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Jonathan Jones (Never mind the Bayeux! Here’s some other great medieval art – and it’s free, 30 June) says that medieval art came to Britain with the Normans after having pointed out, probably correctly, that the tapestry was almost certainly embroidered by Kent women. These women were almost certainly Anglo-Saxon, and their husbands may well have died at Hastings.

The quality of this English embroidery was widely known across Europe before 1066 and it was often called Opus Anglicanum – English work. The creators of the Bayeux tapestry were probably forced by Odo of Bayeux to create it by the sort of compulsion that often characterised Norman rule in England. The article goes on to quote alternative sights due to the Normans, which are almost entirely architectural.

The Normans gave us castles and cathedrals, but like so many mixings of cultures, the end result was a merger of both rather than the replacement suggested by Jones.
Roy Musgrove
Crickhowell, Powys

• Jonathan Jones is absolutely right to celebrate the fantastic range of medieval art and architecture we have in Britain. But he makes the mistake of suggesting that lots of it is free when none of it is. Those churches and cathedrals that don’t charge an entry fee still cost many millions to maintain every year.

Please be realistic about what it costs to give us access to this unparalleled range of historical treasures and give generously for every visit rather than thinking someone else will pay for it. Frankly, £5 to visit Durham Cathedral, the greatest Norman building in the UK, is the bare minimum – little more than a coffee or a couple of litres of fuel.

And to make matters worse, the government has just ended the exemption from paying VAT on church repairs so everything has gone up by 20%. Get real: don’t take the absence of an entry fee as an excuse to pay little or nothing, and add on the gift aid so that future generations can wonder at the inheritance we’ve left them.
Rev Tim Evans
Lancaster

• Jonathan Jones is right about the medieval treasures on view to all. He would love Newcastle upon Tyne’s magnificent 12th-century Norman keep, the best preserved one in England, with its small but perfectly formed chapel, challenging staircases and terrific city-wide view from the top. It’s also a monument to some amazing Victorian civil engineering: aesthetically sympathetic railway bridges, built between the keep and the Black Gate barbican, carry long-distance trains with less than a metre between the foot of the bridges and that of the keep itself.
Heather Welford
Volunteer guide, Newcastle Castle

• Jonathan Jones writes: “Medieval art came to Britain with the Normans. I don’t mean to insult Anglo-Saxon England but as the Bayeux tapestry shows … continental Europe was slightly more advanced.” The Lindisfarne Gospels? The Sutton Hoo treasures? The Alfred Jewel? The Staffordshire hoard? And the rest.

Indeed, there is an argument that the Normans made their art subservient to the imperative of bashing a defeated society over the head. Art designed to show who was boss. The Bayeaux tapestry is an excellent example of this, but there are other examples through history. I’m thinking particularly of Nazi Germany, but other fascist art in other centuries is also sadly available.
Paul Smith
Claybrooke Parva, Leicestershire

• Regarding Jonathan Jones’s article on beauty that you can see free of charge, may I suggest that everyone consult Simon Jenkins’ book England’s Thousand Best Churches for a superabundance of free beauty.
Robert Tilleard
Salisbury, Wiltshire

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