Conserving the Bishop’s Palace in Lincoln

The ruins of the medieval Bishop’s Palace in Lincoln reopen today following a conservation project which is described by BBC News at Lincoln Medieval Bishops' Palace walls turfed to protect ruins and in more detail by Lincolnshire Live at 'Important' medieval palace 'saved for the future' by masons

English Heritage who administer the remains of the Palace have produced a video about the project which can be viewed at Conservation in Action: Lincoln Medieval Bishops' Palace

The Palace was one of the not inconsiderable number of residences of the medieval Bishops of Lincoln. Because of their responsibility for a diocese that stretched from the Humber to the Thames they were not that frequently in Lincoln itself, although the Palace within the cathedral close was their foremost residence. It was there, for example, that Bishop Fleming entertained King Henry V at his episcopal enthronement feast in 1421, and Fleming’s next but one successor William Alnwick made significant alterations to the twelfth and thirteenth century core of the complex. 

Wikipedia has a well illustrated account of the Palace at Lincoln Medieval Bishop's Palace

The bishops followed an extensive itinerary rather like a figure of eight around their residences in what was the second largest in area, and most populous, diocese in medieval England.

Thus from their London house at the Old Temple on Holborn they could travel north to Buckden in Huntingdonshire, which from the seventeenth century was to be a favoured residence, to Lyddington in Rutland and near to Stamford in the middle of the diocese, then to Sleaford Castle and along the Wolds to their manor and park at Louth, to Nettleham just outside Lincoln and then to the Lincoln Palace. From Lincoln a journey north-west took the bishop to Stow - associated with St Hugh - and then just over the county and diocesan boundary to the substantial castle at Newark, and back to Lyddington. Although there were no episcopal residences in Leicestershire and Northamptonshire these could be reached from Lyddington or from the bishop’s castle at  Banbury in Oxfordshire. In that county there was another manor house at Thame and other at Fingest and Wooburn in Buckinghamshire before a return to London. In the early sixteenth century it was seen as a diocese which required a resident diocesan bishop rather than relying on a Vicar General or other deputies. The published Visitations of monasteries from the middle illustrate this assiduity well.

As a result Bishops of Lincoln were rarely holders of officerships of state or members of government, save for the brief periods as Chancellor for Henry Beaufort, Thomas Rotherham and John Russell in the fifteenth century.