An architecture of incumbency?

Abstract

Medieval parish churches were fundamentally multilateral institutions. Yet historians of art and architecture have often neglected to treat them as such. This chapter adopts a more inclusive approach by investigating the role of incumbents in parish church building projects in late medieval East Anglia. Its departure point is the church of St Mary the Virgin, Burwell (Cambs), rebuilt between c. 1450 and c. 1470. Special attention is devoted to the relationship between the nave and the chancel, the former paid for by the laity and the latter paid for by the incumbent rector, John Higham (d. 1467), a pluralist who hailed from a prominent local family based at Gazeley (Suff). It is argued that the sophisticated formal dialectic that obtains between the two structures – both of which were likely designed by Reginald Ely, the first master mason at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge – should be understood in terms of a larger attempt to distinguish the socio-liturgical roles of the laity and the clergy. In order to assess the prevalence of such a strategy, comparison is made with church-building initiatives at other wealthy rectories in nearby deaneries, including Holy Trinity, Balsham (Cambs); Holy Trinity, Long Melford (Suff); St Mary, Over (Cambs); St Andrew, Orwell (Cambs); and St Mary, Cavendish (Suff). This survey suggests that clerical investment in architectural undertakings varied widely from place to place in ways that disrupt the idea that the ‘laicisation’ of the parish church was a universal phenomenon in late medieval England.