Finding the Saxon city beneath the streets
Hereford's history begins with a settlement beside a crossing of the River Wye. The name is explained as 'army-ford' in the council's account of its Saxon origins. Archaeology provides more tangible evidence of an early defended town. Excavations in Victoria Street in 1968 exposed successive pre-Conquest ramparts; the earliest gravel bank lay above grain-drying ovens with a radiocarbon date centred on AD 761. That date belongs to the activity below the defences, rather than an exact year for building the bank. [3]
Other discoveries bring the people within the defences into view. In Berrington Street, excavators found the remains of two Saxon timber buildings, pottery and a coin of Alfred. The evidence is fragmentary, disturbed by later pits, but shows that the town's early story is preserved beneath its later streets as well as in written accounts. Hereford's position combined a river crossing, religious institutions and a defended place in which trade could develop. [3] [4]
A market alongside the cathedral
By the Domesday survey, Hereford was a regional centre of government, religion and commerce. The council's account of Saxon Herefordshire notes sheep, honey and salmon among its recorded goods, and a customary payment from women who brewed ale. These details place agriculture, fishing and household production within the city's economy. Its churches attracted a community in which traders and craftsmen could find customers. [4]
The Norman town expanded beyond the earlier defended core. William fitz Osbern developed land to the north of the Saxon wall, while settlers from Normandy were offered burgage plots and relief from customary dues. Their street, Frenschemanne Lane, survives in the modern name Bewell Street. The city was therefore shaped both by growth around older institutions and by deliberate decisions about streets, property and the terms on which newcomers could settle. [5]
Destruction, rebuilding and daily worship
Worship on the cathedral site is documented from at least the eighth century. The cathedral was destroyed in the attack on Hereford in 1055; rebuilding between 1107 and 1148 produced the Romanesque architecture that is the earliest style still visible there. The medieval institution was governed by secular priests, rather than monks. Its Vicars Choral lived a collegiate life and sang the daily services, making the cathedral a workplace and community as well as a monumental building. [2]
Rebuilding did not end in the Middle Ages. The west tower collapsed on Easter Monday in 1786, and major restoration followed in the nineteenth century. The building seen today is the result of repeated repair and alteration. Its long-lived collections offer another kind of continuity: books and manuscripts survived changes that transformed the architecture around them. [2] [7]
Reading a medieval world
The Mappa Mundi, dated to about 1300, presents a world organised around Christian understanding rather than modern mapping conventions. Jerusalem occupies its centre. Drawn on a single calfskin, it combines places with biblical scenes, animals, peoples and classical stories. Its interest lies in that combination: geography, history and belief occupy the same surface. It offers an unusually rich view of how a medieval audience could imagine a world beyond Hereford. [6]
In the Chained Library, the physical arrangement explains how books were used and protected. Chains connect their front covers to rods along the shelves, allowing reading at a desk while preventing removal. The foredges face outwards so that a volume can be opened without tangling its chain. The collection includes 229 medieval manuscripts, among them the eighth-century Hereford Gospels. Its present chamber displays the library's arrangement of 1611–1841 while providing controlled conditions for the books. [7]
A butcher's home in High Town
The timber-framed Old House, also known as the Black and White House Museum, was built in 1621 as a butcher's shop and residence. It later housed other businesses and a bank before becoming a museum in 1929. The county archive describes a photograph from about 1879 showing it as a hardware shop. The image is a useful corrective to treating an old building as belonging only to the period in which it was built: this house continued to work in the changing commercial city. [8] [9]
Hereford's livestock market was part of this commercial landscape. In the 1850s the cattle market moved out of the central streets to the area between New Market Street and Blackfriars Street. Later enlargements recorded in the city's historic-area assessment show its continuing importance. Market space changed, but the relationship between Hereford and its agricultural hinterland remained a working part of the city. [10]
The demands of a defended city
During the Civil War, defence imposed demands on residents as well as soldiers. In 1644 the king authorised Hereford's governor to compel military service, take arms, quarter troops and levy contributions. Gates were strengthened, fixed bridges replaced by drawbridges, and buildings outside the walls removed so that an enemy could not use them. Security for the Royalist garrison could mean lost buildings, supplies and freedom for others. [11]
A Scottish army fighting for Parliament began its siege on 31 July 1645. The city resisted through weeks of bombardment, mining and sorties; accounts describe townspeople repairing breaches under fire. The army eventually withdrew, but Hereford was captured for Parliament that December. Its walls were therefore both instruments of defence and the focus of a struggle that reached deeply into everyday urban life. [11] [12]
Turning an industry into a collection
The Museum of Cider occupies a former Bulmer's factory, linking the city's industrial buildings to the orchards beyond it. Its origins were an act of preservation: Bertram Bulmer and Norman Weston feared that the history of cider making was being lost. Their trust was founded in 1973, and staff and volunteers collected objects and archives before the museum opened in 1981. Equipment and business records could become historical evidence when an industry changed. [13]
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