Uncategorized – Site and the City

May 13, 2016Emma Jane Haigh No Comments

Final Blog Post- ‘High Bridge Histories’

Framing statement

For our site specific performance, we decided that High Bridge would be the ideal location for our site. It is a bustling area of the high street which also acts as a resting place for people to stop and socialise due to the large amount of benches in the space. Stokes Café can also be found in the site, a café which is very popular and has an outdoor seating area situated on the street in front. After researching the bridge, we found out that it ‘is the oldest bridge in the United Kingdom… dating back to 1160AD.’ (Visit Lincoln, 2015) Due to the historical background and the social potential of the space due to the café and benches, we decided that a look back on social history would be a really interesting concept for our ‘High Bridge Histories’ piece.

During our research of past site specific work, we were inspired by Georges Perec’s book An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris (Perec and Lowenthal, 2010). Influenced by Perec’s documentation of everyday life, we attempted to recreate a sense of a day at High Bridge in our soundscape. We took inspiration from Marc Augé’s idea that ‘if a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place.’ (Augé, 1995) We did this by experimenting with our sound file to physically activate the space from a non-place to a place, our performance made the site a place because it gave our audience a specific memory of that space, rather than it just remaining a random area on the high street with no meaning. Cathy Turner’s concept of ‘palimpsest’ influenced the various different uses of layering in our performance and John Smith’s use of narration in his piece The Girl Chewing Gum (Smith, 1976) inspired us to use a live narrative effect as one of our layers in the performance.

On Thursday 5^th May at 12pm, we performed our piece, ‘High Bridge Histories’. Each of us held a small speaker which connected to a phones to play the sound file. We were all initially out of site, until 12pm when Joe could be seen entering the space and began the 6 minute long sound file. After 1.5 minutes, I entered the space and played the sound file on my phone, afterwards, in turn, Holly and Lucy did the same. Because each of us started the file at the different times, our performance consisted of us all doing different actions with different sounds and voices layering over the top of each other. When a date played of the sound file, we would write the date on the floor in chalk. The sound file also included the sound of footsteps, during this time, we used our chalk to outline the top and bottom of our feet. When the snippets of conversations were playing, we commented on what we could see, for example ‘Man in long black coat walks past walking a dog’. We took our inspiration for this from The Girl Chewing Gum (Smith, 1976), we differed from John Smith’s work because our commentary was live in the moment, whereas, Smith put his narration over the top of video footage. For each sound effect, we had an action which made our piece more visually interesting. During the laughing sound effect, we experimented with taking the sound in different directions out of the space. When the bird noises played, we scattered bread for the birds over the dates on the floor. When the phone noises played, we handed out business cards which gave a brief explanation of what we were doing. The final sound effect was the noise of babies crying, during this, we cleaned away our footprint chalk marks with small brushes. After each of our tracks had individually stopped, we walked out of the space, everyone’s sound track had finished after 10 minutes.

Our Business Cards (Lucy Workman, 2016)

Process Analysis- The Initial Idea

Our original performance idea included a map of Lincoln on a whiteboard with clear plastic overlays which we would write local people’s opinions and stories about their city. Before performance day, we would have prepared a social media overlay, where we would have written people’s stories which they had shared with us on social media. The wheely whiteboard meant we would have been able to travel down the high street over the course of a day. We also wanted to record people’s stories to play through a speaker as the audience came and wrote on the board. This map idea was heavily influenced by Cathy Turner’s concept of palimpsest, we wanted to show layers physically as well as metaphorically with the white board.

Concerns about our concept began to emerge as we thought more deeply about the performance. The piece relied too heavily on members of the public coming to write on the board, we were worried that nobody would take part, but also that it could encourage people to write inappropriate or offensive things. We had also been concerned about the amount of elements we wished to incorporate, all the different elements over complicated the piece. The idea of transporting the whiteboard along the high street began to seem unnecessary, so we chose three different points along the high street which seemed like the most ‘sociable spaces’, one of these was High Bridge.

Process Analysis- A New Idea

After all of our concerns, we had been thinking about starting a fresh with something new. Joe suggested an idea which completely contrasted our first concept. He suggested that we sit in our site and write down people’s conversations, record other people saying them and then play the track out into the space, speaking along with it on performance day. We began collecting conversations from the space and asking members of the public if we could record them saying various lines from the script of conversations which we have written up. Inspired by Perec’s book An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris (Perec and Lowenthal, 2010), we decided that if we were to use sound effects in the piece to create a better sense of the everyday. So we wrote down what else we heard in the space, this included: builders, babies crying, buskers and birds. Our idea differed from Perec’s project because, unlike us, he did not write down conversations, only what he saw, heard and smelt.

Lucy began to compile the final sound file, which came to just under 20 minutes in length. We decided that the piece should have a mixture of the conversations and the sounds which we had collected. In rehearsals, we experimented with different ways we could perform the piece as the soundtrack was playing. Our idea was to have one speaker, attached to a laptop which would be playing the sound track. We attempted to talk along with the track by reading our script along with it but this proved very difficult because of how fast the recording was. We experimented with speaking along with some of the sound file and miming other parts.

As well as experimenting with how we could deliver the piece vocally, we also decided to work on our physical delivery of the piece. We decided that we should have a movement for each sound effect. For the footsteps, we experimented with using chalk to draw around our feet. This linked well with Cathy Turner’s ideas of palimpsest because we were physically drawing a layer over the top of what is already there. For the building site noises, we were going to use a shovel to sprinkle gravel over the site. The bird noise was physicalized by us throwing bread crumbs around the space and into the water behind our site for the pigeons and swans. We bought dummies and baby bottles to suck on for the baby crying noises, and when the child noises played, we drew childish pictures on the floor in chalk.

Chalk Drawings (Joe Turner, 2016)

After a meeting with our module leader, we received feedback which could improve our piece. We were told that the piece was too long and that it was not visually interesting enough. We were also told that we were acting too much and that the piece should look as naturalistic as possibly. We were told that quite a few of our visual aspects didn’t work and just looked a bit odd, marking the footsteps worked and so did feeding the birds. We were told that the piece could be cut right down to 10 minutes, but the soundtrack would need to be re-recorded due to the voices on the track sounding far too acted. We were also told that we had a budget, so instead of just having one speaker, we could have one speaker each.

Because of the short timescale, instead of re-recording the entire sound file, we went through the recordings and got rid of the voices which sounded the most acted and kept the ones which seemed the most naturalistic. We were left with a 6 minute soundscape, by entering the space at different intervals, we were able to ensure our piece was 10 minutes long. When we were all in the space with the speakers, you could only hear what the speaker closest to you was playing, so having all four speakers playing different sections of the sound file which made waking through the space interesting because of the different layers of sound this produced.

We also altered the visual aspects of our performance. Our module leader liked the idea of us incorporating the dates where we recorded conversations into our performance in some way. We came up with the idea of including these dates in our sound file, to show the dates as a visual layer, we also wrote them on the floor in chalk. Instead of just sprinkling the bread anywhere, we decided to put the bread over the dates, therefore creating another layer which the birds would remove by eating it. Instead of drawing around the entirety of our feet, we decided to simply draw a quick mark at the top and bottom of our feet. We experimented with washing away our footprints after we had drawn them, this can be seen in the video below:

Practising Ideas (Lucy Workman, 2016)

We practiced using the narrative effect we saw in John Smith’s The Girl Chewing Gum (Smith, 1976), changing the technique to make it our own by commenting on people’s appearances live, rather than over pre-recorded which can be seen in Smith’s piece.

Performance Evaluation

An hour before the performance, we arrived at High Bridge, where to our horror, a busker was setting up ready to perform. After speaking to him, and explaining what we were doing, to our relief, he agreed to stop playing during our performance.

The warm, sunny weather we received on performance day played a large part in the success of our piece. The pleasant weather meant there were a lot more people leisurely walking about on the high street, benefitting our performance because it meant we had quite a few members of the public stopping to view our piece there were also people sitting outside Stokes Café who acted as additional audience members. During our rehearsals, we had been asked on numerous occasions what we were doing. In preparation for the possibility of this happening on performance day, we prepared a brief description of the piece: ‘A performative look back on the aural history of High Bridge’. After saying this, our plan was to give them one of the business cards and point them in the direction of our blog. Nobody asked us during our performance, however, when we had finished and went back to clean up, a couple told us they had been watching and wondered if they could have more information, so we explained and pointed them in the direction of the blog. It was nice to hear that people were interested and had stayed to watch the whole piece.

During our performance, a group of musicians could be heard playing further down the high street. After reflecting on the performance, we realised that the music added another layer to the feeling of everyday life that we aimed to convey through our piece. I felt that entering the space at different times from different areas of the high street worked well to make the activation of the space more visually interesting. The speakers worked very well during our performance, I think having one each added another interesting dimension to the performance. The visual aspects of the performance, such as the marking of footsteps on the floor and the writing of dates in chalk looked interesting and the scrubbing brushes and spray bottles worked as we had hoped they would.

During the performance, we had a few problems with our props. The chalk became an issue because they snapped so easily, meaning that members of the group had trouble writing the dates of the floor. When we had finished, Joe told us that his phone dropped out of his pocket, but I didn’t notice this during the piece, so I think he did a good job of recovering from this. Before we started performing, we were worried that we wouldn’t have any birds flocking to eat the bread off the dates an essential aspect to the performance. The adding of bread and then the bread being eaten represented a layer being physically added and then taken away. We were relieved to see the pigeons eating the bread from the dates during the performance. If I could improve the final performance, I would have made sure we had had a few more rehearsals to make us feel more confident in the final performance. We wanted the performance to have an element of spontaneity, which is why we had fewer practices but I feel that if we had rehearsed a bit more, we could have had fewer mistakes and it would have perhaps looked more professional overall.

Site specific has completely altered my understanding of what it means to perform, I always believed that performing and acting meant the same thing but site specific has taught me that they are completely different things. When you act, you make your actions stylised and exaggerated but when you perform, you can simply be doing an action as yourself.

Word count: 2498

References

Visit Lincoln (2015) High Bridge. [Online] Lincoln: Visit Lincoln. Available from http://www.visitlincoln.com/things-to-do/high-bridge [accessed 11 May 2016]

Perec, G. and Lowenthal, M. (2010) An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris. Cambridge: Wakefield Press.

Augé, M. (1995) Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso.

Turner, C. (Nov, 2004) Palimpsest or Potential Space? Finding a Vocabulary for Site-Specific Performance. New Theatre Quarterly, 20(4) 373-390

Ewwtubes (2012) John Smith- The Girl Chewing Gum 1967. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57hJn-nkKSA [accessed 10 May 2016]

May 13, 2016Christopher Champion No Comments

FINAL BLOG SUBMISSION – Chris Champion

Site Specific Blog

Christopher Champion (13391567)

Introduction to “Edward & Eleanor 1254”

Once upon a time King Edward I and his doting wife Eleanor, travelled to Lincoln long ago. The love they shared for one another was absolute. Eternal. Upon arrival in Lincoln they separated in order to enact their formal duties. Unfortunately, during this brief time apart Eleanor died. Edward, was so overcome by grief and remorse that he and his men erected a tall spire within Lincoln castle as a reminder of what he’d left behind, Eleanor’s Cross. Upon his solemn journey with the funeral procession, at every checkpoint, at every small village that they took rest, they then in turn built these spires again and again. This marked the way of their last journey Edward and Eleanor shared and a monument of remembrance of how beautiful it was in her company, and miserable it was without her. When the King arrive in Westminster the funeral was held. Songs were sung, tears were shed and all the people in the land, whispered of the lovers who went to Lincoln.

This was the story that made our site specific performance what it was. We, Mary Jane, Rayanne, Dequaine, Laura and I, researched and experimented with all sorts of different motions and idea’s before coming to this concept. We never abandoned our core objective throughout this process. The outcome of our performance/installation was to make the people aware within our site: The High Street, that they all have on thing that links them all, love. It was this that made us consider if the love people share as they walk side by side, could then be associated with they place they walk.

Our piece commenced with a procession up the high street dragging our interpretation of a modern Eleanor cross that had numerous names and dates of scratched into it taken from the people on the city centre over the previous weeks. We proceeded then to arrive at the central cross roads of the high street where we positioned ourselves in the physical form of a cross whist our monument was left central. In turn we took time to carve more names whilst others would tell the street, afoot small platform boxes, (like a town crier) all the different stories we had collected. Through this performance we have take the admittance of love from a stranger, brought it to life through enacting and proclaiming it then make the symbol of love; their story last forever by carving it into Eleanor’s cross. Whilst speaking the stories to the street we transitioned the way in which they were told to make each story have its own feeling, character and overall uniqueness. After 4 main transitions of speech and carving the piece was drawn to a close and we brought the installation back in a procession down the high street to were we’d started. We finished with answering any question any audience member had. In some cases, we’d have an audience member request their own name on the ‘cross’ which was received well and therefore even in the performance period we were still developing and creating this object, symbol if you will, of the love that lives in Lincoln.

ANALYSIS OF PROCESS OF CREATING “EDWARD & ELEANOR 1254”

In the early weeks, we as a group came together through circumstance due to different idea’s and general uncertainty of what site is? However soon after collaborating and long discussion we came to a clear idea of what we wanted to achieve. Our understanding is that what makes The High Street a ‘place’ is the people that walk up and down it every single day. Going back to the discussion it was apparent early on that we wanted to do something about relationships. This was influenced by our tutor, Steve Fossey. He had shown us a past performance of his own work, where he had stapled hundreds of flowers to a fence. The overall purpose of Steve’s work was quite elusive but our take from it was the memory of hundreds of ‘loved ones’ on one singular fence to symbolise the amount of grief there is in the world. This inspired us to look at the high street’s inhabitants and how they behaved rather instead of the buildings and overall architecture of the street.

“Marc Augé’s book is a haunting analysis of modern life and in particular those homogenised “non-places” where we spend so much of our time: airports, railway stations, superstores, motorways and international hotel chains. Unlike conventional “anthropological places” (the symbolic site of an altar), these “spaces of circulation, consumption and communication” exist beyond history, relations and the game of identity.”

(PD SMITH, 2009) It was only in the fifth week of study we looked Marc Augé and his idea’s on what a ‘place’ and ‘non place’ was. Differentiating the two by suggesting that a place is a place of happening. Therefore, a non place was branded as a place of transition: a way to get somewhere else. If the High St. is considered into this equation, then surely being the shopping central of the city, the walkway its self is a place of transition from one shop to another, and labelled as a non place. Though this seemed evident when confronted with a busking choir whilst researching for our performance, we noticed that with a simple symbolic gesture of good will, shown through singing of a hymn, subsequently gathered a crowd circulating this troop of religious folk singers. It seemed obvious that though the street was a branded ‘non place’, the people of Lincoln are longing, subconsciously begging for it to have some sort of relevance or meaning. But yet after another day fully observing the passers by, the only thing that came to be noticed is that people tended to walk in couples, often hand in hand. After all, it is the most secure, safe area of Lincoln with over 87 CCTV camera’s covering our performance site alone.

Whilst the other researched into famous couples and Lincoln I then took it upon myself to delve a little deeper into the history of the high street. Being aware of a focus which was the idea of couples, relationships I decided to look at part town criers within the city itself. This idea cam to me because I thought if people got married way back when, would the town crier have declared it? Although historical content was extremely limited in this area I did find out that the position of a Town Crier in Lincoln has been occupied for the last two centuries’, however on in 2011 was it declared a state occupancy and only then was the position paid and paid for by the local county council. Upon taking this back to the group we had collectively gathered very different segments of knowledge. We had looked further into “Partly cloudy, Chance of rain” and the concept of exchanging an item for a section of personal information. This was incorporated by Mary Jane so for in order to understand the relationships within Lincoln, we would have to go out research and ask the public and this allowed us to do that without getting to personal and with that extra little touch i.e. flowers we could get exactly what we wanted: love stories. We then came to a communal understanding that from the research we had committed to, our piece looked like it would consist of collecting stories in exchange for flowers, telling the stories like the ‘Town Crier’ whilst having some kind of grand installation to, more than any other reason at this point, draw the eye of passing audience members.

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With this clear concept in mind we ventured through the city in search of stories for our collection. After some but little success we stopped out Lakeland Pottery Barn whilst I went in to ask the staff about the building itself, for it is a magnificent building with columns and arches all through it. The store assistant made myself aware that this used to be the old train station before it had to be moved due to traffic congestion and building maintenance such as a replacement roof. The Lakelands shared the building with the local ARGOS so we ventured inside to see what it would have looked like. Whilst in ARGOS we came across a lovely elderly Couple who had been married for over fifty years. They approached us as we were admiring the photo’s and the made it apparent that they had been together when the old train station stood. We dug deeper to unearth that Colin, the gentlemen had caught the train every day from Newark to Lincoln, originally for his place of work, but then after, for his lovely wife Cathy. He said he hated that train and he was only contracted to take if for 3 of 20 years he took it, and that was due from work. As we spoke with the couple for their story was inspirational to say the least, they mentioned that their story resembles the story of the King Edward I and Queen Eleanor. Honestly, we had no clue of this story, nor did we know much on the the monarchs in Lincoln. Lucky for us there was a sign next to the photos, to left of where we’d been looking already that told us just enough to have a clearer understanding of the story which turned out to have absolute relevance to what we were aiming to achieve.

I offered without hesitation to build, craft our own Eleanor cross with scrap wood sourced from Lincolns street. Weeks passed and unfortunately, the pallets I’d collected couldn’t be taken apart. We compromised by building a 90cm by 90cm box from fibre wood sourced from B&Q. Then found a pallet and screwed nails into it so the box could be easily transported. At this point, as a group, our piece was demonstration of love, through declarations, conversations and the carving of names to ensure the memory’s survival. We met with Conan, the module leader, and he advised us to paint the box so it looked appealing, Speech had to be clearly defined when it was a ‘Crier’ speaking and when its just ‘us’ telling a story. Therefor the box had to painted to look aesthetically pleasing. I purchased the woodstain and spent a weekend in the sun painting and carving into and on the sides of the box.

After the paint job and DIY we came together to discuss what our piece achieves because I wasn’t to clear on why we were doing what we were doing. We as a group wanted to experiment with relationships in Lincoln and see if those feeling could transcend into the space we perform. This can make the audience to share memories of when love existed in their lives or how important it was, what they carved on a tree when younger. “We often pressure the memory of an indefinable charm from this town we’ve merely brushed against. The memory indeed of our own indecision, our hesitant footsteps, our gaze which didn’t know what to turn towards and that found l most anything affecting.”(Perec,G.1977, 64) The carving gave the entire piece that personal, real feeling. Much like when you find carvings in a tree, it triggers memories of your own that can relate, so to take away the base object: a tree and carve instead onto a box in the centre on the high street, allowed us to give the audience and people passing this same emotional memory which came from associating wit a box on Lincolns High Street. This became the obsession of our piece. Everywhere you look on the high street today, you can see that its new, modern and really quite devoid of character; “only infrequently are there trees in the streets. When ther are, they have railing surrounding them […] Thus there are street lights which go on automatically as soon as day light begins to decline.”(Perec,G,1977,47) Our overall intension came about to be that we wished to add a little character to the street itself whilst reminding all that love is always in the air.

Also following our final showing to Conan, we focused on the speech itself. We had many ‘everyday’ stories but as a ‘Town Crier’ the majority of these stories couldn’t be read properly and sound formal. Rayanne devised an idea where if the Crier gives the news, i.e.: Mary and Joseph, Wed 1987. Then follows with stepping of his plinth, he could tell the rest to any audience member listening. We had noticed that in the earlier weeks’ people responded to the shouting. At first people might’ve been intimidated however once past the initial shock the words spoken then has a much more profound meaning to any listener. This was inspired by Mike Pearsons “Site Specific Performance” and his idea’s of the different uses and styles about reading text. “The insertion of a classical or modern text in this ‘found space’ throws new light on it, gives it an unsuspected power and places the audience at an entirely different relationship to the fact, the place and the purpose of being there.” (Pearson,M,2010,7) Through our transitions in speech and the overall manner in which the stories we told, we believe that we achieved Mike Pearson’s theory throughout our performance.

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

Our performance itself went as well as it could have been. There were of course some uncontrollable eventualities that took place which disrupted the overall flow. Such as Dequaine didn’t know what to say when coming to carve, even after spending eleven weeks on this process, he still had no idea what we we doing, also the procession to and from the site was a failure due to the heaviness of the box, it was simply impossible to drag the extremely heavy box with the strength of one of my legs as I am not that strong. On the other hand, the audience was fantastic, even interrupted the performance to enquire on our presence. These things were prepared for and dealt with very professionally and therefore had little impact on the piece overall. Personally, I am not a practitioner, I am an actor. Site specific was the opposite to what I enjoy and love about Drama. I found the final product was what we had envisioned yet for me still lacked that strong performance element I am used to seeing on stage. This was our fault, we spent too much time on the installation rather than the performance. The carvings on the day were much more personal, audience members came close to see exactly what we were carving. This created a kind of intimate feeling we had not expected. Whilst people past us by during our show I heard many anonymous voices saying “It’s a love box”, so I have little to no doubt that we achieved what we wanted to through this performance and the installation. I however will take a few to many years before delving back into Site Specific Performance.

Reference List:

P,D,SMITH. 2009 GUARDIAN REVIEW: Available at :

:http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/mar/28/non-places-marc-auge-review

M, PEARSON. 2010, 7 “Site specific Performance”, Macmillan Hampshire, London.

G, Perec. 1977, 47-64. “Species of space and other pieces”, Penquin publishers, London: routledge.

Auge, M. (2009) Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: routledge.

May 4, 2016Joseph Peter Turner No Comments

Final Few Tweeks

We were unable to meet on the Monday due to it being really busy over the bank holiday weekend. We have spent the last two weeks refining and adjusting our piece after the feedback we received. Essentially our piece is the same as it was, the differences are that we have shorted the soundtrack to the least contrived ones. This track will be played out of four speakers at four different times creating an auditory layering in the piece. We are taking influences from The girl chewing gum by John Smith by commenting on the pedestrians as they walk past our piece creating a ‘live layer’ to our piece. The difference between our piece and Girl chewing gum is that our commentaries of people are spontaneous and live whereas Smith’s commentaries on his piece happened retrospectively (he watched the footage and then commented on what he saw meticulously knowing on what was coming).

The layering is one of the key elements to our piece in that as well as the layering of sound and live elements we also have the layering of dates. The dates which we collected the recordings on are incorporated into the soundtrack which we then right on the space, this, combined with writing the dates of the performance creates as additional layer.

Feeding the birds has been a part of the piece for a while but what Conan mentioned in his feedback is of a piece in Paris which he witnessed in which the artist filled a trench full of bird seed and the installation piece lasted 20 minutes as the birds flocked around to eat the food. We were inspired by this in that we are crumbling the breadcrumbs finely and sprinkling them over the dates creating yet another layer on top of the written words. This layer will quickly be removed by the birds reinforcing our links with Cathy Turner’s ideas of palimpsest and erasure (still being able to see the layer after it has been removed).

To aid us in remembering/clarifying the piece in our head we wrote out a table of what we were doing and when. This creating a sort of dialogue on the page which, after discussions with Steve, he thought could create an interesting element to the piece. We were cautious however that the piece would become stale and rehearsed so the addition of commenting on what we are doing is going to be spontaneous and completely up to the performer who is doing said action.

Joe Turner

April 28, 2016Hannah Marie DArcy No Comments

A royal place to meet – The stone bow arches/ Guildhall and its history.

In the very center of Lincoln high street stands the stone bow arches, every day the public pass through these arches, most of which are unaware of the local and national history..

“Kings and prisoners have walked this way. In 1541, Henry VIII and Catherine Howard passed through it on their way to the Bishops Palace, where Catherine allegedly committed one of the “indiscretions” that later led to her execution.

Richard II and his Queen passed under the Stonebow on a visit to Lincoln in 1387. He was rallying support in his struggle against the Lancastrian faction.

Richard’s sword was presented to the city and is now on display in the Guildhall treasury. It is part of what is believed to be one of the most important civic collections outside of London.

The Stonebow must have made an impression, as in 1390 it was Richard II who ordered the city to construct a new gate, as the medieval gate was in a dire state of repair. It took more than a hundred years to complete but the history of the Stonebow goes much further back than the Middle Ages.

The name Stonebow comes from “stennibogi”, a Norse word meaning stone arch. As far as we know there has been a building on the site of the Stonebow on Lincoln’s High Street since the Romans put a gate there in the 2nd century.

The original Roman structure consisted of the main gateway in the southern wall of the lower town, through which traffic from the south would enter the settlement. It was probably similar in style to the Newport Arch at the top of Bailgate.

After the Romans left Britain in the 5th century, the gatehouse continued to be used.

In 1237, probably due to its central location, it became the Lincoln Guildhall, a meeting place for the local governors of the city. Before that date there was another Guildhall in the city, although its whereabouts are unknown.

At this time the Stonebow was also used as a courtroom to hear disputes brought by local folk against their neighbours and to hear criminal cases when the king’s judges visited the city on assizes.

When Richard II decreed that a new gatehouse had to be built in 1390, public funds were raised but the monies were misused and it was not until 1520 that a new gate was finally built by William Spencer. He was a freemason of the city of Lincoln, and is responsible for the structure that we see today.

If you look at the south-facing front of the Stonebow you will see carvings of the Virgin Mary (patron saint of Lincoln and its cathedral) and the Angel Gabriel on either side of the main arch.

These are thought to be original. The carving of the arms of King James I, also on the south face, are believed to have been added in 1617 for his visit to the city. The clock set into the crenellated top of the south and north fronts of the building dates from 1888. This replaced an earlier clock which dated from 1835.

While the present structure is a gatehouse, there do not appear to have been any doors to impede access through its arches. There is, however, evidence to suggest that the central arch would have been barred to carriages and horses by a locked chain across its width, forcing all such vehicles and travellers to stop and state their business before being allowed to proceed into the city.

The eastern wing of the Stonebow was used as the city prison until 1586, when the facility was moved to an adjacent building.

In the Stonebow there were four rooms where prisoners were kept – two at ground level, for male and female debtors, and two dungeons below ground, for male and female felons.

As was customary at the time, debtors had to pay the gaoler for their keep. They did better than the felons in the dungeons below as they could access passers-by through two small unglazed ground floor windows which looked out upon the street. Through this, debtors could beg for money, food and drink and their family and friends would pass items through the bars to them. The prison was located in the Stonebow as it afforded close access to the courts being held in the Guildhall above.

It had a terrible reputation, even at a time when prisons generally were of a very poor standard.

It has been called by various authors of the time both “a loathsome place”, “a disgrace to humanity” and “the worst in the kingdom”.

One visitor described the prisoners as half-starved, half-suffocated and in a state of continual intoxication.

The prison next door to the Stonebow was finally closed in 1809, four years after a new prison had been opened in Lindum Road. In 1842 this building was demolished and the east wing we see today was built in its place, in a style sympathetic to the existing structure. There is a bell housed on the roof of the Stonebow called the Mote Bell which dates from 1371. This bell is used to call councillors to their meetings and is the oldest of its kind in the country. It still rings today

The Guildhall on the top floor of the building has been home to the city administration for many centuries. It comprises several rooms, the biggest of which is the council chamber.

This room has windows looking out to both the north and south and is covered by a marvellous oak beamed ceiling, the timber having come from Sherwood Forest, which in the Middle Ages was much larger and so would have been much closer to Lincoln than it is today.

In the centre of the room there is a large oak table around which are arranged 22 tilting seats. These are occupied by the city councillors when council meetings take place. The western end of the room contains a raised dais on which the Mayor sits when the council is in session.

It also contains further seating originally occupied by the city Aldermen but now used by the council’s committee chairpersons. In the council chamber is displayed the portraits of King George III, Queen Victoria, and Sir Francis Hill, who was mayor of the city from 1945 to 1946.

When the council is in session the mayor sits in his grand chair behind the mayor’s mace. This large and impressive piece of elaborate silver gilt dates to around 1660 and is carried before the mayor on all ceremonial occasions – it is present at all meetings at which the mayor is present.

Behind the chamber there is an inner chamber which was originally used as a meeting room for senior councillors and aldermen in advance of official sessions of council.

This room contains many interesting historical artefacts, including two metal Armada chests with highly intricate locking mechanisms.

These chests would have been used to store money and valuable documents, such as royal charters relating to the powers of the city council. The inner chamber again has an impressive oak timber ceiling that dates back to 1691.

In the eastern wing of the Guildhall is situated the Mayor’s Parlour, where she receives important guests and where she robes before attending official council meetings.” (Echo,2016)

Echo, L. (2013) How Lincoln’s Stonebow played its part in both local and national history.. Available at: http://www.lincolnshireecho.co.uk/Lincoln-s-Stonebow-played-local-national-history/story-17946800-detail/story.html (Accessed: 28 April 2016).

April 28, 2016Hannah Marie DArcy No Comments

Week 2, chasing paper.

Week two, today we headed back out on to Lincolns high street, this time with set of instructions written by other members of the class. This task was set by Steve, and inspired by Carl Laverys article, teaching performance studies.

Our first instruction was to simply let go of the instructions and follow them for five minutes with it being an incredibly windy day in Lincoln my group and myself knew that this was a terrible idea from the get go. We did let go of the instructions however, and followed them. Looking back into last week’s conversation on tacit agreements it was interesting to see that passers-by would stand on the piece of paper, attempting to pick it up for us as we were following the instructions. Asking them to let it go again led to some very confused people. Due to the wind, the instructions blew into a bush and stayed there for the further five minutes.

Other instructions given included: