The view here given is after the archway has been passed some little distance, and the scene alters. The house on the left is the celebrated Jews’ house that has so often figured in song and fable. This is a fine specimen of a Norman town residence, the most perfect specimen in fact that we have left. It is built of stone, and not wood as many of the houses of that period were, and until lately there were numbers of immense beams in the recesses of Lincoln streets hidden away in cellars and back premises that dated to the Norman period. Indeed some few parts of wooden fronts also that have been swept away by improvement.
Winwall House is detached, and dates back to the same age as the Jews’ house. It is much less elaborately carved, but the two form the most complete picture that is left us of Norman domestic architecture. Winwall should have appeared in these pages, but Britton has engraved it well in his fifth volume of _Architectural Antiquities_, from a sketch by the late G. Cattermole, and as this volume is not found in every library I venture to quote some extracts as illustrating the accommodation of a Norman mansion.
“Winwall House,” says Britton, “may be considered the most ancient and most perfect specimen of Norman domestic architecture in the kingdom. I visited it with the Rev. Mr. Forby, a well-informed antiquary, about ten years ago. It must suffice to remark that the walls, the buttresses, with cylindrical shafts at the angles, the form and situation of fire-hearth and chimney-piece, the moulding and angular columns, are all indicative of Norman design. The ground-floor is entered by a small doorway on the south side, and lighted by three windows,” etc. etc. Britton then mentions that a thick partition wall cuts off a chamber which some have supposed to be a chapel, though Britton doubts it; but the most suggestive part of this house is its size and importance, and, if this is borne in mind, many things we come across in history will be more readily understood. The total length of Winwall House is 35 feet, about the frontage of a small semi-detached villa, and its breadth 27 feet; from this walls of 3 feet in thickness must be deducted, and then we shall have some idea of its small size. Yet William the Conqueror granted the manor of Wereham, of which this forms a part, to one of his followers, who sold it to the Earl of Clare, or from whom, at any rate, it passed to that family, and we find that the Earl of Clare in King John’s reign held a court here. There is little wonder that great baronial castles might take the place of such houses where there was so much insecurity, in the same way that a great landowner will sometimes absorb cottage holdings into a larger farm, to the mutual advantage of every one on his estate. Remembering the size of this manor-house, we can the more easily understand how it is that chroniclers state that, in order to clear the ground for Lincoln Castle, 166 mansions were destroyed, and furthermore, in order to give this castle the advantage of standing alone, 74 more were also demolished, yet this is on the authority of Domesday Book.