Medieval Normandy - Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance

Beginning in the middle of the ninth century, raiding parties from Scandinavia first pillaged, and then occupied, the coastal reaches of northern France. The effect on Carolingian France was catastrophic, and as its governmental systems collapsed, France disintegrated into a patchwork of small feudal domains. 

Normandy was one of the most significant of these, and after the old Norse chieftain Rollo was granted the lordship of the lands north of the rivers Epte and Andelle, he took the title ‘Duke’ and set his embryonic duchy on a course of expansion. With feudalism came Christianity, the adoption of the French language and the emergence of one of the most far-reaching and influential schools of architecture to grace medieval Europe.

It is no exaggeration to see in the events of 1066 something central to a Norman, and English, sense of identity, events which are relayed in the Bayeux tapestry. But the most visible reminders of William’s success at Hastings are the great Norman castles and churches which are such familiar landmarks of English towns. Their origins lie in the pioneering eleventh-century buildings of Jumièges, Rouen and Caen. This development of a mature Romanesque architecture places Normandy at the forefront of an initiative which was to have profound consequences for later medieval Europe – the development of the integrated and articulate church on a colossal scale – the effects of which are readily seen.

Normandy’s Romanesque buildings have often been the subject of lavish praise, however. That distinctive late twelfth- and thirteenth-century architecture, of polished surfaces, detached shaftwork, giddying spires and sumptuous colour remains less widely appreciated. It is also the case that the buildings undertaken in the aftermath of the Hundred Years War have been overlooked by historians of the period. Yet these are characterised by an extraordinarily well-developed interest in the picturesque and the fantastical, by myriad angles, flickering tracery, and twisted slate-hung roofs. Taken individually they number among the most ravishing buildings of late medieval Europe.