Hello, and thank you for joining me again today for another Oak Academy history lesson.

My name is Mrs. Knox, and today I'll be taking you through the resources and the materials required to complete this lesson.

So, let's get started now.

Our lesson today is part of a unit of work on the Norman Conquest where we're asking, "How do we know what the impact of the Norman Conquest was on England?" In today's lesson, we'll be looking at the Norman Reforms to the English church.

And by the end of the lesson, you'll be able to explain how the Normans changed the English church, and how historians can use buildings as material evidence.

Now in our lesson today, we'll use some keywords, so let's take a moment to have a look at those now.

The first word we'll use in the lesson is the word church, which is the organisation of the Christian religion.

We'll also use the word cathedral, which is the principal church of a diocese and the seat of a bishop.

We'll also use the word monk.

A monk is a person who has withdrawn from normal life to dedicate their life to God.

We'll also use the word monastery.

A monastery is a place where monks live.

And finally, we'll use the word priest.

A priest is a person who works for the church and helps people with religious matters in the local community.

Now, our lesson today will be in two sections.

So, let's get started now with Section 1, which will cover Lanfranc's reforms to the Church.

In this first half of our lesson today, we're going to learn about Norman reforms to the English Church, and in particular, the reforms pushed through by a man called Lanfranc.

But first of all, I want you to have a look at the photograph now on the screen.

It shows a religious building, which we associate very closely with the Normans.

I'd like you to pause the video and have a think about the words that you would use to describe the building.

You might have said that the building looked grand and imposing.

It is actually a photograph of Winchester Cathedral in the county of Hampshire in Southern England.

It is a typical example of a Norman religious building and of Norman religious architecture in England.

We're going to come back to Winchester Cathedral, particularly in the second half of the lesson as we'll be using it as a study for how historians can look at buildings and material remains to learn more about the impact of the Norman Conquest.

However, I wanted to show it to you now because I wanted you to get a sense of the scale and the size and the impressive nature of the religious buildings, which the Normans constructed.

The English Church before 1066 was considered to be in a bit of a bad way.

Although as we've seen, Edward The Confessor was personally very pious and religious, and took his own religious duties seriously.

The English Church was very decentralised.

This meant that many monasteries where monks lived and worked and prayed, and many cathedrals, which were the seats of a diocese where the bishop had power were doing their own thing.

It was very difficult for the central church authorities to work out whether these monasteries and cathedrals were following the rules or whether they were bending the rules.

Monks, for example, had to take three vows when they entered a monastery.

They had to make three really solemn, serious promises.

Those vows were of poverty, of chastity, and of obedience.

But there's some evidence that in the English Church, before the Normans arrived, many of the monks, and indeed the priests were breaking some of the rules.

They weren't upholding their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

And as such, when William the Conqueror came to the throne in 1066, one of the first things he decided to do was to reform the English Church.

Remember, William had the support for his invasion of England from the Pope himself.

And one reason why the Pope had supported the invasion was that William had promised to clean up the English Church and to sort out what the monks were doing wrong.

And this, William duly did.

Now, before we go on, let's have a brief pause to check your understanding so far.

I'd like you to answer this question.

Why was it widely accepted that standards in the English Church were in decline? Was it A, because the English Church had been selling off its land, which was making it poor and was against the rules? B, some monks and priests within the church were marrying, which was against the rules.

And C, some monks and priests within the church were disrespecting the king, which was against the rules.

Press pause now, and when you've got your answer, press play to see what you should have said.

Well done if you said the correct answer was B, some monks and priests within the church were marrying, which was against the rule of chastity.

The man who planned to reform the English Church was a man called Lanfranc, who is an old friend William.

Lanfranc had been known to William the Conqueror because he had been the Abbot of a Norman monastery, a monastery at Bec.

And in 1070, he agreed to come over the English channel and to start making changes to the English Church.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, who is the most important and powerful churchman in England, had been a man called Stigand.

But Stigand had been breaking the rules himself.

Stigand was removed from his post in 1070 and Lanfranc became the new Archbishop of Canterbury.

Lanfranc then set about one way or another, putting Norman loyalists in all the positions of power within the English Church.

There were about 21 abbots who were the leaders of major monasteries in England during the time of the Norman Conquest.

By the end of William the Conqueror's reign, only three of them were English.

The rest had been replaced by continental leaders.

Many of them Normans.

Lanfranc did this because he knew that these new Norman abbots would be more likely to be loyal to him and his plans for reforming the English Church.

Lanfranc also ensured that new lists of rules were sent round to all the cathedrals and the monasteries so that the priests and the monks knew exactly what they had to be doing and what the rules were.

There could be no more excuses for breaking the rules.

Okay, let's check your understanding again.

True or false.

Lanfranc appointed many English bishops and abbots.

Press pause and then press play to hear the correct answer.

You should have said the correct answer is false.

I'd like you to press pause again now and write an explanation for why the answer is false.

You could have said that Lanfranc replaced many of the English bishops and abbots with Normans as they were more likely to follow his rules.

Lanfranc also ensured that many of the English churches and cathedrals and monasteries, which littered the landscape, were pulled down and replaced with buildings in the Norman style.

Let's look now at a couple of the architectural differences between what the Anglo-Saxons built and what the Normans tended to build in terms of religious architecture.

Here is a photograph on the screen of St.

Laurence's Church in Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire.

St.

Laurence's is highly unusual because it is a surviving Anglo-Saxon church.

There are very few of them around.

One reason for this is the Anglo-Saxons tended to build their churches out of wood rather than stone, which is much less long lasting, and certainly wouldn't still be around in a thousand years.

But St.

Laurence's is also a really nice example of Anglo-Saxon religious architecture.

You can see that it's very small.

It is modest in size.

It's not got those huge long windows or aisles that are features of Winchester Cathedral.

Instead, the Anglo-Saxons tended to focus on decorating their churches inside.

There's evidence that they were hung with beautifully embroidered, heavy tapestries, and that the walls were painted in brilliant, bright colours.

That tells us something about what the Anglo-Saxons valued in the religious culture.

They like the inside of the churches to be brightly decorated.

The outside they were less concerned about.

They didn't need them to look imposing or intimidating.

St.

Laurence is a great surviving example of something that would've been familiar to an Anglo-Saxon person in the 11th century.

However, we can compare the Anglo-Saxon Church to this interior photograph of the nave or the middle section of Winchester Cathedral.

Look at its length, its height, the sheer scope and scale of this ambitious building project.

It's hard to imagine a building that's more different in its impact on the viewer.

So, let's think about why Lanfranc set about on his ambitious building programme.

Well, in one sense, clearly the cathedrals are great monuments to God.

Lanfranc would have believed that this was a very religious act, to pour money and effort and time into building cathedrals as impressive as Winchester Cathedral.

These were the largest and the tallest buildings of the time.

In many places, they were the only buildings that would've been constructed from stone.

In that they were monuments to God and they were monuments to religious devotion.

But at the same time, this is sending quite a strong message to any Anglo-Saxon who happens to be passing.

The Normans built to impress and to send the message that the Normans were now in charge.

Their style of architecture is now the style of architecture that will be used in church buildings, and they're the ones who will determine what gets built and where.

So, there was clearly a really sharp distinction between the kinds of buildings which the Anglo-Saxons built, and the ones the Normans built.

And these material changes, the changes in the stuff that the Normans and Anglo-Saxons used perhaps reflect the sort of spiritual changes that were going on within the church as well.

Where the Anglo-Saxons had preferred a system that was decentralised, the Norman's preferred a system that was highly centralised with a clear hierarchy, one person accountable to the next, and everybody following the same rules.

All right, here's another check now of your understanding.

How did they Anglo-Saxons typically build their religious structures? A, from stone on a grand scale, B, from wood on a small scale, or C, from brick on a medium scale.

Press pause and then press play for the correct answer.

You should have said the correct answer was B.

The Anglo-Saxons built their religious structures from wood on a small scale.

I'd now like you to put everything you've learned in this section into practise by firstly labelling the following statements to say whether they are true or false.

When you've done that, you then need to correct all of the false statements by providing additional details to support your corrections.

Press pause now to complete the tasks, and then press play when you're ready for the answers.

Welcome back.

Let's have a look firstly at the true and false statements.

They should look like this.

Statement 1, the Normans did not make changes to the English church is false.

The Pope and William the conqueror wanted to stop rule breaking in the English church is true.

Lanfranc appointed Norman bishops and abbots is true.

Lanfranc did not care if church rules were broken.

That's false.

And finally, Norman religious buildings were designed to impress onlookers.

That's true.

Well done if you sorted them all correctly.

Now, in the second part of the task, you had to correct the false statements and provide additional details to support your corrections.

Your answers could have included some of the following.

The Normans made many changes to the English church.

For example, many cathedrals and monasteries were built by the Normans, which were grander than most English churches built before the Norman Conquest.

And secondly, you could have said that Lanfranc did care if church rules were broken.

As a result, he introduced new rules for the church and replaced most of the English bishops and abbots with Normans who are more likely to follow his rules.

Okay, we're ready now to move on to the second section of our lesson today.

This section will focus on Winchester Cathedral.

The Norman Cathedral in Winchester was built under the supervision of a man called Walkelin, who was a very wealthy Norman individual who was installed as the bishop of Winchester himself.

He oversaw the building of the cathedral throughout the 1070s, and Winchester represents one of the best preserved Norman cathedrals in England.

There are many of them, but many of them have been modified substantially.

That's true of Winchester as well, of course.

The nave was enlarged extensively in the 15th century.

But in particular, the Central Norman Tower remains as a reminder of what it must have looked like to people in the 11th century itself.

Now, analysing buildings might seem like quite a strange thing for a historian to do, but buildings can tell us a lot about the values and the attitudes of the culture which constructed them.

By looking at buildings like Winchester Cathedral, historians can see not only that the Normans existed in a highly religious culture in which the worship of God was a essential activity, but they can also learn that the Normans wanted to impress upon the Anglo-Saxon people in stone, their new power and dominance over England.

In this photograph, we are looking from the southwest towards the central tower, which dates to the early 12th century.

The thick walls would have conveyed an impression of the Norman strength and stability.

You can see one of the transepts pictured here on the right hand side of the photograph.

The transepts are perhaps the oldest part of the cathedral and date from the period of the Norman Conquest.

The Normans built all their cathedrals on an east-west axis.

The reason why the Normans built their churches in this model is that the altar, which was the holiest part of the cathedral or the church, was always facing Jerusalem.

And the transepts which go across the centre of the cathedral form the sides of a cross.

And if you were to look at the cathedral from a bird's eye view, that is if you were to look straight down on it from the air, then you would see that it forms the shape of a cross.

You can see many features of the architectural style that was popular in the Norman period when it was built.

It was called the Romanesque style, partly because it was intended to evoke or to remind the viewer of the power and strength of the Roman Empire, which the Normans were in some ways trying to copy.

So that strong central tower with its rounded arch windows, that is typical Romanesque tower design invokes the power, the solidity, and the strength of the Roman Empire in a way that would've been very useful for the Romans.

We can imagine from this photograph an Anglo-Saxon coming across the building for the first time and being really impressed.

Left perhaps in awe by the sheer scale and the size of the building work.

The building itself embodies some of the Norman values and it reflects the fact of the conquest.

Let's look again at the nave now.

As I said before, the nave or the central aisle of the cathedral was extended later in the mediaeval period in the 15th century, but it still embodies its Norman core.

We can see at that core, again, the height, the light, and the strength of the pillars.

This was a building in which the worship of God was the main activity, but it was also a building that was intended to convey Norman power.

And so in this way, by analysing a building, historians can learn a little bit about the values of the culture that constructed it.

On the other hand, however, there are some limitations to looking at buildings in isolation.

Material culture, which is what we would describe the study of things like buildings to be, can be incredibly useful for historians.

It can provide them with an insight into aspects of the culture or the society which they're studying, which they can't get elsewhere.

Nevertheless, it can't tell them everything.

These buildings can't speak, at least not in straightforward language terms. And therefore, they can't tell us how people felt, that perhaps the written word can convey a sense of feeling.

So, we can speculate about how Anglo-Saxons might have felt when they looked at a building like this or when they worshipped in a building like this.

But we can never be entirely sure about how they felt because we don't have a written record or we don't have their testimony.

Looking at the material remains of a building can take us so far, but there are certain questions for which this kind of source are less suited.

We might want to go back then to something like William of Poiters, Gesta Willelmi, and might even want to look at something more visual like the Bayeux Tapestry to understand how people were feeling or how people were reacting to the material remains, which we can see and analyse.

It's time for a check of your understanding again.

True or false.

Winchester Cathedral represents a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and Norman architectural styles.

Is that true or false? Press pause now and then press play when you're ready for the answer.

You should have said the correct answer is false.

I'd like you to press pause again now and write your explanation as to why the answer is false.

You could have said that Winchester Cathedral represents Norman architecture as it was built in the Romanesque style, and was built by them to show their devotion to God and to Lanfranc's changes to the church.

Here's another check now of your understanding.

The cathedral's Romanesque design was A, based upon a style popular in ancient Greece, B, based upon a style popular in Europe, or C, based upon old Anglo-Saxon influences.

Press pause and then press play when you're ready to hear the answer.

You should have said that the correct answer is B.

The cathedral's Romanesque design was based upon a style popular in Europe.

Historians can use buildings like Winchester Cathedral to analyse what impression the Normans wanted to convey.

Historians can also speculate on how these buildings would've impacted the Anglo-Saxons who saw and worshipped inside them.

However, these buildings cannot speak, so they cannot explain exactly how Anglo-Saxons felt about the changes.

Historians must look elsewhere to find this out.

For example, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is a chronological account of events in Anglo-Saxon in Norman England, describes an incident at Glastonbury Abbey.

The English monks were so upset by the Norman changes to their way of life that they staged a protest.

However, the Norman Abbot ordered soldiers to attack the monks inside the Abbey, and many of the monks were killed at the altar by the soldiers' arrows.

The chronicler recorded that so much blood was shed, that it flowed from the altar to the abbey floor.

So therefore, resisting the changes that the Normans introduced was clearly a deadly business.

Here's a final check now of your understanding.

Which two of the following can be learned from studying Winchester Cathedral? A, the image which the Normans wish to project, B, the values which existed in Norman culture, or C, the thoughts and the feelings of Anglo-Saxons about Norman reforms to the church.

Press pause now and then press play to hear the two correct answers.

You should have said the two correct answers were A and B.

The two things that you can learn from studying Winchester Cathedral is the image which the Normans wish to project, and the values which existed in Norman culture.

What you cannot learn are the thoughts and feelings of Anglo-Saxons.

For that, you might want to look at the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

It's once again time to put everything you've learned into practise.

I'd like you to answer this question.

What have historians learned about Norman changes to the English Church from the study of buildings like Winchester Cathedral? You should list three points.

Press pause now and then press play when you're ready to hear what you could have said.

Welcome back.

Your answer could have included that the Normans were trying to recall the power of the Roman Empire.

The Normans wanted to show their Christian devotion and that the buildings asserted Norman power and control over England.

Finally, I'd like you to describe one thing historians have had to be aware of when relying upon buildings as a source when studying Norman changes to the English Church.

Press pause again, and then press play to hear the answer.

Your answer could have been that a building allows historians to observe some of the changes that the Norman's made, but it does not reveal how Anglo-Saxons felt about or reacted to the Norman changes to the English Church.

We've now reached the end of this lesson, so it's time for a quick summary.

In keeping with the Pope's wishes to reform the English Church, the Normans replaced the Anglo-Saxon Church leadership with Normans.

Lanfranc, the new Archbishop of Canterbury changed the structure and practises of the English Church and began an ambitious rebuilding programme of nearly all England's cathedrals.

Historians can study buildings like Winchester Cathedral to learn about Norman changes to the English Church.

The Romanesque design of Winchester Cathedral shows that the Normans intend to demonstrate their power, as well as their devotion to Christianity and to Lanfranc's changes to the church.

Many thanks for your hard work in our lesson together today.

I hope you feel confident that you've understood the lesson, and I look forward to you joining me in a future Oak Academy history lesson.