Download PDF | Malcolm Hislop - A Guide to the Medieval Castles of England-Pen & Sword History (2024).
314 Pages
INTRODUCTION TO THE CASTLES OF ENGLAND
For we admirers of the English landscape and its monuments, the sight of a castle, perched on an eminence, or surrounded by water, or rising majestically above the treetops, is an encounter that lifts the spirits, stimulates the imagination, and allows us to escape, if but for a moment, from the humdrum round of existence. After that first emotional response we want to know more, and the better informed we are, the more gratifying the experience of exploring the physical remains of these sometimes confusing relics. Unless they were short lived, most castles contain multiple phases of historic fabric, one imposed upon another, thereby generating three-dimensional palimpsests that must be unravelled if we are to extract the greatest satisfaction from our investigations.
The purpose of this book is to provide an introduction to the most significant medieval castles in England, and, for those who wish to pursue further an interest in particular sites, to indicate, in the references given at the end of the individual entries, where further information can be found. No book of this type can be comprehensive if it is to be publishable for the general market. A selection has to be made, but the sites listed here include the most informative examples, and represent the broad sweep of development that took place over 450 years. The castles have been chosen for architectural and archaeological significance, or their accessibility, or indeed both. To meet the accessibility test the building must either open to the public (even though the annual window of opportunity might be small) or can be read about in books, journals or other media. It should therefore be noted that although not all the selected buildings can be freely visited, most can be studied from afar.
Nearly 400 sites are to be found within the following pages including representatives from all the historic counties, but geographical distribution varies greatly, the greatest concentrations being along the land borders with Scotland and Wales, notably in Northumberland (41 sites), Shropshire (28 sites) and Herefordshire (21 sites). Other significant ‘castle counties’ are Kent (20 sites), which, with its proximity to continental Europe, might also be considered a border county, and, as might be expected, Yorkshire (37 sites), the largest of the shires. There is also considerable variation in the degree of survival, but there is something to see at most sites encompassed within this book. The exceptions are a few demolished castles, for even though the buildings themselves may have disappeared, in some cases they have influenced the later townscape, and a good deal of satisfaction may be gained from walking around the former extent and imagining how things might have been.
As this is a book about England’s medieval castles, it takes no account of later monuments even though they might bear the appellation castle. For the purpose of this book ‘medieval’ broadly equates to the years 1050-1500. Many buildings of this date also incorporate earlier and/or later material, but, in order to maintain the intended focus on the Middle Ages, such elements are treated summarily in the descriptions, even though they may have considerable archaeological or architectural significance for the study of other periods. In imposing the chronological parameters given above, the artillery forts of the C16, which are often considered to be part and parcel of a book such as this, have been excluded. Although provision for guns appears in a number of castles from the later C14, artillery fortification, which has a long history of its own, extending far beyond the medieval period, really deserves a separate publication.
The event that turned England into a land of castles was the Norman Conquest of 1066. Whilst it is true that some castles had been established before that date, notably by Normans in the service of the penultimate Anglo-Saxon king, Edward the Confessor, and also that there is some archaeological evidence for the fortification of Anglo-Saxon noble dwellings, the Conquest and the consolidation of Norman power was accompanied by systematic castle building for strategic purposes: overawing the main centres of population, controlling the principal routes of communication, and holding down the profitable territory of the kingdom.
The majority of these Norman castles were of earth and timber, although invariably the timber has vanished and only the earthworks remain. Of the two main types, the motte and bailey is the most recognizable as a Norman castle: a conspicuous mound, usually forming a truncated cone, sometimes man-made, sometimes natural, though normally modified to some degree, accompanied by one or sometimes more courtyards (baileys), the whole complex defined by banks and/or ditches. Multiple baileys may be the result of subsequent enlargement, but the primary bailey (i.e., that closest to the motte) is often kidney-shaped or crescentic in plan, hugging the mound closely and wrapping itself round a large part of its circumference.
The other major category is the ringwork, so called from its penannular plan: a courtyard defined by a bank and ditch, sometimes with an additional courtyard (or bailey) adjacent. Some of these Norman castles seem to be laid out with scrupulous attention to geometry, suggesting the involvement of a professional and the existence of an ideal; others are less regular, though, in all cases, topography undoubtedly played its part in determining the final form. Regarding classification, excavation has shown that there can be a degree of ambiguity. Some mottes have turned out to be ringworks (e.g. Castle Acre), while some ringworks seem to have been converted to mottes (e.g. Pontesbury); mottes were sometimes added to ringworks. Things are not always as they seem!
The timber element of the defences usually comprised a palisade along the top of the banks and the motte. There is also some archaeological evidence that timber substructures and super-structures might be used in maintaining the structural stability of the banks. In addition to a palisade the motte top might also support a tower to be used in observation and defence. Where the motte top was extensive, it might accommodate numerous buildings including the great hall (e.g. Tamworth), but usually the principal domestic buildings would have been in the bailey.
Of course, not all early castles fall neatly into one of these two categories. Where prehistoric, Roman or Anglo-Saxon fortifications already existed they might be reused. Normally these existing fortifications were on a much larger scale than the castles they contained, which therefore occupied only a portion of the site in the form of an inner enclosure, sometimes hard up against two sides of the earlier defences, or, where circumstances allowed (as in the case of an abandoned site like Old Sarum, rather than an occupied fortified settlement), as a freestanding fortification within the old enceinte.
Although most early castles had timber superstructures, a small number were in stone from the outset including the C11 sites of Exeter, Rochester, Richmond and Peveril. The curtain walls of all four sites incorporate a distinctive form of rubble walling known in this country as herringbone masonry, but which seems to be a less formal derivative of the Roman opus spicatum. Flat stones are laid at an angle of approximately 45 degrees, stability being ensured by alternating the direction of pitch from course to course to give a zigzag pattern. Herringbone masonry is generally indicative of an early date.
Initially, none of these four castles was provided with a great tower, or keep, though three of them acquired one in the C12, a period in which great towers proliferated. The fashion had begun in the C11, the most notable and ambitious examples being within the royal castles of London and Colchester. Indeed, the former (known as the White Tower) was such a dominating factor of the wider fortress, that the entire complex of fortifications and residential accommodation is still known as the Tower of London, rather than London Castle. Both the White Tower and its counterpart at Colchester were begun in the 1070s by William I (reigned 1066-87). It was left to his son, William (Rufus) II (reigned 1087-1100), to complete the White Tower, and shortly before he died, he may have instigated the construction of two more great towers, at Norwich and Canterbury. On William’s untimely death he was succeeded by his brother, Henry I (reigned 1100-35), under whom Norwich and Canterbury were completed, and further royal keeps constructed at Bamburgh, Bridgnorth, Carlisle, Corfe, Portchester and Rochester. These conspicuous buildings not only provided secure and princely accommodation, but also served as symbols of royal authority.
This succession of royal great towers was interrupted by Henry’s death and a disputed succession between his nephew, Stephen of Blois, and his daughter, Matilda (Dowager Holy Roman Empress, and wife of the Count of Anjou). Stephen became king (reigned 1135-54), but civil war ensued bringing with it a weakening of central authority and a breakdown of security. Understandably it was also a major castlebuilding period. During this turbulent period (often known as the Anarchy) many castles were thrown up that had not been sanctioned by the King, and to which the adjective ‘adulterine’ is given. Stephen himself caused many castles to be constructed in connection with his frequent siege activities of castles and towns, but these, like the adulterine castles, were mostly of earth and timber rather than more lasting materials. The torch had passed to the nobility: great towers were built both by Aubrey de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and William d’Albini, Earl of Sussex, probably to celebrate their elevation to the peerage. Oxford’s work at Castle Hedingham, and Sussex’s at Castle Rising and Old Buckenham, are all three highly significant buildings that compensate for the disruption to royal patronage. Up to this point all great towers in England had rectilinear plans, a precedent followed at Castle Hedingham and Castle Rising, but the Earl of Sussex’s tower of c.1140 at Old Buckenham departed from tradition by being given a cylindrical form, so acting as a prototype for the numerous towers of this style that were to follow.
Stephen died in 1154, and the accession of Matilda’s son as Henry II (reigned 1154-89) was occasioned by an immediate and widespread destruction of adulterine castles as the King began to restore royal authority. A second wave of destruction took place much later in Henry’s reign, after the Assize of Northampton of 1176, which affected the castles held against Henry during the rebellion of his sons in 1173-4. Such edicts are useful contributions to castle history but cannot always be taken at face value; it is evident that sometimes royal orders to demolish were not carried out, or that they were effected less zealously in some cases than in others. In contrast to these acts of destruction, Henry’s reign witnessed significant royal castle building: a new castle was built at Orford, Newcastle was rebuilt, and a major reconstruction of Dover embarked upon. All three enterprises included the construction of a new great tower, further examples being raised by Henry at Scarborough, Bowes and Peveril; Henry also ordered the Bishop of Durham to rebuild the keep of Norham on the border with Scotland.
Most of these royal great towers were rectangular, but, following New Buckenham, the plan of Henry’s Orford keep was based on a circle. Broadly contemporary with Orford is Conisbrough where Henry’s half-brother, Hamelin Plantagenet, Earl of Surrey, also raised a circle-based keep. On the whole, round keeps are rare in England, though instances appeared at Barnard Castle and Chartley in the early C13, and at Longton in Herefordshire close to the Welsh border. Indeed, it was in Wales and the Marches that the cylindrical keep gained a degree of popularity unmatched in England, both in Marchia Wallia and in Pura Wallia, because they happened to be in vogue at a time when castle building was booming in Wales as a result of conflict and consolidation of territory.
In addition to the keeps, castle building under Henry II incorporated improvements to the treatment of the enceinte, which had hitherto been somewhat uninspired and haphazard in its planning. At both Dover and Orford the curtain wall was studded with a systematic arrangement of rectangular wall towers equipped with regular dispositions of arrow loops; an altogether more scientific approach to defence. The same approach is to be seen in the defences of Framlingham Castle, one of the strongholds demolished by order of the King but rebuilt by Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, soon after Henry’s death on similar lines to the inner curtain of Dover, with rectangular wall towers and methodically disposed arrow loops, although here, in contrast to Dover, there was no great tower, a circumstance somewhat at odds with the royal trend for such monuments, which had been widely emulated. However, keepless castles had a long pedigree, extending back to the early Norman ringworks, and just as ringworks co-existed with mottes and baileys, so was the courtyard castle an alternative to the courtyard and keep.
The reconstruction of Dover continued under Henry’s son, John (reigned 11991216), but instead of the rectangular towers favoured by Henry at Dover and Orford and emulated at Framlingham, this later work is characterized by D-shaped wall towers with rounded fronts and flat backs. They are some of the earliest in England, of a type that was to become highly popular during the C13, and which, in concert with cylindrical towers, would temporarily largely supplant the rectangular wall tower. The advantages of such shapes for the military tactician is that the curving surface provided for a less restricted field of fire by reducing blind spots, and also, its greater deflective properties may have provided some protection against missiles. Similar defensive arrangements were instigated by John at Corfe Castle and Scarborough.
The last years of John’s reign (1215-16) were blighted by the First Barons’ War, a major rebellion supported by the French Dauphin, Prince Louis, who invaded in 1216. A number of rebel castles were destroyed on the orders of the King, and the key royal castles of Dover and Windsor each withstood a siege, though both were damaged. Their defences were reorganised by Henry III (reigned 1216-72) in the early years of his kingship. In addition to his major works at Dover and Winchester, Henry made numerous alterations and additions to the royal castles: at the Tower of London the curtain wall was rebuilt, York Castle was completely rebuilt in stone, and there were major additions at Newcastle, Nottingham, Shrewsbury and Winchester. Henry III’s work is characterized by round and D-shaped towers, but also more unusual plans and inventive constructions, amongst which may be counted the beaked towers at Dover, almost unique in England, the quatrefoil keep at York and the interesting two-stage gatehouses at Dover (Constable Gate) and Newcastle (Black Gate). Henry was an aesthete, and his castle building exudes good taste and architectural deliberation, as well as the latest developments in military theory.
A notable baronial castle builder in the early years of Henry’s reign was the powerful Earl of Chester, Ranulph de Blundeville, who built new courtyard castles at Beeston and Bolingbroke and rebuilt a motte and bailey in stone at Chartley, where he caused a round keep to be raised on top of the motte. Towards the end of the reign another new courtyard castle of special note was built at Barnwell by the otherwise obscure Berenger le Moyne. To him and his anonymous architect we should be grateful for bequeathing to us a small masterpiece: a quadrangular castle reflecting something of the character of the royal works of the C13, albeit on a smaller scale.
Twin D-shaped towers flank the gatehouse at Barnwell; this general form of central entrance and two flanking drum towers first appeared in King John’s Dover gateway, which was the rudimentary basis of a significant development in C13 castle architecture best embodied in England at Tonbridge, built by Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, between 1262 and 1295. Tonbridge is the epitome of the ‘gatehouse keep’, a defended gateway with a major accommodation block attached, giving it something of the quality of a great tower. The Earl of Gloucester built a number of gatehouses on this model in Wales, notably Caerphilly, and the principle was taken up by Edward I’s masons in north Wales at Aberystwyth, Harlech and Beaumaris.
Royal spending on castle building during the last quarter of the C13 was indeed concentrated in north Wales as Edward I consolidated his conquest of Gwynedd. Edward’s castle-building programme in Wales was initiated in 1277, but one of his major works had begun a little earlier c.1275 at the Tower of London and was, for a number of years, carried forward contemporaneously with the Welsh castles. At the ‘Tower, Edward enlarged the castle by building an encompassing outer curtain wall, so creating concentric lines of defence, a system that was employed at several of the royal Welsh castles.
Wales does not fall within the scope of this book, but Edward’s very substantial works there, which pulled in building craftsmen from all over his realm, were to inspire the castle builders of late C13 and early C14 England. Caernarfon, the crowning glory of the Welsh project, was particularly influential. As much palace as fortress, its formidable defences were tempered by its aesthetic qualities and its residential attributes. Its massive scale and air of fantasy, together with unusual aspects, such as polygonal towers, decorative stone banding and a proliferation of shouldered arches, grabbed the attention and led to widespread emulation. Moreover, construction took place over an extended period (1283-1330), a circumstance that kept the castle in the public and professional consciousness.' In England, the influence of north Wales, especially Caernarfon, has been noted at Acton Burnell, Alnwick, Berwick, Bothal, Brougham, Dunstanburgh, Eccleshall, Haverfordwest, Knaresborough, Lichfield (cathedral close), Maxstoke, Newark, Stokesay, Warwick and Windsor.
Following the subjugation of Wales, Edward I turned his attention to Scotland and attempted to establish his authority over the northern kingdom. The unintended consequence of his invasion of 1296, and the wars that ensued, was a breakdown of security along the Anglo-Scottish border, the northern counties of England becoming particularly vulnerable after the Scottish victory at Bannockburn in 1314. Raiding and intermittent warfare was endemic, the situation lasting until the Union of the Crowns in 1603 when James VI of Scotland also became James I of England. During these centuries of uncertainty, those with the means fortified their homes against raids and invasion, and as a result the border counties have a particularly dense concentration of late medieval fortifications.
Most of these are fortified manor houses are now most obviously represented by the residential tower: the largely self-contained and sometimes freestanding tower house, or the attached solar tower, essentially a chamber block in tower form attached to a hall. Some C13 hall houses were converted into towers.’ Any outer defences have usually (but not always) disappeared, and the tower is sometimes the only component of a medieval fortress to have survived. Apart from the manor houses, attention was also paid to some of the larger castles by members of the northern nobility who were active in Scotland. The Percys, for example, rebuilt Alnwick between c.1310 and c.1350, and Robert Clifford rebuilt Skipton from c.1310. Later in the century new Northumbrian castles emerged at Ford (1338), Etal (1341), Bothal (1343) and Chillingham (1344).
During the latter half of the C14, even in the turbulent north of England, the emphasis amongst castle builders was on the residential amenities rather than the defences, a preoccupation that is exemplified by Edward III’s redevelopment of the domestic accommodation at Windsor between 1350 and 1377, a project that, like Edward I’s Welsh construction programme, was supported by the impressment of building workers from large parts of the kingdom, thereby providing opportunity for the dissemination of ideas. The main import of the Windsor project was to highlight the possibilities for large-scale domestic planning within a restricted area.
The sophistication of the scheme for the Windsor royal apartments was emulated in the castle-building boom of Richard I’s reign (1377-99), which, despite being engendered in part by the threat of French hostilities in the south, and by the fear of Scottish incursions in the north, was nevertheless more notable for advances in domestic planning than in defence, and for an interest in aesthetics rather than functionality. In the south of England, gun ports appear spasmodically, but aren’t always functional, and although corbelled machicolations are not uncommon (e.g., Bodiam, Scotney, Cooling), they give the impression of being as much for show as for defence. The purpose of several eye-catching gateways is likewise ambiguous (e.g. Bodiam, Donnington, Saltwood). Several late C14 castles are concerned with symmetry. Edward III’s entirely new castle (1361-75) at Queenborough on the Isle of Sheppey, for example, was circular with concentric fortifications and domestic apartments lining the inner courtyard. A similar concept, perhaps inspired by Queenborough, is to be found at Old Wardour, though here the plan is hexagonal rather than circular. Bodiam, Farleigh Hungerford and Shirburn are quadrangular.
Of the new baronial castles in the north of England, those built by Sir Richard Scrope at what is now Castle Bolton, by Sir Ralph Lumley at Great Lumley, by Sir Thomas Percy at Wressle, and Sir John Neville at Sheriff Hutton, were, like Bodiam, quadrangular, Lumley and Wressle vying with their southern counterparts for symmetry. The Nevilles also rebuilt castles at Brancepeth and Raby, both in County Durham, and Thomas Percy’s elder brother, Henry, Earl of Northumberland, raised a remarkable great tower on top of the Norman motte at Warkworth. Significant works were also carried out at the royal border castles of Carlisle, Roxburgh and Berwick. Yet, here in the north, where there was perhaps more reason to be concerned about security, it is the domestic arrangements that stand out. Nevertheless, it is true to say that the fortifications these late C14 strongholds were provided with were quite sufficient to withstand raiding parties who lacked the means to settle in for a protracted siege and did not carry with them the engines of war. This period saw the culmination of a distinctive form of northern English castle architecture based on the rectangular tower, a component which, from around 1320, had started to eclipse the round-fronted wall towers that had been popular in the C13, and which continued to be the standard in the south. Many of these late C14 castlebuilding activities in the north are attributable to the Durham master mason John Lewyn, and a recurring theme is the integration of the domestic accommodation with the defences to create compact and internally complex plans.
Apart from the residential tower culture of the border manor houses, the north made few major contributions to castle architecture in the C15. The Midlands, on the other hand, contain several important works of this century. The C14 had seen some significant castle building in the Midlands, notably in Warwickshire: the Earl of Huntingdon’s new-build quadrangular castle at Maxstoke, the Earl of Warwick’s reconstruction of Warwick, and the Duke of Lancaster’s remodelling of the inner courtyard at Kenilworth. All three make use of polygonal towers, a characteristic shared by the great tower raised by the Earl of Stafford on the top of Stafford castle motte. The earliest of the C15 Midlands castles, the royal castle of Tutbury, is also in Staffordshire. In origin an early motte and bailey, it was rebuilt in stone between 1400 and c.1460, mostly during the reign of Henry VI (ie., from 1421), the work including two great residential wall towers built to a rectangular plan. From 1439 Henry VI’s treasurer, Thomas Lord Cromwell, built a new fortified manor house on an old castle site at South Wingfield (Derbyshire). Here too, one of the main features was a great tower of rectangular form projecting from the enceinte.
Slightly earlier, in 1434, Cromwell had begun rebuilding the castle of Tattershall (Lincolnshire) and another great tower, but one of the principal interests of the castle is that it was constructed in brick. Contemporaneously, new brick castles were also being built by Sir John Fastolf at Caister (Norfolk) and by Sir Roger Fiennes at Herstmonceux (Sussex), their round and polygonal towers contrasting with the rectangular model found in the Midlands. For the last of the great castle works in brick we must return to the Midlands where William Lord Hastings began work on a new quadrangular castle at Kirby Muxloe (Leicestershire) in 1480, though his execution three years later meant that it would never be completed.
Lord Hastings’ conversion of the old manor house at Ashby de la Zouche (also Leicestershire) into a castle is more likely to have reached fruition. Ashby also has a great tower (the Hastings Tower) on the line of the curtain, perhaps the most architecturally satisfying of all the C15 examples so far mentioned, despite half of the building having been lost. Even so, the castle works of Hastings’ nemesis, Richard III, have fared less well. A polygonal great tower at Nottingham (Richard’s Tower) attributable to Richard and/or his brother Edward IV, his predecessor on the English throne, has been reduced to its foundations, while the even more ambitious tower that straddled the curtain at Warwick has lost its upper storeys and half its width, and survives only as a single-storey gateway. Attractive though this remnant might be, it is a nevertheless pathetic reminder of the vulnerability of monumental legacies and a fitting symbol of the fate that has overtaken so many of England’s castles. We must enjoy them while we may.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق