself with the edge of his sword.

The fighting was most serous along the Welsh and Scottish borders, where it was easy for defeated Anglo-Danish lords to seek sanctuary across the border, and possibly to return to their estates when things were looking better. It was especially serious In the Northern shires, as King Malcolm III of Scotland was a more dangerous potential enemy than was Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, who then ruled as king over (most of) Wales. King Malcolm had in fact taken the opportunity of the Normans landing in the South to recapture the city of Carlisle, which he had (as readers of Shakespeare's May will recall) ceded to Earl Siward of Northumbria, in gratitude for Siward’s assistance in disposing of the “usurper” Macbeth in 1057, and be had shown himself strong enough for King William not to wish to challenge this act of aggression. Furthermore, the English - or rather the Northumbrian - language was the normal speech of the South-Eastern Mires of Scotland, annexed from England by Malcolm Ill's great-grandfather, Malcolm II, and therefore that part of Scotland was very attractive as a place of refuge for English “rebels” fleeing Norman vengeance.

The Norman knights whom William had unleashed on the North behaved with great brutality as they established themselves in their new estates, giving ample cause for many of their new subjects to flee across the Tweed to Scotland. One such would be that Sir John whose family would identify themselves by the name "le Spring", from their rendering of the English name "Houghton atte Springe". We know nothing about the le Springs, but their choice of a surname does seem to confirm that there was some sort of living community at Houghton by 1066, and the place was not still simply the pile of ruins left by Halfdane.

Sir John would expect to live well on the rents he imposed upon his peasants, but he would be expected to give something back in return for his exploitation of the land. He would be expected to maintain justice and law, and no doubt he was willing to hang other robbers so as to leave more for himself. He would be expected to defend his lands from the King's enemies, which would mean driving off any marauding Vikings or Scottish raiders. In order to do this effectively, he was expected to maintain a small gang of ruffians, probably of French origin, who would form his private army, and to build a defensible stronghold from which those enemies could be defied. The normal type at stronghold would be a 'keep', that is a steep mound of earth, like that on which Durham Castle is built, which would be topped initially by a wooden palisade, in which he and his men would dwell, and later, when there was time to quarry and dress stones for use, a stone tower, which might later, as in Durham, evolve into a proper castle. There is of course no trace of any such construction at Houghton or at any neighbouring village, and probably none was built. So many men had fled to Scotland that it was probably difficult to assemble the work-force necessary for such construction, and Sir John would also feel that such peasants as did remain could be more productively employed on the land, to his direct financial benefit.

Also, the Normans had conquered England, in part at least, to reform the English Church, and to bring it up to Roman and Hildebrandine standards. The Norman lord was therefore expected to be a patron of the reformed religion, and to see to the spiritual welfare of his peasants by employing a priest and maintaining a church in which the priest could say Mass - or building a church if there was none there when he arrived.
A church was eventually built (though possibly not until fifty years after the Conquest), and that is the church in which we now worship: though little enough of that Norman building now remains in our much restored church, rebuilt again and again over the centuries.

If we stand outside the church, beneath the great West window (the Gilpin Window ), we may note that there is a 'string-course', running below the sill of the window, about six or seven feet above ground-level. Above the string-course the limestone blocks are oblong in shape, and much weathered (damaged also by coal-smoke in the Nineteenth Century, and cleaning in the Twentieth), while below the string-course, the blocks are smaller, nearly square, and apparently less worn, but patched up with broken bricks and plaster rendering, the rendering having subsequently been worn away in many places. This renovation was undertaken during the Nineteenth Century, but it is possible that the square blocks, or some of them, come from the original Norman church' - or from another Norman building. They are similar to the blocks used for the North wall of the Chancel, the only part of the church which is definitely of Norman date; and Nineteenth-century reports on the churchyard do refer to "architectural fragments strewn about”, which may have included Norman stonework.

Certainly the work of Norman builders can be seen in the exterior of the North wall of the Chancel, the stones still standing in the position where they were laid, nine centuries ago. While one has to go outside to see the stones themselves, the ornamentation is best viewed from the inside. Standing within the Chancel, and looking towards the North wall (the side where the organ is), a narrow doorway can be seen, topped by a round-headed arch ornamented with a "dog-tooth" pattern, and above that is a semi-circular tympanum, on which can be seen a carving of what may be described as the “Houghton Beast”. To the right of that doorway is a similar round-headed window, with a Nineteenth-Century stained-glass picture of Michael slaying the Dragon.
If we inspect more closet/ the design on the tympanum, we will see that the Houghton Beast is actually two beasts - two intertwined dragons fighting each other. This type of design is of great antiquity, and is known in Scythian and Celtic and Germanic art of more than a thousand years earlier. The Houghton Beasts can claim to have had relatives on the Eurasian steppes and in Nordic forests. Such beasts passed into the folklore of the Germanic peoples: there was Siegfried and Fafner, or Beowulf and Grendel, in ancient myth.

We read in "BeowuIf :-

The fleetness of the serpent wound itself together,
Came flowing forward, flaming and coiling.
Our chief raised his hand and brought down a stroke,
With his ancestral sword, that, meeting the bone,
It turned, bit less strongly than required of it then;
The bared battle-blade had failed in the fight!
After this on the worm grew savage-minded
Spat death-fire, war flashes blazed in the distance.
Fire fenced in the folk-king: he felt bitter pain.

In Northumbria there is of course much more modem mythology about such 'worms" - the Laidley Worm of Spindlestone, near Bamburgh; the Sockburn Worm on the river Tees; and closer to Houghton, the Lambton Worm:-

Whisht, lads, haad yor gobs.
Aa’ll tell ye aal an aaful story,
Whisht lads, haad yor gobs,
An' aa'll tell ye 'boot the worrrm.

But the worrrm got fat an growed an' growed,
An' growed an aaful size;
He'd greet big teeth, a greet big gob,
An’ greet big gogglie eyes
.
. This feorful worrrm wad often feed
On calves an’ lambs an' sheep
An swally Iittle bairns alive
When they laid doon to sleep.

We do not know who was the stone-mason who carved the Houghton Beast. We suspect that he had in his head some “worm stories", either heroic ones like "Beowulf”, or more cheerful ones about monsters on the river Wear. He may have seen such dragons illustrated in a book now in the Durham Cathedral Library, which once belonged to Carileph, the second Norman bishop of Durham (1081-1096), describing the beasts that Satan will attempt to unleash at the Last Judgment, including a pair which look remarkably like the Houghton Beasts.

But what the mason was meant to be illustrating was, almost certainly, the dragon which fought against the Archangel Michael, as described in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Revelation:-
"There was war in Heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the Dragon; and the Dragon fought, and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in Heaven. And the great Dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole World: he was cast out into the Earth, and his angels were cast out with him."

Michael was a popular figure with the warlike Normans. For them, he took the place later held by Saint George, a more or less mythical saint, also renowned for slaying dragons and rescuing damsels, who was brought to England from the Holy Land by returning Crusaders, including perhaps the "bold Sir John" Lambton, the hero who slew the Lambton Worn. The Normans dedicated many of their new churches to Michael: not only at Houghton, but also at Bishopwearmouth, Wilton Gilbert, Bishop Middleham and Heighington, to mention only parishes in County Durham.

Thus did that other Sir John (le Spring) not only build for Houghton a church, but he provided it with a background of ideas, which connected our town with ancient legends, with the foundation myths of the English people, with contemporary heroics with the Hebrew Scriptures, and with the Revelation to Saint John the Divine, at the close of the Christian Bible.


1 Peter Ryder suggests, on page I of his report “St.Michael & All Angels, Houghton-le-Spring, an Archaeological Assessment, April, 1998" (available in the parish library ), that These square blocks came from the original Norman church; but I am not altogether convinced by his argument.

2 See pages II and 12 above report. Ryder is quoting from the "Proceedings of the Society of Newcastle”, Second Series, Volume VIII. page 198, 1899.

3 Julien Glover's translation of "Beowulf” (Into modern English)

4. Julian Glover’s suggests, in an article ''St Michael, the Dragon and the Lamb on Early Timpana”, published in the “Transactions of the Architectural and Archaeological Society of Durham & Northumberland” Second Series, Volume VI, that the mason who carved the Houghton Beast may well have been shown this illustration before he began to carve this tympanum in Houghton church.

Dick Toy

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