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Architecture and Justice: Judicial Meanings in the Public Realm

The theme of this book I co-edited first took shape at an international conference I co-organised at the University of Lincoln in November 2009. Bringing together eminent architects, philosophers, criminologists, judges, lawyers, urban designers and geographers, the conference provided a platform for debating some of the key issues about the role of architecture in the deliberations of justice in both contemporary and historical contexts. The significance of the conference, and subsequent publication of selected papers, was underlined by Baroness Vivien Stern (international authority on criminal justice and author of the Forward to this book) who recognized the importance of the event in bringing together for the first time both academics and practitioners with diverse interests in the field of justice. The setting of Lincoln for the conference was not without significance; both its medieval castle and cathedral accommodated prisons, the former containing one of the last remaining chapels using the ‘Pentonville’ (or isolation) system. My chapter in this volume draws upon this aspect of Lincoln’s history, by examining the topographical and political relationships between castle and cathedral in Lincoln. It examines the judicial and punitive practices in the ‘upper town’ of the city, from the Middle Ages to the early 19th century, highlighting how these practices were closely allied to jurisdictional claims of both castle (bailey) and cathedral (minster close) that variously defined territorially the implementation of canon and civil law. The chapter develops from an on-going research interest in Lincoln Cathedral and its symbolic and topographical significance (earlier published as a chapter in my book, ‘Disclosing Horizons: Architecture, Perspective and Redemptive Space’ – Routledge 2007) and in the forthcoming edited book ‘Bishop Robert Grosseteste and Lincoln Cathedral: Tracing Relationships between Medieval Concepts of Order and Built Form’, Nicholas Temple, John Hendrix and Christian Frost eds., (Ashgate, 2014).