MEDIÆVAL MILITARY
ARCHITECTURE
IN
ENGLAND.
BY GEO. T. CLARK.
VOL. I.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.
... Time
Has moulder’d into beauty many a tower,
Which, when it frown’d with all its battlements,
Was only terrible....—MASON.
LONDON:
WYMAN & SONS, 74-76, GREAT QUEEN STREET,
LINCOLN’S-INN FIELDS, W.C.
1884.
LONDON:
WYMAN AND SONS, PRINTERS, GREAT QUEEN STREET,
LINCOLN’S-INN FIELDS, W.C.
TO
E. A. FREEMAN, ESQ.
THE HISTORIAN OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST,
THESE PAPERS,
COLLECTED AND PUBLISHED AT HIS SUGGESTION,
IN THEIR PRESENT FORM,
ARE APPROPRIATELY INSCRIBED.
PREFACE.
The articles comprehended in the present volumes were written at very
long intervals of time, some half a century ago, and printed in the
Transactions of various Societies in different and distant counties.
Many also appeared in the _Builder_ newspaper. Each paper was intended
to be complete in itself, and was written with no expectation that
they would ever be collected and reprinted as one work. This I mention
to account for, and I hope in some degree to excuse, the occasioned
iteration of certain views concerning the connexion between the banks
and earthworks, the moated mounds of the ninth century, and the
buildings in masonry afterwards placed upon them,—which the Author
was the first to set forth, and which are explained at length in the
Introduction.
The latter and greater part of the work is occupied by minute, and,
it is hoped, generally accurate accounts of most of the principal
castles of England, and of one or two of a typical character in France
and Scotland. The account of Caerphilly was drawn up in 1834. It was,
I believe, the first attempt to treat, in a scientific and accurate
manner, the plans and details of a great mediæval fortress.
My cordial thanks are due to the editors of the various Archæological
Journals in which the original papers appeared, and especially to the
late editor of the _Builder_, Mr. Godwin. I have also especially to
thank an old friend and school-fellow, Mr. Murray, of Albemarle Street,
for leave to reprint the paper on the Tower of London, and for the use
of the woodcuts with which he so liberally embellished the original in
his “Old London.”
To Mr. Freeman my obligations are of a different and less personal
character. Other historians have visited the scenes of events which
they were about to describe, but no one has shown himself so familiar
with the ancient divisions, civil, ecclesiastical, and military,
of English ground, and with the buildings connected with them.
His accomplishments as a topographer and as a master of mediæval
architecture are peculiar to himself among historians, and materials
which in their original form are dry and uninstructive give, in his
hands, weight and substance to some of his most brilliant sketches. As
a collector of some of these materials, I have often felt surprise and
delight at the use to which they have been applied; and, although my
work has been rather that of a quarryman or brickmaker, I am sometimes
led almost to regard myself as sharing in the glory of the architect.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
CHAPTER.
I. INTRODUCTION _Page_ 1
II. EARTHWORKS OF THE POST-ROMAN AND ENGLISH PERIODS 12
III. OF THE CASTLES OF ENGLAND AT THE CONQUEST AND UNDER THE
CONQUEROR 35
IV. OF THE POLITICAL VALUE OF CASTLES UNDER THE SUCCESSORS
OF THE CONQUEROR 48
V. THE POLITICAL INFLUENCE OF CASTLES IN THE REIGN OF
HENRY II. 60
VI. THE CASTLES OF ENGLAND AND WALES AT THE LATTER PART OF
THE TWELFTH CENTURY 68
VII. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED 85
VIII. THE SAME SUBJECT CONCLUDED 99
IX. THE RECTANGULAR KEEP OF A NORMAN CASTLE 121
X. OF THE SHELL KEEP 139
XI. CASTLES OF THE EARLY ENGLISH PERIOD 147
XII. OF THE EDWARDIAN OR CONCENTRIC CASTLES 157
ALNWICK CASTLE, NORTHUMBERLAND 175
ARQUES CASTLE, NEAR DIEPPE 186
ARUNDEL CASTLE, SUSSEX 195
BARNARD CASTLE 204
BEAUMARIS CASTLE, ANGLESEY 213
BEDFORD CASTLE 217
BERKHAMPSTEAD CASTLE, HERTS 223
BERKELEY CASTLE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE 228
BODIHAM CASTLE, SUSSEX 239
BORTHWICK TOWER, MIDLOTHIAN 247
BÔVES CASTLE 256
BOWES CASTLE 259
BRAMBER CASTLE, SUSSEX 264
BRIDGENORTH, OLDBURY, AND QUATFORD, SHROPSHIRE 273
BRONLLYS TOWER, BRECKNOCKSHIRE 283
BROUGH AND BROUGHAM CASTLES, WESTMORELAND 286
BUILTH CASTLE, BRECKNOCKSHIRE 304
CAERNARVON CASTLE 309
CAERPHILLY CASTLE, GLAMORGAN 315
CARDIFF CASTLE, GLAMORGAN 336
CARLISLE CASTLE 350
CASTELL COCH, GLAMORGAN 358
CASTLE RISING, NORFOLK 364
CHÂTEAU-GAILLARD, NORMANDY 378
CHRISTCHURCH CASTLE, HANTS 385
CLIFFORD CASTLE, HEREFORDSHIRE 393
CLITHEROE KEEP, LANCASHIRE 397
CLUN CASTLE, SHROPSHIRE 402
COCKERMOUTH CASTLE, CUMBERLAND 409
COLCHESTER CASTLE 418
CONISBOROUGH CASTLE 431
CONWAY CASTLE 453
CORFE CASTLE, DORSET 461
COUCY-LE-CHÂTEAU 476
COYTY CASTLE, GLAMORGAN 487
ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. I.
ALNWICK CASTLE, Plan of _Page_ 185
ARQUES, Castle of, Plan of the 189
BARNARD CASTLE, Plan of 206
Ditto The Keep 208
BEAUMARIS CASTLE, Ground Plan 213
Ditto Entrance 214
Ditto Bird’s-eye View 215
BERKHAMPSTEAD CASTLE, Plan 225
BERKELEY CASTLE, Plan _face p._ 229
Ditto Keep 〃 233
BORTHWICK TOWER: Section 248
Ditto Plan of First-floor and Basement 249
BOWES CASTLE, Plan of First Floor and Ground Floor 260
BRAMBER CASTLE, Plan and Section _face p._ 268
BRIDGENORTH CASTLE, Plan of Keep 274
BROUGH CASTLE, Plan 287
BROUGHAM CASTLE, Ground Plan 295
Ditto Ground Plan of Keep 297
Ditto Keep, Vertical Section 301
Ditto Keep, from the South-West 302
BUILTH CASTLE, Ground Plan _face p._ 307
CAERNARVON CASTLE, Bird’s-eye View 313
Ditto Battlements, Eagle Tower 314
CARDIFF CASTLE, Ground Plan _face p._ 341
CAERPHILLY CASTLE 320
Ditto Ground Plan _face p._ 320
CARLISLE CASTLE, Plan 〃 352
CASTLE RISING, Plan of Keep 366
Ditto Plan of Upper Floor 367
CHÂTEAU-GAILLARD, Plan 382
CHRISTCHURCH CASTLE, Plan 386
CLITHEROE KEEP, Plan 398
Ditto Section 399
CLUN CASTLE, Plan _face p._ 404
COCKERMOUTH CASTLE, Plan 〃 410
COLCHESTER CASTLE, Plans of Ground Floor and First
Floor _face p._ 424
CONISBOROUGH CASTLE, Plan of Castle and Earthworks 432
Ditto Ascent from the Gatehouse 434
Ditto Pilasters as seen from the Outside 435
Ditto Detail of the Base of one of the
Buttresses of the Keep 436
Ditto Keep from outside the Curtain 437
Ditto View of the Keep as at Present _face p._ 437
Ditto Keep 〃 438
Ditto Plan, First Floor 439
Ditto Plan, Second Floor 440
Ditto Window in Second Floor 441
Ditto Interior of the Keep _face p._ 442
Ditto Plan, Third Floor 442
Ditto Capitals of Centre Arch, North Side 443
Ditto Interior of the Oratory or Chapel _face p._ 443
Ditto Plan at Rampart Level 444
Ditto Suggested Original Appearance 446
CONWAY CASTLE, Plan 455
Ditto Bird’s-eye View 456
Ditto Bird’s-eye View of the Town 459
CORFE CASTLE, Sections of Lodge Door 464
COUCY CASTLE, Plan 481
COYTY CASTLE, Ground Plan _face p._ 488
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
The art of construction in Europe from the fall of the Roman empire to
the dawn of the Reformation, though of late years much and successfully
investigated, has been approached almost exclusively from its
ecclesiastical side. This was, for many reasons, to be expected. The
service of the altar justified, perhaps required, the highest degree
of taste in the design of the temple, and the utmost richness in its
ornamentation. Moreover, the greater number of our ecclesiastical
buildings are still in use, and even the remains of those that are
in decay, being chiefly monastic, are interesting from the intimate
connexion of their foundations and endowments with early piety and
learning, and from the evidence supplied by their records of the
descent of landed property and of the ancestry of the older historic
families of the country.
The coëval military structures exhibit, generally, no such splendours
of design or excellence of execution, nor do they awaken such
sympathies in our breasts. The parish church is the common concern
of all who worship within its walls, or whose dead are laid within
its sacred precinct; but the castle, always a dangerous and unpopular
neighbour, and often associated with local tyranny or the disasters
of war, was in most instances ruined or swept away with the general
use of gunpowder, and even where preserved, its narrow dimensions and
inconvenient arrangements, particulars more or less essential to its
value as a place of defence, rendered it, except in a few instances,
unfit for a modern residence, and have thus tended to sever it still
more completely from the current sympathies and interests of humanity.
Nevertheless, there is in these structures, obsolete as they are, or
because they are obsolete, much to attract those who care to know of
the life and customs of former generations. Many of these buildings
were the work and residence of persons who have left their mark
upon the history of our country. Some, as York, Lincoln, Norwich,
Dover, Rochester, Chester, Colchester, Wallingford, have been the
seats of Saxon thanes or Danish jarls, succeeding a Roman or perhaps
British occupant; others, as Bamborough, Taunton, Sarum, Tutbury,
and Hereford, are associated with the earliest, most celebrated, or
most patriotic of our purely English kings; others, as the Tower,
Windsor, Winchester, Berkeley, Pontefract, Newark, Carisbrook, were the
scene of the splendours of our greatest or the miseries of our most
unfortunate monarchs; some, as Oxford, Northampton, Lewes, Kenilworth,
are connected with great constitutional struggles between prince and
subject; some, as Exeter, Bedford, Rochester, Pembroke, Chepstow, and
Raglan, remind us of bloody combats and sieges from the times of the
Conqueror to those of Charles the First. Some castles, as Sherborne,
the Devizes, Malmesbury, Wolvesley, Newark, Farnham, Norham, and
Durham, were constructed by lordly ecclesiastics who brought the arm
of the soldier to support the brain of the priest and statesman; some
again, as Hedingham, Bungay, Axholm, Alnwick, Raby, Tonbridge, Warwick,
Wigmore, Powderham, Goderich, and Helmsley, are intimately bound up
with the great baronial names of De Vere, Bigot, Mowbray, Percy,
Neville, Clare, Beauchamp, Mortimer, Courtenay, Talbot, and De Ros,
those “ancient stocks that so long withstood the waves and weathers
of time.” Ludlow is identified with the fairest creation of Milton’s
genius; Caerleon and Tintadgel glitter bright in mediæval romance;
while Shrewsbury, Chester, the Welsh castles, Carlisle, Newcastle,
Prudhoe, Ford, Hermitage, Jedburgh, Berwick, and a host of subordinate
towers and peels, are celebrated in Marchman’s warfare or Border
Minstrelsy, and played a part in the politic but unjust aggressions of
our earlier Henrys and Edwards.
The histories and remains of these fortresses are full of interest
to the antiquary, whether his branch of study be legal, social,
architectural, or military. Almost all the most important of our
English castles date, in some form or other, from remote antiquity,
and their associations were of slow growth, and deeply rooted in
many centuries of the national history. Most were the centres of
estates which had become great in the course of many generations, and
for the protection of which they were established; and the tenure
and services of the tenantry had grown up gradually, so that the
castle, or rather the fortified hall, was closely connected with the
institutions, laws, and customs of the estate, or it might be the
shire, wapentake, rape, or hundred, of which it was the defence. Such
castles as Belvoir, Clitheroe, Gloucester, Totnes, Dunster, Hastings,
Bramber, and Tickhill, were the “capita” or chief seats of ancient
sokes, honours, and baronies, having peculiar privileges within their
garths and demesnes, with manorial dependencies scattered through many
counties, and accumulated in some considerable degree even before
the Norman era. Many of the lands were held, even in Saxon times, by
the ancient tenure of military service, which, reduced into a system
under the Norman kings, often took the form of guarding and keeping in
repair some specified part of the lord’s castle, a tower, gate-house,
hall, or wall, to be paid either in person as castle-guard, or by the
commutation known as ward-silver. Something like castle-guard appears
indeed in the history of Norwich castle as early as the seventh
century, and it was common in the tenth. Like the castle of Chester,
that of Durham was the seat of an Earl-Palatine, the subject of the
grim humour of Cœur-de-Lion, who of an aged Bishop made a young Earl,
whose successors, more fortunate than those of their lay brother,
preserved their Earldom and its more than Vice-regal appendages almost
unshorn till the Reformation, and with a splendid remnant of judicial
and social power to our own day; and indeed, even now, though his mitre
no longer springs out of a coronet, nor is his crozier as formerly
combined with a sword, and though the baronial hall has been liberally
surrendered for the purposes of education, the lord of Durham is not
altogether wanting in pride of place, nor reduced, as yet, even to
episcopal poverty.
The “Registrum Honoris de Richmond,” a very curious Custumary,
specifies the precise part in that castle that each tenant was to
defend. At Belvoir, Staunton tower, at Berkeley, Thorpe’s tower, are
so called because families of those names were responsible for them,
and at Dover, Magminot and a score of other towers still bear the names
of the chief tenants of that important lordship, and thus preserve the
memory of a tenure the substance of which has long been abolished. The
connexion between the military tenant and his lord was intimate, and
much imbued with the ancient Teutonic equality and independence. The
lord held his “aula” for his own safety and that of his tenants; their
mutual support gave power to the one and security to the others; no man
was degraded by such a tenure. The most powerful barons were almost
always also tenants holding fiefs under other lords, often far their
inferiors in rank and power.
It is this ancient history, this connexion with the earliest works of
defence, that gives so great an interest to the older castles. When, in
later days, and under extraordinary circumstances, it suited the king
or some great baron to erect a castle in a new place, the fabric had no
root, no associations. The grand characteristic of an old castle, the
mighty earthwork, was wanting, and its place was ill supplied by masses
of masonry and a ditch of moderate dimensions. No tenants clustered
round the place, to it no manors were attached, no dependents held
lands by the tenure of its defence. Thus Bere, Beaumaris, Caernarvon,
Diganwy, Conway, Harlech, and Caerphilly, grand structures as were most
of them, were mere intrusions upon the soil, and when the need that
produced them ceased, as they represented no private estate, and were
the residence of no great baron, they were left to fall into decay.
Not the less are they of great architectural interest. They are mostly
of one date, laid out and constructed upon one plan. Though intended
for military purposes, within the palace shares with the fortress. The
accommodation afforded is ample, the main apartments are spacious, the
ornamentation rich. The inner court, gatehouses, and hall of Caerphilly
are grander than anything of the sort in Britain.
The castles of a still later period, when built on new sites, were
scarcely Castles in the military sense of the term. They were not
posted for the defence of a March or a threatened district, but
for the residence, more or less secure, of the lord, usually of
a newly-acquired estate, very often purchased with the ransoms
of prisoners taken in the French wars. Even where the castle
most predominated, as at Bodiham, built, as Arundel was largely
repaired, with the spoils of war, or at Tattershal, they were rather
palace-castles than castle-palaces, and this was especially the case
with Bolton, Wressil, and Sheriff-Hutton, works of the latter part
of the fourteenth century. In such works the salient towers, loops,
embattled parapets, and bold machicolations, are introduced partly for
their appearance, partly from custom, but scarcely for any military
purpose.
To the student of military architecture, or of the art of the defence
of strong places before the introduction of gunpowder, the ground-plans
of defensive works and the details of castellated architecture of
every period are interesting; sometimes they are to be admired for the
grandeur of their earthworks or the enormous strength of their walls;
sometimes for their happily-selected site and the skilful disposition
of their arrangements for a flanking defence; or, as at Arques, Dover,
Sarum, and Windsor, for their subterranean outlets and countermines.
Some, as Clitheroe and Peak, were structures purely military, intended
to contain only a captain and a small garrison, and provided with
scanty accommodation, and quite destitute of ornament; in others, as
Ludlow, Caerphilly, and Beaumaris, the interior arrangements were on a
scale and of a character to accommodate a Royal Court. Even where the
walls are destroyed, there often remain, in the earthworks, traces of
a much earlier people than the Normans, a people who, as at Old Sarum,
Castle-acre, Marlborough, Clare, Tonbridge, and the Devizes, occupied
the ground with bank, ditch, and palisade, long before native skill
had attained to the construction of wall or tower. Finally, although
the stern necessities of war did not admit of the banded shafts, lofty
vault, or woven window-tracery of Tintern, or Fountains, or many a
less distinguished church, the ornamentation of the richer castles, as
Dover, Rochester, Hedingham, Newcastle, Knaresborough, Castle Rising,
and Coningsborough, is marked by a chastened fitness peculiar to such
works; and of the ruder and less ornate castles, the ruins of very
many present a savage grandeur which few who have visited Caerphilly,
Harlech, or Scarborough, can fail to appreciate; any more than that
union of strength with beauty so conspicuous in Chepstow, Raglan, and
Ludlow, which, enhanced by an illustrious history, attains its highest
perfection in Warwick.
The history of such castles as are connected with public events
is seldom difficult to trace. They are mentioned by the ancient
chroniclers, and their repairs and various particulars concerning them
are often entered on the Pipe rolls, and in other of the records of the
realm. About a score, such as Arundel, Bamborough, Taunton, Wigmore,
and Hereford, are named in the Saxon annals, and in charters of the
eighth and following centuries; and others, though unnamed in these
authorities, may from their general similarity safely be attributed
to the same people and period. The castles on the Welsh Marches, as
Ludlow, Montgomery, Chester, Rhuddlan, Cardiff, Chepstow, and Pembroke,
had their special jurisdictions; their courts of law and of record;
their chancellor, chancery, and official seal; the lord’s “Vicecomes”
exercised powers of pit and gallows, and his court passed fines and
recoveries, and other early instruments for the conveyance of land.
In the northern Marches such castles as Norham, Prudhoe, Cockermouth,
Alnwick, Naworth, Caerlaverock, and Home, constructed for the defence
of an exposed frontier or a debatable district, the home of those
who lived by “snaffle, spur, and spear,” are commemorated in the
records of either country. Others were originally royal castles, as
Dover, Canterbury, Winchester, London, Nottingham, and York; or, as
Kenilworth, Bridgenorth, and Rochester, fell by escheat or forfeiture
into the hands of the crown, and so were maintained at the public
expense, and the cost of their repairs charged in the sheriffs’
accounts of each county.
However complete, and it is usually much the reverse, may be the
history of a castle, any knowledge we may desire as to its particulars
greatly depends upon what may remain of the structure, either in
masonry or earthworks, and to understand these the first thing
necessary is a plan, and this is just what is wanting in most guides
or handbooks of castles. With a good plan not only the age and much of
the details of any castle can be ascertained, but sometimes the work
recorded in the Pipe or Fabric rolls may be recognised. Original plans
indeed there are none; no doubt the military architects, like their
ecclesiastical brethren, drew and worked from designs and plans, but
these have not been preserved. No such thing is known to exist as an
original design or a working drawing of a Norman or even an Edwardian
castle. In ecclesiastical researches, from the known uniformity of the
arrangements, this want is scarcely felt, but the plan and details of
a castle vary with the disposition of the ground or the caprice of
the builder, and although a hall, a kitchen, a chapel, a well, and
a barrack are indispensable features in a castle, these parts have
nothing of the regularity of position of a nave or choir, a cloister,
a chapter-house, or a refectory. Nevertheless, great as is the variety
in both the plans and details of castles even of the same age, their
architects and engineers worked by certain rules, so that if these be
studied a clue will be obtained to the age of the work executed. The
dimensions, plan, and profile of the earthworks, the presence, absence,
or figure of the keep, the thickness of the walls, the plan, figure,
proportion and position of the mural towers, the character of the
entrance, the material employed, and the particulars of the masonry,
all, if carefully observed, afford a clue to the date of the building
or of some of its parts, so that as a general proposition, a Norman
castle may be known from one of the early English period, or from those
of the first or second Edward, and still more readily from those built
in the reign of Richard the Second. What these rules are, in what these
differences consist, will appear further on.
Mediæval architecture has only been scientifically studied during
the last forty or fifty years, and military architecture for a still
shorter period. Rickman, who first taught us to read the date of
a building in its details, was induced to turn his attention to
architecture by the advice of Mr. Blore, who died but the other day.
But Rickman, a member of the Society of Friends, scarcely notices
castles, and they have by no means shared in the flood of light
directed by Willis upon our cathedrals. Rickman’s rules, however,
apply as much to one class of buildings as to the other. What has been
done, and what has to be done, towards a history of the architecture
of castles, though aided by contemporary records and especially by
sheriffs’ accounts and Fabric rolls, has been mainly attained by
attention to the internal evidence afforded by the buildings themselves
and their earthworks. Even where the castle is a ruin, where the ashlar
casing has been stripped off, and little left but the rubble and
concrete of the interior of the walls, as at Bramber, Saffron-Walden,
and Thurnham, and the disintegrating effect of the weather has had full
play, it is not impossible, nor very often difficult, to detect the
general age of the several parts of the building by the thickness of
the walls and the character of the materials and workmanship, as well
as by the outline of the works. The absence of ornament and the general
removal of window-dressings and door-cases often, it is true, render
the absolute date difficult to discover, but even then, the general
figure of the openings, the rough contour of the arches, the position
and proportion of the buttresses may be detected, and a tolerably safe
conclusion formed. Perhaps, on the whole, the greatest difficulties the
military antiquary has to contend with are those where, as at Norwich,
Lancaster, York, Oxford, Caermarthen, or Haverfordwest, the building is
converted into a gaol, or where, as at Appleby and Chilham, it is part
of or attached to a modern residence. Warwick, so remarkable on many
accounts, is especially so for the skilful manner in which it has been
made suitable for modern habitation without materially obscuring its
ancient parts, and this merit may be claimed for Tamworth, and perhaps
for Raby.
Our county historians are often diffuse upon the descent of a castelry,
and the particulars of its area and tenures, but their descriptions of
the buildings are seldom intelligible. Even Surtees, so distinguished
for the wealth and lucidity of his style, whose history of Durham
contains, entombed in folio, chapters that in a more accessible form
would have met with far more than antiquarian attention, never attempts
scientific description. Hunter, whose histories of Hallamshire and
of the Deanery of Doncaster are perfect as records of the descent of
families and property, is not at home in architectural detail; and even
Whitaker, who, with Hunter, was quite aware of the interest which
attaches to earthworks, gives plans of but few of them, and says very
little about the details of the castles. To come down to the latest
period, even Raine, Hodgson, and Eyton, in their histories of Durham,
Northumberland, and Salop, so copious and so accurate in all matters
of record, pass by with but short notice the various earthworks and
castles in which those counties are so rich, and the details of which
would be so valuable. We look in vain in the pages of these writers for
any general conclusions as to the age, style, and points of resemblance
or difference between these works, points which certainly fall within
the province of the topographer.
The great work of King, the “Munimenta Antiqua,” three-quarters of
a century or more older than most of the above, and full of absurd
theories, misplaced learning, and fanciful and incorrect descriptions,
recognises the importance of plans and details, and although those
given with great show of accuracy are often very incorrect, they are
worth a good deal, and with all its absurdities the book is on the
whole valuable.
The “Vetusta Monumenta,” a work of the same school and period,
includes a few castles, and gives plans and sections of two, the Tower
and Hedingham, correctly, and in great detail. Unfortunately, these
large and needlessly expensive plates are accompanied by no proper
descriptions. The voluminous works of the industrious Britton include
very few castles, but what there are, as Rochester, Kenilworth, and
Castle Rising, are drawn and planned with extreme accuracy. The
drawings of Grose and the brothers Buck serve to show the condition of
many English castles a century ago, though the descriptions of Grose
are poor, and his drawings are by no means clear. Buck’s perspective
is very incorrect, but this allows of the bringing into view more of a
building than can really be seen at once, which has its advantages.
Since the rise, during the last twenty years, of numerous county
archæological societies, castles have received more attention; but no
distinct work has appeared upon English castles, though many of the
most remarkable are noticed by Mr. Parker in his excellent works on
domestic architecture. More recently has appeared the book of the late
Mr. Wykeham Martin upon his ancestral castle of Ledes, a work not only
well illustrated and furnished with an excellent ground-plan, but in
which the architecture and arrangements of the fortress are treated in
a scientific manner, and his conclusions supported, in many instances,
by original documents.
England contains many curious and some grand examples of military
architecture; but that insular position and those industrious habits
which have given her internal peace have not been favourable to the
erection of fortresses of the larger class: for these we must pass to
the Continent, and especially to France. In France not only were the
works of imperial Rome of a grand and substantial character, but they
were adopted and employed by the people after the fall of the empire,
and both Franks and Visigoths, unlike our English Saxons, practised
the arts of attack and defence upon Roman principles, and remodelled
the older works to meet the later circumstances of the period. In the
southern provinces, especially, are still to be found castles and
fortified towns such as Tholouse, Narbonne, Beziers, and Carcassonne,
where the old Roman circumvallation has been preserved, and may still
be recognised amidst the additions and alterations of succeeding ages.
Like the Romans, their successors made use of earthworks and of timber
both for attack and defence, and for permanent works employed masonry
of a very Roman character. Such accounts as have descended to us of
the great sieges of the Middle Ages show that the machines and methods
in use were those handed down by tradition from Rome, many of them
being such as Cæsar employed, while others were the same as those
sculptured on the column of Trajan or described by Vegetius. Mines and
countermines, battering-rams, balistæ, catapults, the cat, the mouse,
the sow, and a large family of devices for reaching under cover the
wall to be undermined, were all derived from Roman warfare, and were
employed, if not with the skill and discipline of Rome, with a degree
of vigour and boldness that was scarcely less effective.
Moreover, the political circumstances of France were eminently
favourable to the construction of great military works. The great
duchies and scarcely subordinate kingdoms which afterwards composed
the French monarchy were, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
independent states, each with an open frontier needing defences, and
with a brave and wealthy baronage very able and very willing to supply
them. Hence France contains within its present borders not only cities
of Roman origin and celebrated under the immediate successors of the
Romans, but the remains of the castle-palaces of the dukes and barons
of Normandy and Brittany; of Burgundy, Provence, Navarre, Flanders,
Anjou, and many a lesser province; and he is but little qualified to
judge of castles or of fortified mediæval cities who is unacquainted
with Arques, or Falaise, or Loches; Coucy or Château-Gaillard, or
Etampes; Carcassonne, Avignon, Villeneuve, or Beaucaire, or the
splendid restoration of Pierrefonds.
The possession of these great works has drawn forth, though tardily,
a few writers capable of comprehending and describing them. Those in
Normandy are the subject of the well-known lectures of M. de Caumont,
delivered at Caen in 1830 and published in 1835. They contain a very
interesting section on military works, with plans and elevations
which, though roughly executed and on a small scale, are valuable; his
descriptions are clear, and his conclusions generally sound. Others,
before M. de Caumont, have described particular structures, but he
seems to have been the first to attempt a general classification based
upon a critical examination of the examples in his own province.
Of detached writings, monographs, may be mentioned those of M. Deville
upon Château-Gaillard, Tancarville, and Arques, published in 1828,
1834, and 1839. The first is particularly strong in its history of the
castle and of its famous siege, and the last excellent both in history
and description; and all three are accompanied by clear ground-plans.
The great work of Viollet-le-Duc, though not confined to military
architecture, contains by much the most comprehensive, as well as the
most detailed, account of French castles yet given to the world; and
as, besides the general resemblance between all European castles,
those of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Normandy are almost
counterparts of those of the same period, and often built by the same
nobles or their sons, in England, it has deservedly become our chief
authority. Also the castles of France, being on a larger scale and
often more perfect than our own, M. Le-Duc has been able to explain
more satisfactorily than could have been done here, certain details,
such, for example, as those of the gateway, drawbridge, and portcullis,
and especially of the timber superstructures for vertical defence,
known as “_hourdes_” and “_bretasches_,” terms represented with us
by the “hoard” of a London builder, and the “brattice” of the mining
engineer. M. Le-Duc’s work has given occasion and matter for a small
volume from the press of Mr. Parker. There is besides a work in German,
“_Geschichte der Militär-Architectur des fruhern Mittelalters_,” by
M. G. H. Krieg von Hochfelden, which contains much of great interest
concerning German castles, as well as a general notice of those in
France and England.
Although military architecture in England, setting aside the works of
the Romans, begins with the age, and probably with the actual period,
of the Norman Conquest, the country contains numerous examples of
military works of an earlier, and in many instances no doubt of a
very remote, time. These works, executed in earth, or at least of
which no parts but banks, mounds, and ditches remain, are sometimes
of great size, but usually of extreme simplicity of plan. Of most of
them, the Roman again excepted, the relative age is all that we can
hope to ascertain, but even from this knowledge we are at present
very far; and although it is probable that the simple encampments, of
irregular outline, and on high ground, are the work of the earliest
inhabitants of Britain, and those of circular or more regular outline,
having higher banks, and placed in more accessible positions, are the
works of the post-Roman period, yet the outlines are often so mixed,
and the arrangement of the mounds and banks so alike, that it cannot
always certainly be said what is sepulchral, what merely commemorative
or monumental, and what military; what the works of the earlier or
later Celts, what of the Saxons, what of their Danish conquerors, and
sometimes even, though not often, what is Roman.
The particulars of these various earthworks, so different in plan
and extending over so many centuries, deserve a separate notice, and
therefore, though originally intended to have been here treated of, it
seemed more prudent to lay this branch of the subject aside for the
present, in the hope that it may be taken up when the completion of
the larger scale Ordnance Maps shall afford more accurate and copious
data than now can conveniently be procured. The subject, in fact,
should have entered into the instructions given to the officers of the
Survey, by which means we should at least have avoided the obscure and
sometimes contradictory system of nomenclature by which these works
have been designated at different periods of this great, and in most
respects admirable, national undertaking.
But, although it be expedient here to pass by in silence those
earthworks, irregular, rectangular, or concentric, which have no direct
connexion with the subsequent castles of masonry, and therefore with
military architecture, there remain, nevertheless, certain earthworks
which are so connected, and which must therefore here be noticed, and
are of importance sufficient to require a separate chapter for their
consideration.