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I love this sort of discussion because, whilst I'm now an IT consultant, I studied Civ Eng at Plymouth Poly and graduated in 1992 when the UK had a bit of a rec

I love this sort of discussion because, whilst I'm now an IT consultant, I studied Civ Eng at Plymouth Poly and graduated in 1992 when the UK had a bit of a recession and it all went a bit south. I should have been a Civ Eng but ended up a bit of an IT nerd. Building anything is quite complicated. Surveying, logistics, material sciences, geotechnics and more. The old Greeks kicked off some of the modern forms of civilisation (eg demos kratos) but the old Romans ran with it, big style and added to it. The old Romans invented concrete and a modern Civ Eng appreciates the stuff and we have made a few changes to it in the form of additives. For starters concrete is a chemical reaction, exothermic, and will work underwater. The Romans also gave us the Roman arch - circular based. They seemed to have lacked a formal analysis of other geometries for arches or even considered them. The "Norman" arch has a point of inflection and can usefully narrow the space required. Building anything is sodding complicated - try it!

wrp 4y ago
When the Normans conquered England, they apparently tore down every Anglo-Saxon church to be replaced by one in the Romanesque style. How much is known about the Anglo-Saxon style and how they handled things like arches?
- nemo 4y ago
  The Normans didn't tear down every Anglo-Saxon church, there's still a number of them standing. A surprisingly high number given their age, really. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Standing_Anglo-Saxon_churches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Standing_Anglo-Saxon_...
  - wrp 4y ago
    Thanks, wouldn't have guessed to search for that list. In the entry for Escomb Church, is says there are "only four complete Anglo-Saxon churches remaining in England, the others being St Lawrence's Church, Bradford-on-Avon, Greensted Church and All Saints' Church, Brixworth." Looking through the list, it seems that in the Anglo-Saxon portions of all those buildings, any arches were relatively narrow and crudely fashioned compared to subsequent Norman style. So I guess there was quite a gap in sophistication of architectural knowledge between Britain and the Continent in the 11th century.
    - nemo 4y ago
      Yeah, the Anglo-Saxon period was a time of a much less sophisticated building techniques, the UK was an early loss from the Western Rome and the sophistication of the material culture under the Anglo-Saxons there was grim. The Romanesque style of the Normans was largely a continuation and development of late Imperial Roman building traditions (loaded with deliberate callbacks) that grew very sophisticated. That part of the continent had hung onto more of the late Roman engineering traditions that were lost in Britain, so they were able to produce much larger, more impressive buildings, and they had a much richer cultural vocabulary in their iconography and art of their churches as well.
- wrp 4y ago
  If you are interested in the story of the Norman reconstruction of institutional architecture in England, there is a quick overview in Garnett's The Norman Conquest: A Very Short Introduction. (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/5056609-the-norman-conquest https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/5056609-the-norman-co...) From the book: ...within fifty years of 1066 every English cathedral church and most major abbeys had been razed to the ground, and rebuilt in a new continental style, known to architects as 'Romanesque'. (p. 10) ...No English cathedral retains any masonry above ground which dates from before the Conquest. (p. 11) ...Old England, in an architectural sense, had been eradicated. (p. 12)

wrp 4y ago

When the Normans conquered England, they apparently tore down every Anglo-Saxon church to be replaced by one in the Romanesque style. How much is known about the Anglo-Saxon style and how they handled things like arches?

nemo 4y ago
The Normans didn't tear down every Anglo-Saxon church, there's still a number of them standing. A surprisingly high number given their age, really. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Standing_Anglo-Saxon_churches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Standing_Anglo-Saxon_...
- wrp 4y ago
  Thanks, wouldn't have guessed to search for that list. In the entry for Escomb Church, is says there are "only four complete Anglo-Saxon churches remaining in England, the others being St Lawrence's Church, Bradford-on-Avon, Greensted Church and All Saints' Church, Brixworth." Looking through the list, it seems that in the Anglo-Saxon portions of all those buildings, any arches were relatively narrow and crudely fashioned compared to subsequent Norman style. So I guess there was quite a gap in sophistication of architectural knowledge between Britain and the Continent in the 11th century.
  - nemo 4y ago
    Yeah, the Anglo-Saxon period was a time of a much less sophisticated building techniques, the UK was an early loss from the Western Rome and the sophistication of the material culture under the Anglo-Saxons there was grim. The Romanesque style of the Normans was largely a continuation and development of late Imperial Roman building traditions (loaded with deliberate callbacks) that grew very sophisticated. That part of the continent had hung onto more of the late Roman engineering traditions that were lost in Britain, so they were able to produce much larger, more impressive buildings, and they had a much richer cultural vocabulary in their iconography and art of their churches as well.
wrp 4y ago
If you are interested in the story of the Norman reconstruction of institutional architecture in England, there is a quick overview in Garnett's The Norman Conquest: A Very Short Introduction. (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/5056609-the-norman-conquest https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/5056609-the-norman-co...) From the book: ...within fifty years of 1066 every English cathedral church and most major abbeys had been razed to the ground, and rebuilt in a new continental style, known to architects as 'Romanesque'. (p. 10) ...No English cathedral retains any masonry above ground which dates from before the Conquest. (p. 11) ...Old England, in an architectural sense, had been eradicated. (p. 12)