The Lost Fort
My Travel and History Blog, Focussing mostly on Roman and Mediaeval Times
Ancient Beauty Shines Again
Lippoldsberg Abbey Church is a fine example of pure Romanesque style in the basilica structure. Since the light comes mostly through the upper windows, the illumination of the main nave gets this ethereal atmosphere, despite the heavy pillars and massive walls.
Abbey Church Lippoldsberg
The church was built in a more elaborate design, a nave and aisles basilica style church with transept, choir and apsis; finished about 1150. The material used was yellow-grey sandstone, and the exterior has undergone major sandblast cleaning last year. Here are some photos of the fresh interior.
Lippoldsberg Church, main nave
In Mediaeval times, churches usually were painted, but in case those frescoes are lost today, the renovation process either involves cleaning the stones or apply a neutral white colour. Though there are examples of mostly 19th century Mediaeval-ish paintings that are today considered history and have to remain. Fortunately, Lippoldsberg has none of those.
View towards south aisle and upper windows
Lippoldsberg is the first Romanesque church in northern Germany to have been built completely using a cross-grain vault structure. In other churches from the time, cross grain was used partly, while other parts had a wooden cassette ceiling.
The Nuns' Crypt in Lippoldsberg
This one is interesting, because it's not an underground crypt like in most Mediaeval churches, but a so called high crypt which is distinguished from the main nave by its lower vaults. The nuns' gallery from where they participated in the service is above the crypt.
The Local Nobility and Their Castles - Hardenberg Castle
I've been castle hunting again. This time I got the remains of Hardenberg Castle. It's some 15 minutes drive from where I live, but since the ruins are dangerous, you can only visit the castle on a guided tour. It was a pretty, warm Indian summer afternoon today, and I felt like visiting a castle and take a few pics. Here are some.
Hardenberg Castle, remains of the VorderhausThe land where the Hardenberg lies is old Saxon territory that was conquered by Charlemagne. It seems that soon thereafter a fortified building was erected on the sandstone promontory that overlooks the south-north route towards the Harz and one of the west-east going trade ways. The place is first mentioned by the name of Hardenberg in a charte of 1101, as belonging to the archbishop of Mainz. The castle - more a fortified house then - was held by
ministeriales, administrators of a noble birth, a feudal class particular to Germany.
The sandstone rock promontory on which the castle standsThe lands of the archbishop of Mainz bordered to those of the Saxon dukes of Braunschweig, thus there had been a number of border skirmishes and the Hardenberg was besieged several times, but never taken. But nevertheless, the evacuations of the village people in the surroundings and the upkeep of the castle cost a lot of money, and the archbishop of Mainz got indebted to the counts of Hardenberg. In 1357 he thus granted them castle and lands as allodial possessions.
View from one of the windowsThe castle was expanded over time, and at some point developed an interesting structure. Since there were two heirs in the 14th century, they divided the area where the castle stands and the surrounding lands belonging to them, and a second main hall and some outhouses were built. They came to be known as
Hinterhaus (back house, the older buildings) and
Vorderhaus (front house), and the two familes as 'back house' and 'front house' line.
Back house main hall, seen from the towerThere are some legends about family quarrels and fights, but those are not true; on the castle ground peace was kept (the so called
Burgfrieden), and the families shared the well and the gate house.
But the structure makes for an odd mix of building styles from the 12th to the 17th century. In the end it was impossible to find the first house in the tangle, the one that theoretically belonged to the archbishop of Mainz. It became an issue when the Hardenberg Counts adopted the Protestant faith, a fact the archbishop didn't like one bit. He wanted his part of the castle back by legal means, but lost the process.
Front house main hallAt the end of the 17th century, the front house suffered severe damage during a lightning storm, and the family moved to Göttingen until a new Renaissance palace was built nearby. The family moved to that place in 1710 and their descendants still live there.
The line holding the back house died out without male issue, so the castle was abandoned and fell into ruins until some preservation took place in the 19th century. It's a picturesque place today, but dangerous to climb around. When I stepped onto the remains of a wall to get a better shot, the guide warned me to be careful or I'd end up in the trench.
View from a front house cellar to the back houseBoth castle and Renaissance palace, as well as the buildings at the foot of the hill and most of the land is still in possession of the Counts of Hardenberg. They've opened the park to the public, built a destillery and a luxury hotel plus restaurant in the estate houses, a golf place on some of their land, and host riding tournaments and other events.
The Hardenberg liquors are very good, too, and you can buy them in the distillery. *grin*
Some Medicine Fun For Writers
One of the members of Forward Motion, a writer's site I frequent, is a IR nurse and knows a lot about medicine. I've discussed third degree burns with her (Thorgil can thank her if he survives and it's realistic), and torture (Roderic will probably not thank her, lol) in the FM chat. Since I'm not the only one to pester her about all things medical, she started a blog where you can learn about the symptoms of the plague, how to have a character die of tetanus, breastfeeding and lots of other interesting stuff. It's called Muse Medicine, and Arizela will add more articles to it. Be warned, though, it has pictures, and some are not pretty.
It reminded me that I have some fun things to share in my photo archive as well.
Another view of Caerphilly CastleAs I already mentioned, the day I visited Caerphilly Castle there were fencing demonstrations, archers and musketeers in the yard, but entertainment was also going on in the great hall. The time was Civil War, not really Medieaval, but it was very interesting. Too bad I forgot to grab a flyer of the reenactment group.
The Great Hall, interiorOne lady made butter (tasted yummy), another showed how to card and spin wool, a third made soaps and scented lotions, to name some examples. One of the guys was a surgeon, and he brought some tools of his trade. Ouwie.
The omnipresent enema syringe, and bullet removal tongsIn the foreground are tongs for removing bullets from a wound. The surgeon would first poke around with the lancet and when he found the bullet, he'd insert the tong which worked a bit like a reverse screw driver. The bullet was caught and drawn into the metal stick and dragged out that way. No aneasthesia in sight except for filling the victim up with wine or stronger spirits. Mwuhaha. Chance that the wound channel would get infected was pretty strong.
Amputation knivesAmputations were common since often severe infection or gangrena would set it, and in case a limb was afflicted, cutting it off was a chance to save the patient's life. For some reason, the survival rate of an amputation was a bit higher. The knives were used to cut through skin and muscle down to the bone.
Bone sawThe really nasty part. Sawing through a bone hurts
worse than hell, as anyone who'd had a broken bone can attest (I can't *knocks on wood* and I don't want to try; my love for research has its limits, lol).
So I rewrote the end of the
innibränna scene to give the treatment of Thorgil more realism, and all scenes with Roderic after the torture in the dungeon of the Avodrite have been rewritten, taking into account he's left with several stiff fingers from the thumb screws and problems with his left shoulder due to the
strappado. Which makes for a lot of fun if he tries to use a sword. Evil, me? Nooo.