Along the south side were placed the great kitchen, buttery, and

great hall. The kitchen, 33 feet by 24 feet, occupies the south-west

angle, and communicates with the adjacent angle tower. It has two

large fireplaces, of 12 feet span, in the north and south walls. The

former has an oven in its west jamb, an afterthought, as it projects

into the adjacent room. The other had a large stone hood, of which one

springing stone remains, and is buttressed by a corbel, placed in the

hollow angle to receive its thrust, as at St. Briavels. The kitchen had

an open, lofty roof. Next is the buttery, of two floors, with traces

of a cellar below. It is 18 feet by 24 feet, and opened into the hall

by three equilaterally arched doorways side by side, each towards the

hall, having a deep hollow early Perpendicular moulding. These opened

into a passage under the music-gallery.

The hall was about 50 feet long by 26 feet broad, with an open roof.

It had, at the dais end of the south wall, a window of two lights,

with a transom; the lower pair square-headed, the upper pair pointed.

The whole is in a recess, with a flat segmental arch. There are said

to have been two windows in the north wall, looking into the court,

and here probably was the fireplace, for fireplaces and not central

hearths seem to have been in fashion here. The hall door remains. It

is a handsome archway with a double ogee moulding. It opened below the

music-gallery, and at the other end of this passage was the entrance

to the lesser gatehouse, so that there was access from the court to

the gate, through a passage screened off from the occupied part of

the hall. Of course, the lesser gateway was used for foot-passengers

only. A passage somewhat similar crosses the lower end, not of the hall

itself, but of the vaults below the hall, at Kenilworth.

The state apartments and chapel occupied the east side, and the former

seem mostly to have been of two floors.

Behind the end of the hall was a large room, called the armoury, from

which opened the south-east tower. Here the sub-basement is hexagonal,

and was vaulted and groined. The vaulting has fallen away, but the

corbels remain, and the six gables and wall-ribs. Probably this was a

private store or cellar, for it has no fire or garderobe, and though

the vaulting was elegant, the chamber, being at or a trifle below the

water-level, must always have been damp. The upper floors were of

timber.

Probably the term armoury is modern, and here were the

withdrawing-rooms, to which a passage led from the north end of the

dais, outside the hall. There remains a platform of masonry, which

seems to have been laid to carry such a passage.

North of these rooms are traces of others, which communicated with

the east tower and chapel, and were probably private apartments, with

windows to the court. Under the whole was a range of cellars, below the

court level, but with doors and loops ascending to it.

Next comes the chapel, 29 feet by 19 feet, having a large pointed

window of three lights at the east end. The floor, of timber, covered

a cellar, having a loop, rising to the court, and a door in the south

wall. The eastern end has a solid raised platform for the altar, and

near it a small north window. To the south is a small plain-pointed

piscina, and near it a lancet door, opening by steps into a vaulted

and groined mural chamber, 11 feet by 6 feet, intended as a sacristy,

having two lockers, and a small window to the moat. The chapel door

was in the south wall, leading from the lower private apartments.

Above the sacristy is a rather larger room, having a door from the

upper apartments, and a square-headed window, of two trefoiled lights,

looking into the chapel; evidently the lord’s private seat, whence,

unseen, he could be present at mass. There was no west door, or direct

entrance from the court. The chapel seems to have had an open timber

roof.

The masonry throughout the castle is excellent ashlar, the material

a fine-grained, soft, but durable sandstone. There is but little

ornament. There were seven main well-staircases, each terminating in

an octagonal turret, serving as a head. The stairs did not ascend to

the top of the turret, which was domed over, and inaccessible. The

rooms are almost all furnished with fireplaces, and very many with

mural garderobes which seem to have been closed with curtains, or not

at all, since there are no marks of doors. Their shafts descend within

the walls, and discharge into the moat below the surface. The windows

generally are small, that of the chapel and of the hall are the only

ones even of tolerable size, towards the moat.

The drum towers look older than their real date, their gorge-walls,

general proportions and arrangement, well-staircases, and lancet and

often trefoiled windows, savouring of the Edwardian period. Their

hexagonal interiors, however, and the bold and simple moulding that

crowns their parapets, belong to the Perpendicular style. The chimneys

throughout are octagonal, well-proportioned, but plain, save the

embattled moulding above. They may be later than the castle.

The three armorial shields over the great gateway represent Bodiham

or Bodeham, Dalingruge, and Wardeux. The central, being that of the

founder, is placed angle-wise beneath his helmet and crest. There

were also three shields above the lesser gateway. One was, no doubt,

Dalingruge, as before, another was Knollys, out of compliment to that

commander.

The battlements generally have a plain ∧ coping, with a beaded ridge

towards the field. The merlons are much broader than the embrasures,

but are not pierced. The coping is not repeated in the embrasures.

No well has been discovered, nor any lead piping, as at Ledes, where

the castle was supplied with pure water from a spring at some little

distance. On the whole, the castle, for its period, is unusually severe

in its arrangements, there being scarcely any traces of luxury. It was

a castle, not a manor house, nor palace.

There remains to be described a very singular feature in this castle,

the approach to the great gateway. At present, a causeway of earth,

about 6 feet broad, springs from the north bank of the moat, and

proceeds direct, about 62 feet, towards the opposite gateway. It then

stops abruptly, and its head is revetted in masonry, which, however,

is modern. Opposite, 11 feet distant, the water flowing between, is

an octagon of 16 feet on each face, or 40 feet diameter, rising as an

island out of the moat, and revetted all round. There was evidently a

shifting bridge of some kind between this octagon and the causeway.

Whether this octagon carried any superstructure is uncertain, probably

it had only the parapet, of which traces remain.

Crossing the octagon in the same straight line, there is reached a

second gap, of 6 feet, and beyond this is a rectangular island about 21

feet north and south, by 20 feet broad, also revetted all round, and on

which revetment stood the walls of the barbican. This was, therefore, a

rectangular building, traversed by the entrance passage, and having a

doorway at either end, the outer guarded by a portcullis, and the inner

by doors. The passage was vaulted and apparently groined. It seems to

have been of one stage only, the platform resting on the vault and

battlements. In the north-west corner was a well-stair, opening from

the passage, and ascending to the roof. Grose’s drawing shows this as

though it was a side or foot entrance, which does not appear to have

been the case. The work is excellent ashlar, but only the west side

remains.

The barbican is about 54 feet from the great gate, and at present is

connected with it by a causeway. As this causeway is here and there

seen to be revetted, it may be original, in which case it was possibly

broken at either end, and the connection carried on by bridges falling

from the barbican and from the great gate. This, however, is conjecture

only.

Some doubt has arisen as to how the octagon was originally approached

from the main land. This doubt is caused by the presence of a demi-pier

of masonry projecting from the west bank a few yards from its north

end, and therefore opposite to the octagon. It is therefore supposed

that the causeway from the north bank is an addition, and that another

causeway, or some kind of communication, was laid from the west bank to

the octagon, a much greater distance, nearly thrice as far. No doubt a

similar half-pier on the south bank indicates a communication thence

with the lesser gateway, but here there seems no reason whatever for

the suggested lengthening and bend in the approach. On the whole, for

whatever purpose the western pier may have been intended, the evidence

is in favour of the approach having always been along the present line.

Neither the north nor the west bank is commanded seriously by higher

ground. That to the north rises, no doubt, but scarcely so as to give

any great advantage to archers posted to annoy those entering the

castle, and certainly no greater advantage than could be gained from

the rising ground to the west. Possibly the pier was intended for the

mooring and protection of the boats employed on that side of the moat.

A road, still traceable, led up to this demi-pier.

This double outwork in the moat is peculiar, it is supposed, to

Bodiham. At Ledes, indeed, there are two barbicans, but they are not

exactly in the moat, but upon the bank, and are deeply intrenched, so

as to carry the water round them. At Caerphilly, there is a single

large isolated pier in the centre of the moat, now dry, which pier was

connected by drawbridges with the great gate and the counterscarp, and

may be likened to the octagon in the present instance.

BORTHWICK TOWER, IN MIDLOTHIAN.

Borthwick has been selected and is included in these examples as a

noble specimen of military architecture, and the finest extant specimen

of the Peel tower so celebrated upon the Scottish border; meaning by a

“Peel” a stronghold of which the tower is the only considerable work,

and which stands within a walled base-court or barmkin of moderate

area. Here, indeed, the dimensions of the tower are those of a Norman

keep, and the court, though small, is guarded by bastion towers of

large diameter, but still the tower is itself the fortress, and was

obviously the residence of the lord and his family, not only during a

siege, but at all times. Such fortresses as Lochleven and Urquhart on

Loch Ness, though far inferior to Borthwick in strength of masonry and

grandeur, are nevertheless castles, whereas Borthwick is a Peel.

[Illustration: SECTION A B, LOOKING WESTWARD.]

Though a ruin, and deserted probably for a couple of centuries,

Borthwick is still in tolerable order, having been preserved by the

unusual thickness of its walls and the excellence of their masonry,

and the fact that both its basement and uppermost story are vaulted,

and the upper vaults protected by stone roofing of a very substantial

character. The intermediate timber floors are all gone, and the vast

cavities are inhabited by a numerous colony of jackdaws, whose heaps of

guano might be removed with advantage. No care has been or is bestowed

upon the place, which until recently needed but little; now, however,

the rank vegetation on the roof is displacing the tile stones, and the

water penetrates the vaults. The grand fireplaces have fallen, and some

of the lesser ones are about to fall. At present a few score pounds

judiciously laid out would arrest the decay which, unchecked, will

certainly in a very few years bring down the upper vaults, and involve

the whole structure in irreparable ruin.

[Illustration:

FIRST FLOOR.

BASEMENT.

BORTHWICK TOWER.]

The tower stands upon a tongue of rocky land, protected by deep,

rugged, and wooded ravines to the south, east, and north. Down two of

these flow the heads of the Middleton burn, and, below the castle,

unite, to fall into the Gore water, which, gathering its springs from

the adjacent Lammermuirs, flows, parallel to the railway, down a pretty

pastoral valley by Gore Bridge, to the South Esk. The tower, placed

over the juncture of the three streams, is a very marked object from

the railway, contesting the attention of travellers with Crichton

Castle, in an opposite direction, but in sight, for a few seconds, at

the same time.

The platform, covered by the base-court, is an irregular figure,

governed by the ground, rounded to the east, and presenting right

angles to the north and south-west. Its dimensions are about 80 yards

east and west, by 35 yards north and south. There is a large drum-tower

at the south-west angle, and another, with a square rear, in the centre

of the south front, and there are traces as of a third capping the

south-east angle. These towers are 18 feet diameter, have a basement,

a first and second floor, and are about 23 feet high above the court,

and 35 feet to the field. In the west front, close to the angle-tower,

is a gateway; an opening in a very thick low curtain, round-headed, and

probably of the date of the tower. It had a drawbridge and portcullis,

and may have had a low upper story. Above the door, outside, is a flat

entablature, with mouldings in the Renaissance style, and the adjacent

bastion and curtain are pierced with long loops, placed horizontally,

evidently intended for musquetoons, and therefore insertions. They are

similar to those in the north-east bastion of Berwick town wall. The

southern bastion has the original vertical loops for bows and arrows.

The west is the weak side, for which nature has done nothing. The

curtain accordingly is on that side thickened to 12 feet or 15 feet,

and there may have been a ditch, now filled up.

The court was divided by a cross wall, north and south, of no great

strength, and the tower stood in the western half, from six to eight

yards from the three outer walls. The northern curtain is an irregular

heap of ruins; upon it, opposite to the tower door, there seems to have

been a mass of masonry ascended probably by steps, and serving as an

abutment to the stone arch by which the main or first-floor entrance

was reached.

The _Tower_ is rectangular, 74 feet north and south by 69 feet east and

west, and from 90 feet to 110 feet high, the latter height being to the

ridge of the gables. In the west front is a recess, also rectangular,

14 feet broad and 24 feet deep, so that the building in plan resembles

the Greek capital Π, and may conveniently be divided into a body and

wings. The recess is not quite in the centre, the north wing being

31 feet and the south 29 feet broad. Also, the latter is rather the

shorter, so that the north front measures 69 feet, and the south front

68 feet. The arrangement of the chambers is very simple, all being

rectangular and parallel to the sides, but the mode of reaching them

by staircases is very complex. The walls are of immense thickness,

the north or entrance side being 14 feet, and the other from 10 feet

to 11 feet. Those of the recess, being protected, are rather less,

and in parts only 6 feet. It is remarkable that these thicknesses are

continued with little or no reduction, to the top. The style is simple

and severe, and although the material is cut stone, of remarkably fine

workmanship both inside and outside the structure, there is scarcely

any ornamentation. Over the outer door, in a shallow ogee niche, is

a saint or bishop in low relief, and within is a handsome canopied

niche for a statue and a sort of seat of state or sedile for the lord.

The fireplaces also are good, and the two larger ones of magnificent

character and dimensions. These ornaments belong to the Decorated style

of architecture, and correspond with the known date of the building,

the first half of the fifteenth century. The walls rise from a plain

plinth, and are terminated by strong corbels, 2 feet apart, and about 2

feet deep, between each of which was a “meurtrière,” and outside it a

low parapet, now removed. As usual with Scottish towers, at each angle

was a three-quarter low bartisan resting on the corbels, and probably

rising no higher than the parapet. Also, the three high-pitched roofs

of the body and wings rise above and within the walls, being set back

from 6 feet to 8 feet. The chimneys, where they remain, are tall and

handsome, and the three well-staircases opening on the roof were housed

in cylindrical turrets with conical roofs, of which one remains,

wanting only its finial.

The basement is on the ground level, which is about 5 feet below the

exterior ward. Above it is a first floor, which in the body is occupied

by the great hall, above which is a second floor containing the chapel

and upper hall. Above this is a third floor. The divisions of the

wings are less lofty. The north contains six floors, the south five.

There are five well-staircases in different parts of the building.

Two ascend from the ground level to the first floor and there stop.

Two others commence at that floor and ascend to the roof, supplying

the intermediate floors, and another commences half-way up the height

of the hall, threads two walls as a gallery, and finally rises as a

well-stair to the roof. There was thus a ready access from the first

and upper floors to the battlements in case of danger.

_Basement._—In the body are three chambers placed crossways, east and

west, side by side, all 23 feet long, the central 14 feet wide, the

others 15 feet. The vault springs 14 feet from the floor, and in each,

at the east end, is a large arched recess, high up, narrowing to a

loop. At the springing line of each vault is a row of strong corbels,

evidently to support a floor, a sort of windowless entresol. These

lower chambers communicate by doors, and in the south wall of the most

southern is a recess or cupboard. The outer doorway, 6 feet wide, at

the level of the ground outside, is in the north wall, and is closed

by a stout door, within which the passage descends eight steps. In

the same wall is a well-stair, which ascends from the basement to the

first floor, and there stops. In this, half-way up, is a door into

the entresol over the northern chamber, from which level the stair is

continued to the first floor. The entresols over the other two chambers

were reached by ladders. The whole range clearly was intended for

stores, in case of a siege.

From the north and south chambers doors open into the basements of the

two wings, also vaulted. The north, the prison, is 18 feet by 12 feet,

with a high and narrow loop to the west. In its upper part is also a

small door, from the adjacent entresol, which may have opened upon a

similar floor above the prison, or may have been an opening to look

down into it.

In the left wing is a vault 20 feet long by 12 feet 6 inches broad, and

only 8 feet high. This was reached from the adjacent chamber in the

body, and contained the well. From this chamber, opening in the south

wall, is a well-stair, which rises 10 feet to an entresol, and thence

proceeds to the first floor. This entresol, also vaulted, was 18 feet

by 12 feet. There is a fireplace and cupboard in the north wall, and in

the south a small loop, a mural garderobe, and the door of entrance.

From it a rise of 14 feet leads to the first floor, which is thus 24

feet above the basement.

The _first floor_ contains the great _hall_,—a noble chamber, 51 feet

by 24 feet, with walls from 12 feet to 14 feet thick. It is covered by

a pointed barrel vault, quite plain, but, with the walls, of excellent

ashlar. The height to the crown is about 30 feet. It occupies the

whole breadth of the building. In the north end is a mural chamber,

8 feet 6 inches by 7 feet 10 inches, which contains the head of the

well-stair from below. This has a door into the hall and another

into the entrance passage. This is the passage of the main entrance,

4 feet 7 inches broad, and 14 feet long, having a door at each end,

but no portcullis. It is the main entrance to the tower. Outside, it

seems to have been approached by a stone arch of about 8 feet span, of

which the springing-course is seen under the door-sill. In the vaulted

mural passage are the opposite doors, one mentioned already upon the

stair-head, the other leading to the kitchen, which occupies the north

wing.

At the other extremity of this northern end of the hall a door opens

into a well-stair, 7 feet 10 inches in diameter, which here commences,

and supplies the upper floor and the roof. The east side of the hall is

pierced by two windows, square headed, in deep-splayed arched recesses

of 7 feet opening, and 22 feet apart. Besides these, towards the north

end is a small light, a mere loop, in a recess of 2 feet 7 inches

opening.

The great feature of the hall, after its fine pointed vault, is a

grand fireplace, 9 feet broad and 3 feet deep, with a projecting hood

of stone, which dies into the wall about two-thirds of the way up,

and is supported by two double half-shafts, with bases and carved

caps and a flowered band above, all in the Decorated style. This

occupies the centre of the south end, and on each side of it, high up,

are recesses of 5 feet opening ending in loops of 1 foot. The hood

is broken down and the fireplace in decay, but its remains are very

striking. Along the west side of the hall are various openings. In the

centre is a window recess, 5 feet 10 inches broad and 9 feet deep,

from which a side opening leads into a vaulted serving-room, 5 feet by

11 feet, which again opens into the kitchen. In the south end of this

side a door opens into the withdrawing-room, and another door into

a well-stair, which here commences, and communicates with the upper

floors of the south wing, and the roof. Near the north end of this side

a low arch or buttery-hatch opened direct into the kitchen. Besides

these openings, there are two ornamental recesses. The one a niche in

the north wall for a statue, about 5 feet high, with a handsome groined

and floriated canopy and a base resting upon a half-shaft, probably for

a statue of the patron saint of the family. Also in the west wall, near

the fireplace, is a sort of sedile, 4 feet broad, with an ogee canopy,

containing on a shield the three cinquefoils, the Borthwick arms. The

walls of the hall seem to have been either painted or covered with

devices, one of which, “Ye Temple of Honour,” was recently to be seen.

Here and in the staircases are many masons’ marks. Two of the doors

have heads as of three sides of a hexagon, something like the Berkeley

arch.

The _Kitchen_ occupied the first floor of the north wing. It is 16 feet

by 22 feet, and is spanned by a large flat arch, throwing the western

half into a stone hood, under which the principal culinary operations

were carried on. There are three recesses with loops in the north and

west sides, one of which is blocked by a later oven. There is also a

small fireplace. The entrances are from the main door of the hall and

from the serving-room, and between is the buttery-hatch.

The _Withdrawing-room_ occupies the south wing, and is 19 feet by 14

feet. It was entered from the hall and from the well-stair, and has

recesses and small windows towards the south and west, besides wall

cupboards. The south wall contains, in a vaulted chamber, the head

of the staircase from the well-room and its entresol; and in this

wall also is a mural chamber, 8 feet by 7 feet, with two doors, a

window, and, in its flat slab-covered roof, a shaft, probably for a

stove chimney. This is called Queen Mary’s room, and was probably her

bed-chamber when she visited Borthwick. This and the larger room are

plugged for panelling, and the contiguous doorways from the stairs and

the hall had a wooden porch shutting them off in the corner of the

room, so that there was a passage either from the Queen’s room or the

staircase into the hall without entering the withdrawing-room.

Above the hall, a corresponding space, 51 feet by 24 feet, is divided

by a cross-wall into an upper hall and a chapel. The _upper hall_, 27

feet by 24 feet, has a large fireplace, with a stone hood and flanking

shafts, and near it a window, both in the east wall. In the north

wall is a large recess and window and a door into the north-eastern

staircase. In the west wall is a window in a recess, and a door which

leads by a mural passage into the north wing, and into a garderobe in

the north wall.

The _Chapel_, 24 feet by 21 feet, has a recess of 9 feet wide, in which

is the east window, a piscina, and an almbry. It had also two south

windows, and between them a small fireplace. In its west wall is the

entrance-door from the well-stair, and a door, 2 feet above the floor,

from the south wing, which probably opened into a raised seat for the

lord. Both chapel and upper hall had a flat timber roof, and were 14

feet high.

The room next above these, the third floor of the body, was of the

dimensions of the great hall. It had three windows to the east and one

to the north, south, and west. It was entered from the well-staircase

in the north-east corner, and that of the south wing, and it had a door

direct into the north wing. This room has a long, full-centred barrel

vault, which rises about 6 feet above the walls, and is, therefore, to

the crown, about 15 feet high. It is probable that this great chamber

was broken up by partitions, but it contains no fireplace.

Corresponding to these floors in the body are, in the south wing,

five,—the first being the withdrawing-room already described, and

13 feet high. The second has two windows, a fireplace, and a mural

garderobe, and is about 11 feet high. The third, the same, and is 8

feet high; the fourth has the same arrangements, and, in addition, a

door into the private seat of the chapel. It is 17 feet high. The fifth

floor has two windows only, and is about 15 feet high to the crown of

its vaulted roof. All the chambers in this wing are of the same size,

and one over another.

The chambers in the north wing are over, and of the same size with,

the first floor or kitchen, the hood and chimney-shaft of which, built

against the west wall, passes up through each floor, tapering as it

rises. In this wing there are six floors, most having two windows and

some a fireplace. The second floor—that over the kitchen—is entered

from the eastern well-stair, whence, at 12 feet above the floor of the

hall, a mural passage threads the north wall and its window recess, and

leads into the chamber. Hence, ascending in the west wall of the hall

10 feet, it reaches the commencement of a well-stair, which leads to

the upper floors and the roof. The uppermost and sixth floor is in the

vault of the roof, and is lighted by orifices in its gables.

Besides these chambers in the two wings there are small mural chambers

at two levels in the west wall, which are reached from the south stair,

and look into the recess on the west front of the tower.

The battlements are still accessible by two staircases, and the three

roofs are seen to rise independently from the rampart-walk level. They

are high-pitched, and their vaults are covered with cut stone tiles,

fitted so as to form ridges and hollows, and so jointed as completely,

while perfect, to exclude the rain. This roofing has lasted well, and

even now only needs relaying and the replacing of a few broken stones.

The gables are of cut stone. The stair-heads are about 8 feet high,

circular, with conical roofs of ashlar. There seems to have been a low

parapet all round, set out upon corbels, and between each pair a square

machicolation. There is a clear walk all round, only broken by the

chimney-shafts. The parapet has been removed, probably to prevent the

tower being held as a military post. The east wall near the top is much

injured, it is said, by Cromwell’s shot, when he battered the castle

from this side, beyond the ravine.

Borthwick Tower was built under a licence from James II. to Sir William

Borthwick of that ilk, dated the 2nd of June, 1430.

Billing gives an excellent view of this tower from the south-west, and

a good drawing of the interior of the hall, showing the great fireplace

before its fall, and the lord’s seat.

HISTORY.

The family of Borthwick, though for centuries the owners of this

estate, derive their name from a place on the shore of Borthwickwater,

in the shire of Selkirk, whence, at a remote period, they migrated to

the lands and castle of Catcune, holding it with Legertwood and Herriot

Muir, whence they again removed to Locherwart, to which they gave the

name of Borthwick, an inversion common in Ireland, but rare in England

and Scotland. Their predecessors at Locherwart were the Hays of Yester.

The first of the name on record was, I., _Thomas_ de Borthwick,

_temp._ David II., and who held lands in Berwickshire. His son, II.,

_Sir William_ Borthwick, of Catcune, was living 1378, and his son,

III., _Sir William_ Borthwick, in 1387-1401, and who was father of,

IV., _Sir William_, of Legertwood, who, in 1410, had a grant from

Robert Duke of Albany of the lands of Borthwick and Thoftcotys, in

Selkirk; V., another _William_, son of the last, was one of the

hostages sent to England for the ransom of James I. To him, as

Willelmus de Borthwic, miles, the king granted, 2nd June, 1430, a

letter of licence, “construendi castrum in illo loco qui vulgariter

dicitur le Mot de Lochorwort ... ac in eodem castro et fortalicio

Constabularium, Janitorem, custodesque necessarios et optimos pro sua

voluntate providendi, removendi, et omnia alia quæ ad securitatem et

fortificationem dicti castri necessaria fuerint faciendi.”

Such a licence is rare in Scotland, where the nobles were very

independent of the Crown, and the country commonly so disturbed that

a castle was almost a necessary of life. To the castle so licensed to

be built was given the name of Borthwick. It is probable from the term

“Le Mot” that there was already a strong place there, for which indeed

the position was very suitable. This Sir William seems to have been

the first Lord Borthwick. His lineal male descendant, John, the eighth

lord, held out his castle for a time against Cromwell’s artillery. His

son, John, the ninth lord, died childless in 1681, and on his death the

castle passed to his sister’s son, Dundas of Harrington, from which

family, after two descents, the castle was purchased by Borthwick of

Croston, descended from a younger son of the first lord, and his male

descendant in the tenth generation claimed, in 1774, the barony, which,

however, was ultimately granted to a still nearer male heir.

John, the fifth lord, was a strong partisan of Queen Mary. He it was

who ducked the apparitor in the burn, and made him eat his letter of

excommunication, steeped in wine. Mary fled to Borthwick Castle, about

three weeks after her marriage with Bothwell, 7th June, 1577, and,

being followed by the opposing lords, fled thence, on the 11th, to

Dunbar, disguised as a page. No doubt she slept in the chamber called

by her name. Bothwell, at that time, possessed the adjacent castle of

Crichton.

The Borthwick arms carved in the hall of the castle are,—(A) three

cinquefoils (sable).

The adjacent church was rebuilt, or nearly so, in excellent taste, in

1850. It has a western tower with a broach spire, a nave, chancel, and

round apse, and two transepts, of which that to the south is old, and

mainly in the Decorated style, though with some traces of Norman work.

Dr. Robertson, the historian, was born in the manse, which, however,

has been rebuilt.

THE CASTLE OF BÔVES.

The Castle of Bôves is here introduced as a good example of a moated

mound on the other side of the Channel. The castle and village stand

upon the left bank of the valley of the Noye, in the old province of

Picardy, above and about a quarter of a mile distant from the stream.

The Noye rises near to Crêvecœur-le-Grand, beyond Bretuil, and flows

across a district of chalk. Both a little above and immediately

below Bôves, it inosculates with the Avre, which rises near to

Crêvecœur-le-Petit, and the combined stream, flowing past Longeau,

joins the Somme immediately above Amiens, which city is about five

miles distant from Bôves. Both the Noye and the Avre exhibit the

features which are still more strongly marked in the Somme. They flow

sluggishly across broad, flat tracts of peat and gravel, contained

within steep and high banks of chalk. The peat has been extensively

excavated for fuel, and the cavities are filled with dark peaty water.

The supply of coal by railway and canal seems somewhat to have checked

the demand upon these turbaries, and the uncut surfaces are highly

cultivated as nursery gardens, which appear in patches amidst the

pools, and are chiefly reached by boats. The poplar is the prevailing

tree of these damp, gloomy districts, and it there attains a very

considerable size. Below the peat, and at the base and up the sides of

the chalk hills, the rock is more or less thickly covered up with beds

of gravel and light loam, in which are found the flint implements which

have been the subject of so much speculation.

The village of Bôves contains under 2,000 persons, whose chief

employment is bleaching in the open fields the cotton cloths

manufactured in the neighbourhood. The church, the only public

building, is a heavy Doric temple, of modern date. The village is built

at the foot of the chalk hill upon which stands the castle, and which

has been quarried for building purposes into a cliff of 50 feet to 80

feet high.

The castle, now a mere ruin of no great extent, is chiefly remarkable

for its earthworks. It stands upon a chalk ridge, perhaps 150 feet

above the valley, and has been isolated towards the south by a curved

ditch, about 50 feet deep by 60 feet or 70 feet broad, and about a

furlong in length. This ditch works out upon the face of the cliff

towards the village, and upon the natural slope in the opposite

direction. The ground without, or upon its counterscarp, has not been

disturbed. The contents have been thrown inward, and cause the scarp to

be crowned by an elevated bank.

On the highest part of the ground, just within the ditch and near its

centre, is a mound or motte, with very steep sides, about 50 feet high,

and a circular flat top about 100 feet in diameter. This motte has a

basis of chalk rock, which has been scarped, and the material added

to the summit. The bank proceeds from the mound along the edge of the

ditch, and probably was connected with or covered the entrance into the

work upon the motte. To the east and north of the motte the ground is

tolerably level as far as the edge of the cliff, and of a deep hollow

way ascending from the village. This space is now partially occupied by

a public cemetery and some farm buildings. West of the motte is a sort

of lunated platform, beyond which the slope is again scarped by art.

Probably the principal buildings of the castle and its offices occupied

these platforms under the motte.

The only masonry remaining stands upon the motte, and consists of

the ruins of a tower and a fragment of wall. The tower stands at the

junction of the scarped bank with the motte, upon the edge of the

ditch. Its remains are quadrangular, with thick walls, of which only

the north and south remain. It was of three floors, a basement vaulted

in round-headed barrel; a first floor, with timber ceiling; and a

second floor, higher, and evidently a room of state. In the basement

walls remain three rectangular loopholes, or small window-openings,

high up. The upper room may have been vaulted. Its walls show a

round-headed gable, but this may have belonged to a coved plaster

ceiling. Outside, against one wall, is a plain buttress, 3 feet by 3

feet. The material is chalk rubble, without flints, and faced, within

and without, with chalk ashlar, the stones being coursed, and about 9

inches long by 6 inches high, with rather open joints. This tower may

have contained a small portal. From it extends a fragment of curtain,

along the edge of the motte. This has one broken opening, perhaps a

window, with a round head. It is difficult to form an opinion upon the

age of this masonry. It is possibly late Norman.

There are marks of the foundations of a shell of wall all round the

edge of the motte, and of a central rectangular court. At present the

summit is planted with trees, and the slopes covered with brushwood.

Bôves underwent a siege from Philip Augustus of which an interesting

account was drawn up by Guillaume le Breton. The following is extracted

from it:—

“The first barriers being won, the besiegers constructed with osiers,

hides and stout planks, a cat, under cover of which picked men filled

in the ditch. This done, the knights, under cover of their large

shields held against the wall, covered the miners, who, with bars and

picks, broke into the wall, propping it up with rough trunks of trees,

and then removing the masonry above the level of the foundations. When

enough was thus undermined, they set the props on fire and retired.

When the props were burnt the wall fell in the midst of a dense cloud

of dust and smoke. The besieged then gave way, a body of youth,

sheathed in armour, ascended amidst the dust and ruin, massacred some

and captured others, while the remainder, retreating, fled into the

keep, which, built upon a scarped rock and protected by a double wall,

offered a sure asylum.

“Then a machine, contrived for various purposes, was brought to bear

upon the keep; sometimes as a mangonel, such as are used by the Turks,

it sent a shower of small stones into the air, sometimes a single stone

of vast weight was projected with a velocity exceeding that from a

sling. Fissures began to appear in the walls, shaken by the repeated

blows,” &c.

The history of Bôves is probably that of Amiens. It is supposed to have

been thrown up in the ninth century, for defence against the aggressive

Northmen, and the character of the earthwork favours this view. Some of

the Sieurs de Coucy were lords also of Bôves; and Henry IV., whose wars

brought him to Amiens, is said to have occasionally visited Bôves with

Gabrielle d’Estrées. The lordship was, during that reign, the property

of Philippe de Mornay, son of that Du Plessis Mornay whose name is so

intimately associated with the career of Henry. The earthworks are seen

to great advantage from the Bôves Station of the Amiens Railway.

BOWES CASTLE, YORKSHIRE.

The stronghold known as Bowes Castle consists at this time of a single

rectangular tower, unconnected with any other buildings, and bearing

no trace whatever of ever having been so connected. This is very

remarkable, inasmuch as the tower is in every respect both of plan

and detail, a Norman keep, and Norman keeps usually, it may be said

invariably, are, as the name imports, connected with or surrounded by

other buildings, of which the tower is the strength or citadel.

Brough, Brougham and Appleby, Carlisle and Newcastle, Helmsley,

Scarborough, and Richmond, all Norman rectangular keeps of the Northern

Counties, are parts only, though the chief part, each of its castle,

and it is only to fortresses so composed of parts that it is usual

to apply the name of castle, a single structure being usually termed

a tower or peel. Bowes, however, is always styled a castle in the

records, and it is, of course, possible that it may, in respect of

composition, have resembled other castles, and that the stronger and

better-built part of the work may have proved most durable. It is,

however, clear that no other work in masonry abutted upon, or, at

least, was bonded into this tower, nor is there any indication of

building or of foundations in the greensward, to which the tower on

two of its sides lies open. On another side the churchyard runs up

to within but a few feet of the tower, and on the remaining side the

cottages show nothing of either old walls, or of the material of which

such were likely to have been constructed.

Bowes Keep, if then Keep it may be called, is a rectangular tower

rather above 82 feet east and west by 60 feet north and south. It does

not, however, stand with the main points of the compass, the actual

north being the north-west angle of the description. It is about 50

feet high. Each angle is capped by a broad flat pilaster, 14 feet broad

and projecting a foot, and the angle of meeting of each pair is solid.

Midway, in the centre of each face, is also a pilaster 8 feet 10 inches

broad, and of the same projection with those flanking it. There is no

base or plinth or set-off, save where a plain string-course marks the

level of the upper floor, and is continued along the whole building,

walls and pilasters. The top of the wall is much broken down, no

battlement remaining. There do not appear to have been turrets at the

angles, save perhaps one at the south-east, containing the stair head.

There is a basement, a main, and an upper floor. The basement, as

usual, is at the ground-level. Its walls are 11 feet to 12 feet

thick and solid, enclosing an area 36 feet by 58 feet. This again is

subdivided by two cross-walls, 4 feet 4 inches thick. One of these,

lying north and south, seems to have ascended through each floor, the

other at right angles to it was probably confined to the basement.

Both walls are broken away, only enough being left to show that such

there were. Of the three chambers thus formed, that occupying the west

end of the floor was 37 feet long by 16 feet broad (_a_). Of the two

others the southern was 37 feet 10 inches long by 17 feet broad (_c_),

and the northern the same length by 15 feet broad (_b_).

[Illustration: BOWES CASTLE.

FIRST OR MAIN FLOOR.

GROUND PLAN.]

The western chamber was certainly vaulted, the corbels whence sprung

the ribs or vaults remaining at the four angles. The other two chambers

were probably also vaulted, some trace of the angle corbels remaining.

A special rib seems to have shut off the south-east angle, probably to

give head-room for the staircase doorway. A doorway led from the south

to the western chamber, of which the south jamb remains. Probably these

chambers were vaulted in two bays, but of this no indication is left.

All are lighted by loops, each loop is about 2 inches broad, and 6

feet above the ground, and is placed in a round-headed stepped recess,

splayed from an internal breadth of about 4 feet 6 inches. Of these

loops there are six. One in the north wall, opening from the north

chamber; three in the south wall, of which two open from the south

chamber, and the third from the west chamber, which has also two others

in the west wall.

The south-east angle is occupied by a well-staircase 11 feet 8 inches

diameter, which rises to the roof, communicating by a short lobby with

each floor. The only access to the basement was by this staircase from

the first floor.

The first or main floor was divided by the cross-wall into a larger

east (_e_) and a smaller west chamber (_d_), and a shelf or set-off

reduces some of the walls by a foot, and enlarges the inner area

accordingly. At this level also the walls contained several mural

chambers. The main, and indeed the only entrance to the tower was

on this floor in the east wall, about 10 feet from the ground. The

doorway, a plain rounded arch of 5 feet 4 inches opening (_f_), led

into a passage of 6 feet breadth, opening direct into the eastern

chamber. There was no portcullis, and the only defence was a stout

door, barred. In the south wall of the passage a small doorway led into

a chamber in the east wall, 6 feet wide by 14 feet long, and which has

a loop in its outer wall, and no doubt opened by a doorway, now broken

down, into the east chamber. On the north side of the doorway, but not

communicating with the passage, the north-east angle of the building is

occupied by a second mural chamber 14 feet long by 9 feet broad, also

vaulted (_g_). In the north wall of this chamber is a fire-place with

a concave back, and at the east end is a loop. It was entered from the

east chamber by a doorway, now broken down, in its south wall, and this

door led into a small lobby, cut off by a cross-wall from the chamber

with the fire-place.

A third mural chamber is entered from the larger room by a small door

in the south wall. This opens into a passage 2 feet 6 inches broad,

and 33 feet long, lighted by a couple of loops in its south wall, and

terminating in a small chamber about 8 feet by 4 feet, which occupies

the south-west angle, and was lighted by a loop in the west wall.

A fourth chamber was contained within the west wall. It was entered

by a doorway now broken down, opening into a passage 2 feet 8 inches

broad by 19 feet long, lighted by two loops in the outer wall, one

of which was in a garderobe, and in the broken wall is seen a shaft

descending from an upper garderobe, possibly in the second floor or on

the battlements. The mural chambers are all vaulted. At the south-east

angle a doorway and lobby lead into the winding staircase. This main

floor was lighted by three windows, one in the north and one in the

south wall of the larger apartment, and one in the west wall of the

smaller room. These windows are all alike. Their recesses are flat

sided and round headed, and are open to the floor-level. They are 8

feet wide. Their framework or tracery is gone, so that it is impossible

to say precisely how they were closed in. Their flat sides give to

these three window recesses very much the appearance of doorways. This

floor was not vaulted, but ceiled with timber in the ordinary way.

The upper or second floor is a mere ruin and inaccessible, only

fragments of its walls remaining. The least injured part is about the

head of the staircase at the south-east angle. Here the sides of the

doorway and one wall of the lobby remain.

The material of the building is a rough strong sandstone, weathered

to a dark colour. The walls, inside and out, were faced with coarse

ashlar, well executed, and on three of the exterior sides remaining

unhurt. The west face has been stripped, no doubt for use for later

buildings. The interior also has been almost wholly stripped, just

enough remaining to show what has been. The basement is encumbered with

the fragments of the vaulting, so that the floor is nowhere to be seen.

There may therefore have been a well. The stairs have been designedly

broken away, so that the staircase remains an empty cylinder. The

entrance to it, at the base, is much broken. The three southern loops

are tolerably perfect; one quite so.

On the first floor the larger or eastern chamber was probably the

Hall. The main entrance had no forebuilding or exterior covering, nor

is there any trace of a stone staircase or of a drawbridge. It seems

to have been reached by steps of wood. The chamber in the north-east

angle, containing a fireplace, full large for its size, may have been

the kitchen. This is the only fireplace now seen in the building,

though there may have been others in the cross-wall. The two chambers

about the south-west angle seem to have been garderobes, one opening

from each of the main rooms. The three windows are unusually large, and

being only 12 or 14 feet from the ground, must have much weakened the

strength of the place. No doubt the framing or tracery filling up the

apertures was heavy and strong, but still no tracery or mullion could

have resisted a heavy stone from a catapult, nor indeed could the shell

of wall containing the staircase. Probably the borderers, whose raids

the tower was intended to resist, had no military engines at their

command.

As the roof is gone, with the walls that immediately supported it, it

is impossible to say whether it was flat or pitched at an angle. There

is seen, however, in the west wall, at its north end, a patch of ashlar

cut to a low slope, evidently that of a former roof, and there is a

like indication in what remains of the cross-wall, at its south end;

also about the same level is a square hole, which evidently carried the

water from the gutter on one side of the wall to that on the other. The

level of these indications of a low-pitched roof is about that of the

floor of the upper story, and many feet below even the present top of

the wall. It looks as though here, as at Richmond, Ludlow, Porchester,

Bridgenorth, Kenilworth, and in many other instances, the original

roof had been over the first story, and the second story had been an

afterthought, generally not more than a few years later. Possibly the

whole wall above the string-course is an addition, but if so it is a

very early one.

Bowes tower may safely be pronounced to be very late Norman in style.

The cross-walls are certainly original, but the vaulting was probably

an addition, and, to judge from the skewbacks of two ribs in the south

wall, of the Decorated period. The basements of Norman keeps were very

rarely vaulted, and here, as at Brougham, Richmond, and Carlisle, the

vaulting looks later than the walls.

The two open sides of the tower, the west and south, show that it was

guarded by a ditch at from 40 to 70 feet distance, and this may have

been continued all round. The tower stands a few yards south of the

highway which traverses this district from east to west, and represents

the Roman Way from Greta Bridge by Brough, Appleby, and Brougham, with

branches northwards to Alston and Carlisle. At Bowes, as at Brough and

Brougham, the road was strengthened by a camp, and Bowes tower stands

within the camp, near its western boundary, and to the south of its

central line. The ditches of the camp may be traced to the north and

west, and partly to the east, and its area is about 130 yards, by 140

yards: to the south the ground falls sharply towards the deep bed of

the Greta, and is defended by terraces and scarps, in which, a little

west of the centre, is an opening probably for communication with the

river. The remains of a Roman bath have been laid open outside the

south-east angle, and a fragment of lead pipe, no doubt feeding it,

was dug up in the adjacent churchyard. To the west are the remains of

four small barrows in Roundhill Close, and the defence of the camp is

strengthened by two watercourses at a short distance on the east and

west fronts. Besides this camp there is one at Greta Bridge, 6 miles

to the east, and two others at 6 and 8 miles to the west, of which

one known as Raycross is regarded as a British camp, adopted by the

Romans. The cross, commemorated in the name, is said to have been set

up in 1067 to mark the boundary then agreed upon between England and

Scotland. The further camp is known as Maiden Castle. Bowes is held to

be the Roman Lavatræ. The position is well chosen, having considerable

local elevation. It is 928 feet above the sea, and commands extensive

views, especially to the south and east.

As the history of North Yorkshire is as yet unwritten, but little is

known as to Bowes, save that both manor and castle were always held by

the Earls of Richmond. King John, that most restless of monarchs, was

at the castle on the 16th February, 7th of his reign, that is, in 1206,

when he thence, “apud Bouas,” addressed a mandate to the Foresters of

Nottingham, and again, according to Mr. Hunter’s itinerary, 16th June,

in the 14th year of his reign, 1212. “The Earls of Richmond,” says

Camden, “here levied a through toll, and set up a gallows.” Rymer also

gives a charter of Henry III. to Peter, Earl of Richmond, dated 25th

March, 1262, granting and confirming to him, with other lands, “Villas

de Richemund et Boghes, cum castris et wapentachiis, et omnibus aliis

pertinentiis suis;” and “Bowes castrum” was held of Peter of Savoy,

10 Edward I., and “Bowes Manerium” of John le Dreux the elder, Earl

of Richmond, 13 Edward I. 19 Edward I., William de Felton was put in

charge of Richmond and Bowes, &c., for the King. John le Dreux, Earl

of Richmond, had it 5 Edward III. 36 Edward III., Margaret de Dacre

died, seised of Bowes manor, as, 4 Henry VI., did Joan, widow of

John de Gray, Chevalier; and, 14 Henry VI., John Duke of Bedford. 22

Henry VI., two parts of the manor or lordship of Bowes were held by

John Duke of Somerset. Its present owner is Mr. Pulleine of Clifton.

Mention is made of a Bowes in Northumberland in the reign of Edward

III. and of a tenement called Bowes in Boulne in Sussex, 4 Henry IV.

The castle was probably built late in the 12th century, and dismantled

by either Charles or the parliament in the 17th century. It is a very

good example of a late Norman keep. The mill, the almost invariable

appendage of an early castle, stood upon the river Greta.

THE CASTLE OF BRAMBER, SUSSEX.

Of the shires of England there is none more intensely English than

Sussex. Its name, the names of the most central of its two capital

towns, of its principal and secondary divisions, of its parishes,

and in a very remarkable degree of its inhabitants, are but little

changed from those they bore on the eve of the Conquest, and when

under the sway of Godwin and Harold. Even the not infrequent marks of

Norman occupation, in the form of parish churches, abbeys, and castles

of great strength and durability, were many of them grafted upon

foundations dating from the days of Alfred and Egbert. This is the

case with Selsey, the ecclesiastical parent of the see of Chichester,

with Bosham, Malling, Steyning, and other religious houses; and

Arundel, Bramber, Knapp, Hastings, and Lewes, all great castles in

their day, were the seats of English chiefs for centuries, before their

banks were crested with walls of masonry, or their mounds crowned with

keeps constructed after the Norman pattern. Pevensey, indeed, boasts a

still earlier origin.

British remains in Sussex are but scanty. A few of the larger and more

elevated of the hill-camps, and those of irregular form, as Cissbury,

which includes 60 acres, are supposed to be the work of the Regni, the

earliest recorded inhabitants of the district. It is also difficult not

to see in the Arun, the Adur, and the Ouse, names corresponding to the

Aeron, the Dour, and the Usk or Esk, by which many streams in Celtic

countries are still designated. Glynde has been claimed as a Celtic

name, but it is very rare, especially in Sussex, to find the name of a

parish of other than Teutonic origin.

Of the Roman period the traces are more numerous. The main road

intersecting the county from Chichester towards London is undoubtedly

of that date, and there seems to have been at least one other from

Chichester—the Roman Regnum—to Pevensey. There remain also several

rectangular camps, as Goushill, Hollingbury, Ditchling, Highdown, and

Brighthelmstone Down, evidently Roman. Chichester, though its Latin

name probably includes an earlier appellation, has the Roman cruciform

arrangement of its two main streets, though not the rectangular

outline. Anderida, Mutuantonis, and Mida, Roman towns of which the

site is disputed, seem to have been in Sussex; and at Bognor and other

places, pavements and foundations and inscribed stones, and other marks

of Roman habitation, have been discovered. Still the remains, whether

of British or Roman occupation, are but slight: all that speaks of

law, of order, of property, of the family tie, of the forefathers of

the people, of civil or religious polity, and of public worship—all of

this character which is ancestral, is English. This thorough uprooting

of the traces of earlier occupation is due, no doubt, to the position

of Sussex upon that part of the British coast most exposed to Saxon

and Danish invasion, and which bore the attacks of those formidable

invaders when at their earliest and fiercest. Sussex was late to come

under the humanising influences of Christianity, remaining Pagan till

the middle of the seventh century. The remarkable conservation, to our

days, of the names and divisions is probably due to the very peculiar

configuration of the district, and to the isolation produced by its

steep and lofty frontier ridges, and by the dense woodland which

covered, and to some extent does still cover, its central part. As the

position of the principal castles is determined by this configuration,

a few words concerning it will not be out of place.

Sussex forms the western half of a chalk basin. The chalk rises in

a long, narrow, lofty, and very steep ridge, forming the northern,

eastern, and southern margins of the area, its height, reaching to

800 feet, being known as the Downs. The North Downs divide Sussex

from Surrey, the South Downs are the frontier towards the sea. This

latter ridge extends from near Chichester to Beachy Head, while the

North Downs extend to Folkestone and Dover. The deep wooded area thus

enclosed between them is the well-known weald of Sussex. The basin is

cut across obliquely by the sea, and the south-eastern frontier of the

county thus laid open for a length of about fifty miles. In former

days, however, the broad marshes of Pevensey, Winchelsea, and Romney

closed this opening with a barrier as effective as the downs themselves.

Upon these downs, and especially upon the range to the seaward, the

early sea-kings seem to have pitched their resting-places. Here are

still found such hill-camps as Woolstonbury, Caburn, Rookshill, and

Cheukbury, circular in form, and therefore neither British nor Roman,

and besides these, several others, as Newhaven, Seaford, and Burling,

which are segments of circles, and, like Flamborough Head, enclose

headlands, and are attributed, with some probability, to the Danes. It

seems the general opinion that these circular or segmental earthworks

preceded the mounds and banks found in the interior of the country and

upon lower ground, the work of the same people after their settlement

and civilisation.

Sussex is the only county the primary divisions of which bear the

names of rapes; of these it contains six: Hastings, Pevensey, Lewes,

Bramber, Arundel, and Chichester, subordinate to which are sixty-five

hundreds; each rape contains a portion of seaboard, a river, a haven,

and a fortress. The rivers are the Lavant, which nearly encircles the

city of Chichester, and falls into one head of the Bosham estuary,

the port of Chichester—the name is thought to be a corruption of the

Saxon _hlifian_, a rising, because the springs rise annually from deep

sources;—the Arun, which descends the dell bearing its name, cleaving

the chalk-range, and reaches the sea at Little Hampton; the Adur, the

river of Bramber, which, also by a pass in the chalk, reaches the sea

at Shoreham; the Ouse, the river of Lewes, which, through a narrow

gorge, now joins the sea at Newhaven, instead of, as formerly, flowing

out at Seaford. The Cuckmere is the river of Pevensey, but it leaves

that haven far to the east, and descends, also by a gap in the chalk,

to the sea, west of Beachy Head; and, finally, the Rother, the river of

the rape of Hastings, but the common boundary of Sussex and Kent, and

which falls into the sea at Rye. Pevensey Haven, though deprived of the

Cuckmere, is the receptacle for a number of lesser streams, by which

the upland waters formerly flooded that extensive level.

The fortresses of the rapes are also six:—Chichester, probably of Roman

origin, long since destroyed; Arundel, Bramber, Lewes, and Hastings,

all of præ-Norman date; Pevensey, of Roman origin. Ella, who landed

A.D. 477, took possession of Chichester. All were the seats of English

lords, and all were accepted by the Normans as well-chosen positions,

and by them were occupied and strengthened. Knepp or Knapp Castle,

subordinate to Bramber, in the same rape, like it, is of English origin.

Of the six castles, three, Arundel, Bramber, and Lewes, are posted at

the upper openings of narrow gaps in the chalk downs. Chichester is

placed to the east of and outside the chalk range. Pevensey stands

within the weald, among the low marshes by which that tract opens

upon the sea; and Hastings, also within the weald, stands upon the

sea-cliff, on the rocks and sands to which it has given geologically

its name.

All the six, as well as Knapp, possessed, on a larger or smaller scale,

the conical mound so characteristic of English strongholds, and each,

after the Conquest, became the chief seat of a barony, and was held by

a powerful noble. Robert de Eu had Hastings; William de Warren, Lewes;

the Earl of Moreton, Pevensey; Chichester fell to Roger de Montgomery,

who there founded a castle upon the site of the earlier works, of which

part of the mound remains. The castle stood within the city enclosure,

in the north-east quarter. It became, with Arundel, the property of the

D’Albinis, and was destroyed by order of King John, after which the

third Earl of Arundel founded on its site the Grey Friars, of which

the house was probably built with the materials of the castle. It is

said that upon the mound stood a circular or polygonal keep, as at

Arundel, and that the traces of its foundations were long visible on

its summit. The mound has survived all its Norman additions, and is the

only relic of the ancient fortress that is extant. The city, within

which the castle stood, is also an early strong place. The cruciform

streets are, doubtless, Roman, as are the coins and inscribed stones

occasionally dug up; but the outline of the city is not rectangular,

and is enclosed within a bank and ditch of irregular outline, once

of formidable strength, and still in parts tolerably perfect. It is

not improbable that these earthworks are post-Roman, the work of the

Romanised Britons, and therefore earlier than the date of the castle

mounds. The later wall was built against the bank, which thus still,

where it remains, forms a broad ramp or terrace.

Arundel Castle, next eastwards to Chichester, and its superior in

military importance, stands on the right bank of and high above the

Arun. The pass is of a more open character than those to the east of

it. This castle has already been described.

Knepp Castle is in Shipley parish. It had a shell keep upon the mound,

of which traces remain, but which is said to have been destroyed as

early as 1216.

Bramber, the castle next eastwards of Arundel, is held to be the

English “Brymmburgh,” a fortress upon a brim or brink. It was the head

of a barony, and the chief place of the rape to which it has given

name, and which includes forty-two parishes. The rape extends about

twenty-four miles from the Surrey border to the sea, with a width of

about eight miles. Narrow as it is, it contained till 1832 the four

Parliamentary boroughs of Shoreham, Bramber, Steyning, and Horsham,

returning eight members to Parliament, now reduced to three. The

castle stands on the west side of, and just above, the channel by which

the Adur reaches the sea at Shoreham. The pass thus commanded is four

miles long, and half a mile wide; the bottom flat and marshy, the sides

very steep and rising to 600 or 700 feet. New Shoreham, founded about

A.D. 1200, by the Norman lord of Bramber, stands upon the seashore; but

old Shoreham, the English port, is now half a mile inland, the deposits

from the river and the _débris_ of the chalk range having encroached

considerably upon the sea. Combe and St. Botolph’s, ancient parishes,

are placed within the pass, and higher up upon the same side is the

village of Bramber, standing upon slightly rising ground at the foot of

the western hills, and upon the edge of a broad tract of level land,

still wet, and formerly impracticable, across which the sluggish and

frequently flooded Adur takes a rather winding course.

The castle is placed a little to the north-west of the village, and,

as was the English custom, close to the parish church. From thence a

raised causeway is carried across the valley, leading to the village of

Sele or Beeding, the Bedinges of Domesday, where was once a religious

house dependent upon the castle. The village, composed of one short

street, adjoins the causeway, and near it was discovered, in 1839, the

piling and piers in masonry of an ancient bridge by which the road was

carried across one of the bye-streams of the Adur. A charter of 1075

refers to this bridge and to a chapel upon it, as “Stᵘˢ. Petrus de

veteri ponte.” The causeway, however, claims to be of higher antiquity,

and to have carried a Roman road across the marsh then probably flooded

by the sea.

In the construction of the fortress, advantage was taken of a knoll of

the lower or grey chalk, roughly oval in figure, and about 120 feet

high above the river. This was levelled on the top and scarped round

the sides so as to form a more or less rounded area, 560 feet north

and south, by 280 feet east and west. The scarp descended above 180

feet at an angle of 45 feet, or a slope of one to one, into a ditch

about 20 feet wide at the bottom, and the opposite side of which,

or counterscarp, rose about 40 feet at a similar angle, so that the

ditch at the counterscarp level was 100 feet broad, and the crest of

the scarp rose 30 feet to 40 feet above the ground opposite. A very

formidable defence. Towards the east, where the ground was low, the

counterscarp was not above 20 feet high, and to add to the depth of

the ditch, it was crested by a light bank, from which the ground

sloped towards the marsh. On the north and north-west, where the ditch

was at its deepest, and the ground was high, the slope outwards is

gentle, falling off for a furlong or so. To the west, where there is

a valley now occupied by the railway, the ground is low, and here the

outer side of the ditch, forming the crest of the counterscarp, is

a narrow ridge, as at Arques, succeeded by a very steep slope. Thus

those who approached the place on that side, after toiling up a steep

and dangerous ascent, would only find themselves on the outer edge of

a deep ditch, with a second still higher and steeper ascent beyond

it. Towards the south the ditch crosses instead of skirting the

hill, and is much less deep. Here was the entrance, and upon the small

tail of the knoll thus cut off is placed the parish church, standing,

therefore, just outside the ditch, and in its turn defended by the

slope of the hill, and by a hollow way which runs a few yards within

the edge of the marsh, the level of which is 8 feet or 10 feet below it.

[Illustration: CROSS SECTION

BRAMBER CASTLE.

_Face p. 268, Vol. I._ ]

Upon the table summit, 160 feet from its northern, and 40 feet from its

eastern, margin, was thrown up a conical mound, about 40 feet high,

and 70 feet diameter at its summit. It is wholly artificial, and the

material has evidently been scooped up from the surface of the area,

which has thus been rendered slightly hollow, the surface rising gently

towards the mound, and towards the outer margin of the area, that is,

the crest of the scarp. The mound does not appear to have had any ditch

proper to itself. It has been dug into and disfigured on its southern

side. Possibly there have been buildings there. On the north the

original and usual form is untouched. The slope is very steep. This was

the “burgh” or keep of the original fortress.

What stood upon the burgh, or how the margin of the area was originally

defended, is of course a matter of conjecture; but considering the

wealth of timber in the district, it is probable that the defences

were all of that material, as well as the adjacent church, and thus

supposing, we may figure to ourselves the “aula” of Earl Guerd, who was

the lord of Bramber during the reign of the Confessor. The position

is a very strong one, and the view from it to the east and north-east

extensive.

Bramber is one of the castles named in Domesday. It was then a part

of the lordship of Washington, and held by Wm. de Braose, the Norman

grantee. “Ipse Wills. [de Braiosa] tenet Wasingetune. Guerd comes

tenuit tempore Regis Edwardi. Tunc se defend. pro LIX. hid. Modo non

dat geldum. In una ex his hidis sedet Castellum Brembre.”

William de Braose here mentioned probably was present at Hastings.

A charter cited by Dugdale, dated 1075-6, shows him to have been of

Braose, near Saumur, on the Loire. He had an immediate grant of nearly

the whole rape of Bramber, and he adopted the castle as his chief seat.

Although local history is silent as to De Braose’s operations, much

may be extracted from the evidence of the existing ruins. Around the

edge of the table area he or his immediate successor built a wall of

_enceinte_. Where the ground was sound, this was founded upon the

edge of the slope, but where the chalk had given way, the foundations

were laid 3 feet or 4 feet lower down, so that the wall was built as

a revetment, and the ground within formed a ramp against it. Of this

wall of _enceinte_ some large portions remain, and its foundations may

be traced all round. It was 7 feet to 9 feet thick, from 10 feet to 18

feet high inside, and outside from 20 feet to 30 feet. It was built

entirely of large pebbles, as from the sea-beach, laid in very thick

beds of mortar. Of course, such stones could have no bond, and are

about the worst material that could, under ordinary circumstances, have

been selected, but so firm is the mortar that the wall remains sound,

and in places, even the parapet, 2 feet thick, and composed of the

same material, is standing. Towards the north-east is a sharp angle,

and another of some boldness towards the south-west, but neither there

nor elsewhere do there seem to have been any mural towers, although it

must be confessed that a dense underwood of thorn and bramble renders a

close inspection of the exterior impracticable.

The Norman keep stood upon or just within the line of the _enceinte_,

at its south end, close to the east of the entrance, and opposite to

the church. It was a square of 40 feet, standing north and south, and

about 240 feet south of the mound. Its walls at the base were 9 feet 6

inches thick, and at the summit but little, if anything less, and its

exterior face was vertical. The basement chamber at the ground level

was 21 feet square and 14 feet high, and above it were three stages,

all with timber floors. The height to the rampart wall is, by guess,

about 70 feet, or a diameter and three-quarters. The first floor, 23

feet high, either rested upon joists which were supported by the north

and south walls, now gone, or, which is more probable, upon a ledge in

the wall, which is reduced in thickness at that level about 6 inches,

as seen on the west side. Only the west wall remains, and the lower 6

feet or 8 feet of the east wall. The north and south walls are entirely

removed. The west wall is solid at the base, but the east wall is

recessed in a curious way inside, and seems besides to have contained

two cavities like cesspits. The whole mass has, however, been so pulled

about, that little can be made of it.

At the first floor, also, the west wall is solid, save that in its

south end is a short mural passage, vaulted, which seems to have ended

in a garderobe, the vent of which is marked by a sort of vertical

furrow in the wall. This passage was probably entered by a door in the

south wall, near the south-west angle. The east floor, 19 feet high,

rested upon six joists in the east and west walls. In its west wall

is a full-centred recess, 3 feet deep, 2 feet above the floor, 5 feet

wide, with jambs 7 feet high. In the recess is a window 3 feet wide,

with jambs 5 feet high, also full-centred. Both recess and window are

quite plain, and are not splayed.

The third floor, 14 feet high, also rested on six joists, east and

west. This has no window to the west, but in the wall are two recesses

for the vertical beams of a roof, and at the base of each a corbel.

This looks as though the roof was inclined, as at Bridgenorth and

elsewhere, at a low pitch, the north and south walls being its gables.

There are some indications, in a foundation, as of a forebuilding

attached to the north face, where probably was the entrance. The

material of the keep is chalk flint, laid in copious beds of mortar.

The flints are undressed, and the workmanship is coursed rubble, very

plain and good, but rather rough, with a tendency to herring-bone

work. The window is dressed with ashlar, as are the hollow quoins

of the interior, but there is no ornament, not even the usual

Norman pilaster or plinth. The ashlar is probably the malm rock

of the neighbourhood, a bed below the chalk, much like that used

at Dorchester, and for some of the adjacent Oxfordshire churches.

Altogether, this keep seems to be early Norman work, perhaps as early

as Malling, and was probably built by the first De Braose before 1095,

when his son was in possession.

When the keep was blown up, as it evidently was, with powder, the south

and east walls fell in four or five huge masses into the adjacent

ditch, where they remain but little altered, though obscured with

vegetation. If these were cleared, something more of the detail of the

keep might be discovered. The north wall seems to have been broken up

and removed.

About 40 feet west of the keep are the remains of the entrance. So far

as can now be seen there was no considerable gatehouse, probably only

an arch in the curtain, as at Richmond. The fragment of a wall shows

the approach to have been steep, and about 40 feet from the gate was a

bridge, the pier and counter-pier of which, 13 feet apart, are still

standing in the ditch, here not above 90 feet wide and 30 feet deep.

The approach to the counter-pier rises steeply from the foot of the

hill and passes the church.

The only building of which there are positive traces, beside the keep,

within the area, was a rectangular pile, built upon the curtain,

60 feet long, and projecting 24 feet into the area. This is placed

opposite to and east of the mound, and the passage between the two was

only 15 feet broad. A part of the base of this building remains, and

shows a plinth and fragment of wall faced with squared flint. The work

looks many centuries later than the keep, and most certainly is not

Norman. There is no trace of a well.

The parish church shares the protection of St. Nicholas, in common with

Old Shoreham. It is in substance Norman, probably rather later than the

castle, and was originally a cross church with a central tower. The

nave and central square remain, but the choir and transepts have been

removed, and the arches blocked up. The south door of the nave has a

plain billet moulding, but the original opening has been walled up,

and a smaller segmental doorway inserted. The cruciform plan seems to

have been much in use here. It is seen at Old Shoreham, Steyning, and

Broadwater.

Bramber has little or no history. The lords were among the wildest,

most turbulent, and most unfortunate of the Norman barons. Their

founder, William de Braose, received from the Conqueror forty-one

lordships in Sussex, chiefly in this rape, and others in Dorset, Hants,

Berks, Wilts, and Surrey. He founded St. Peter’s Priory, at Sele.

Philip, his son, adhered to Rufus, but was opposed to Henry I., and was

disinherited. He married Berta, daughter of Milo, Earl of Hereford,

with whom he had Brecknock, Gower, and other south Welsh lordships,

and thus laid the foundation of much of the power and most of the

misfortunes of his race. He probably founded the strong castles of

Oystermouth and of Swansea.

William, the grandson of the founder, recovered the estates. He founded

New Shoreham church and port. He also joined in the invasion of Ireland

with Henry II., and held the whole kingdom of Limerick in fee. He is

accused, though upon scanty evidence, of a wholesale massacre of his

Welsh neighbours at Abergavenny. His possessions in England, Wales,

and Ireland were enormous, and he also held the Honour of Braose in

the Bailliewick of Falaise, in Normandy, and a share of the Honour

of Totnes. He married Maud de Hayes or St. Valerie. For some reason

not very clearly ascertained, he became obnoxious to King John, and

their strife, much embittered by the outspeaking of his wife, led

in 1210 to his attainder and exile, and the death of his wife and

William their son, it is said of starvation, in the prison of Windsor

Castle. He himself died at Paris shortly afterwards, in 1212. He was

a considerable benefactor to the Church, and it is recorded of him

that he was careful to use God’s name with great reverence. The king

seized the Rape of Bramber, and granted the barony to Richard, Earl of

Cornwall. Giles, Bishop of Hereford, and Reginald de Braose, brothers

of the attainted baron, obtained after a time a share of the estates.

Bramber was granted to the bishop, who, however, died within the

year. Finally, in the reign of Henry III., Reginald recovered Bramber

and Knapp, and most of the rest of the property, and having married

Grecia, daughter of William de la Bruere, died 6th Henry III., and was

succeeded by William his son.

William de Braose married Eve Mareschal, a co-heir of the great earl.

He fell into the hands of Prince Llewelyn, who accused him of too great

intimacy with his princess, and put him to death at Builth, it is said,

by hanging. He left four daughters co-heirs, whose descendants held the

greater part of the estates.

There remained, however, an heir male, in John de Braose, by Maud de

Clare: he was the grandson by Maud de Clare of that William who was

famished with his mother at Windsor, and he recovered Bramber and

Gower. His son was William de Braose, who held Bramber and Gower, and

added considerably to the Sussex estates. He is said, in 1262, to have

raised a large sum of money from his tenants by foregoing his right of

murage. He died at Findon, 1290, 19 Edward I., and was succeeded by

John de Braose of Bramber, who married Margaret, daughter of Llewelyn,

Prince of Wales. He died at Bramber of a fall from his horse (16 Henry

III., 1232), and was succeeded by William, who died 19 Edward I.

William was a powerful baron, and active in the wars of Edward I. and

II. He was, however, extravagant, and reduced to sell Gower, which led

afterwards to disputes between the purchaser and the lawful heirs of

the vendor, of whom Aliva, his elder daughter, married John de Mowbray,

from whom descended, in the seventh generation, Margaret de Mowbray,

who married Sir Robert Howard, whence comes the Duke of Norfolk, the

present owner of Bramber Castle. The barony is in abeyance. Probably,

with the failure of the elder male line of De Braose, the castle

ceased to be a residence, but in 1644 it was strong enough to be held

by Captain James Temple, for the king, against a strong Parliamentary

party, and it was probably in consequence that the keep was blown up,

and the castle reduced to its present condition. There is an engraving

by Hollar, taken 150 years ago, representing it very much as it now is.

Another branch of the family of De Braose rose to the rank of Barons of

Parliament, and held large Sussex possessions. The last male of this

cadet branch, De Braose of Chesworth and East Grinsted, died in the

reign of Richard II.

Bramber is, like Pontefract, Lewes, and Dudley, an example of a natural

hill, scarped and defended by art, and crowned with an artificial

mound; but, unlike those castles, it has both a mound and rectangular

keep, a rare combination, found also at Guildford and Christchurch.

A rectangular keep upon a natural isolated hill, unaccompanied by a

mound, though not usual, is not unknown. Examples of it are seen at

Hedingham, Corfe, and Bridgenorth. At Bramber, as indeed is the case

in many other sites of early fortresses, the original earthworks have

survived the Norman additions, and remain pretty much as they must have

existed before the Conquest.

BRIDGENORTH, OLDBURY, AND QUATFORD, IN SHROPSHIRE.

The river Severn, in its course from Shrewsbury to Worcester, passes

for several miles down a deep and rugged ravine, within or near to

which lie the populous districts of Coalbrook Dale, Iron Bridge, Coal

Port, and Broseley, early seats of the iron manufacture, and evidences

of the wealth, though scarcely in harmony with the natural beauty, of

the country. The ravine commences a little below the ivy-covered ruins

of Buildwas Abbey, and terminates twenty to twenty-five miles lower

down, about Bewdley and Stourbridge, where it opens out into a valley

of a soft and smiling character.

About half-way down, between Pendlestone rock and the incoming of

the Worf, the Severn receives upon its right bank the waters from a

short but deep and broad valley, which descends obliquely from the

north-west, and between which and the main valley intervenes the point

of a steep and narrow ridge of rock, rising about 200 feet above the

river, and upon the nearly level summit of which is placed the town and

what remains of the Castle of Bridgenorth. The rock is more lofty, and

the position far more striking, than that of Pontefract Castle, the

defences of which were also in a great degree natural, and in these

respects Bridgenorth may challenge comparison with Coucy, which it also

resembles in the relation of the castle to the town. In both places the

castle lay contiguous to the town, and their connected defences formed

the common _enceinte_, while the castle had besides a ditch proper to

itself.

[Illustration: BRIDGENORTH CASTLE.]

At Bridgenorth the castle occupied the apex and south end of the

platform, the broader and northern part of which was covered by the

town, and the town walls abutted against those of the castle, while

the castle ditch traversed the platform from one face to the other.

Of the defences of the town only the north gate remains, and that in

a very mutilated and disguised form, but the line of the walls may be

traced, partly by the inequality of the ground and the arrangement of

the streets, and partly by the existence of the cliff upon which they

in part stood. An ancient fortified bridge, standing when Grose visited

the place late in the last century, though now rebuilt, crossed the

Severn east of the town, and was approached from it by a steep and

narrow flight of rock-cut steps, and by a carriage-way cut in traverses

almost as steep. This bridge defended the passage of the river, and

connected the place with the suburb called the Lower Town upon the

left bank. It is this bridge which is supposed to have given to the

place its early name of Brug, or Breig, the distinctive “North” being

an addition, probably in the thirteenth century, when there is said

to have been an earlier bridge a little lower down. The town contains

several old buildings, and among them, near the bridge, a very fine one

framed with timber, in which was born Bishop Percy. There is also the

fine parish church of St. Leonard’s, which stands at the north end of

the town, east of the north gate, and just within the line of the old

walls.

The castle platform is in plan somewhat of an equilateral triangle,

each side being about a furlong. Leland says its area is about

one-third that of the town. The two sides of this area were protected

by a cliff so steep as to render a ditch unnecessary, and the face of

which, where it needed support, was, and still is, revetted, the wall

and edge of the cliff having been, no doubt, crowned by a parapet. The

cliff rises out of a steep talus, or slope. The base of the area was

defended by a wall within a ditch, upon which was a great gatehouse,

standing in Leland’s time and for a century later. The ditch has been

filled up and built over, and the wall removed. Just within its line

still stands what remains of the keep, and a few yards to the east of

that was the castle chapel, now the church of St. Mary Magdalen, and,

until recently, a peculiar with a special jurisdiction. The chapel was

collegiate with an endowment for certain prebendaries, disendowed at

the Reformation. The present building, constructed in 1796, is a large

and distressing example of Telford’s church architecture, in what the

great engineer was pleased to regard as the Grecian style. The two

buildings stand on the highest part of the castle area, which falls 30

feet to 40 feet towards the southern point. A modern wall has taken

the place of the old _enceinte_. The view thence is very noble, nor

does any town in England possess a finer promenade than that with which

corporate care has encircled the area.

The fragment of the keep, long known as “the leaning tower of

Bridgenorth,” seems to be the only masonry remaining of the castle, for

the revetment wall of the cliff looks as though it had been replaced.

The keep was a regular rectangular tower of the usual Norman pattern,

but in dimensions very unworthy of the powerful earl who built it,

or of the celebrated fortress of which it was the citadel. It was

45 feet square, and from 60 feet to 70 feet high to the base of the

parapet. On each face were two pilaster strips, 8 feet broad by 6

inches projection, placed close up to but not covering the angles of

the tower, which are thus converted into nooks, or hollow angles, of

6 inches in the side, and which, instead of, as usual, terminating

above and below in a flat square, end in a sloping surface, as though

to receive a column. The pilasters rise from a common plinth, and

ascend to the parapet. Whether they were continued upwards so as to

form the usual angle-turrets does not appear. Each had two sets-off on

the face and outer edge only, reducing the breadth to 7 feet 6 inches

and 7 feet. The sets-off were continued round the building. In the

west face was also another pilaster of the same breadth and 15 inches

projection. This died into the wall some feet below the summit, and

seems to have been connected with the entrance door, which probably

opened in its face, for it is broken away below and a part of the rough

backing of an arch is seen. The walls at the base are 9 feet thick,

and about 7 feet at the summit. The building is of three stages, a

basement, at the ground level, 12 feet high; a first floor, 25 feet;

and a second floor rather more, perhaps 30 feet. The floors were of

timber. The first floor seems to have rested on a ledge, the upper and

the flat roof upon joists, those of the lower lying east and west;

those of the upper, north and south. The joist holes in the north wall

have been closed by early work, and above is a slight set-off or shelf

in the wall, as though the level of the floor had been altered. In the

west wall, also, new joist holes, smaller, have been cut above the old

ones.

The original roof was very steep, having two slopes and a central

gutter, as at Porchester, and the reverse of the arrangement at Ludlow,

where the ridge was central, and the two gutters lateral. The weather

table remains perfect in the north wall, with a hole 2 feet high by 1

foot broad, to carry the beam which supported the gutter and the feet

of the rafters. The table is seen continued horizontally upon the west

wall, where it was laid as a flashing to cover the upper edge of the

tiling. The walls were brought up to a level line all round, so as to

conceal the roof. This arrangement, as at Ludlow, Richmond, Porchester,

and the gatehouse of Sherborne, shows that there was no original

intention of using the roof as a platform for mangonels and such

like heavy machines. The flat roof, of lead, was apparently of later

introduction. No traces remain of any mural staircase in the north or

west wall, nor of any mural passages.

The basement was, probably, a dark store or cellar, reached only by a

trap in the floor above. The entrance seems to have been on the first

floor in the west wall, in which also are traces of a loop or small

window. The north wall remains perfect. It was most exposed, and is

without openings of any kind. In what remains of the south wall is one

jamb of an original fireplace, of which is seen the sloping back, and

part of a lateral nook and Norman abacus above it. The flanking shaft

is gone. In the part of the east wall still remaining is the northern

half of a small full-centred window, deeply splayed inwardly. The east

and south walls above the first floor are gone. In the west wall, upper

floor, is seen the north jamb of a small full-centred window set in a

bold splay of hourglass section. North of it, in the same wall, is a

small recess, probably for a lamp, and which seems to have been round

headed. There, probably, was a fireplace in the south wall.

Projecting from the outside of the south wall, bonded into, and of

the same age with it, is a fragment of curtain 7 feet 6 inches thick,

in which, as at Kenilworth, is seen the jamb of a doorway, defended

outside by a portcullis, the groove of which, square and 5 inches deep

by 3 inches broad, shows that the grate was of iron. The groove, as at

Kenilworth, stops about 3 feet from the ground, the door having been

reached by steps. The groove is not open at bottom, but runs up behind

a covering wall, as usual, and was evidently worked from the rampart,

as is still seen at the Fishergate postern, at York. The door jamb is

about 6 feet from the keep. This was evidently the entrance into the

innermost ward, in which, or rather upon the wall of which, stood the

keep.

A few feet to the west of the keep is a mass of masonry, clearly a part

of the forebuilding which covered the entrance. Its face towards the

keep is 13 feet long, and towards the south 16 feet. It varies from 3

feet to 6 feet thick, and is at present about 10 feet high. At present

it is distant from the keep 3 feet 6 inches, but the two faces were

evidently once in contact, and were displaced by an explosion. The mine

by which the keep was destroyed seems to have been placed here.

The material of the keep was rubble-stone faced with excellent

fine-jointed ashlar. The exterior face of the forebuilding seems to

have had a similar casing.

It is not easy to obtain accurate measurements of the keep, so much has

been removed, so much injured, and what remains is so obscured with

ivy. Moreover, the interior is fitted up for two dog-kennels, kept in

a very filthy condition, and with putrid carrion suspended from the

walls. The ruins also stand in three distinct enclosures, all locked

up. A mine has been sprung between the keep and the forebuilding, and

the explosion has removed all the upper part of the latter, and so

tilted the keep that it leans at an angle of fifteen degrees eastward

from the vertical, and the upper part of the east and south walls are

gone. Moreover, the keep seems to have been lifted bodily about three

feet towards the east, and the north wall has a large open crack. About

fifteen yards from the south-east angle stands a huge ivy-covered mass

of masonry, probably the detached angle of the tower. What remains of

the keep is held together by the excellence of the cement. The ruin is

in a state of great filth and neglect, and it is much to be regretted

that the whole area is not converted into a public garden. Judicious

excavation would probably throw much light upon the details of the

keep, and show the line of its contiguous curtain wall.

The masonry and details of the keep answer very well to the date

of 1101 to 1102, to which history assigns it. It is certainly not

earlier. The curtain of the inner ward was clearly of the same date,

and enclosed a court in the north-west quarter of the general area,

of which the keep probably formed the north-east angle, and which was

entered on the east side close south of the keep. All else is gone;

the “mighty North gate” of which Leland speaks is no more. The very

ruins have perished, and the last trace of them, a good Norman arch,

discovered while pulling down some houses in 1821, has since been

destroyed by local Vandals.

The early history of Bridgenorth is exceedingly obscure. It is stated

in the Saxon Chronicle that when, in 896, Alfred stranded the Danish

ships in the Essex Lea, the Danes left them, traversed England, passed

the winter at Quatbridge on the Severn, and there threw up a work.

Three of the four original texts are thus rendered. The fourth makes

them rest at “Brygce,” or Bridge, on the Severn. Florence of Worcester

supports Quatbridge, and mentions the work or fortress. “Brygce,” in

the Chronicle, is thought to be an interpolation, both where appended

to Quat, and where it stands alone, it being probable that the Severn

was not bridged at that time. There are at present two parishes into

the names of which Quat enters on the left bank of the river, below

Bridgenorth, Quat and Quatford, and upon the river is Danesford. Quat

is regarded by Eyton as a corruption of the British “Coed,” a wood, the

whole district having been a forest.

In the same Chronicle it is recorded that Æthelflæda, the great lady of

the Mercians, a mighty burgh-builder in her day, and called by Henry of

Huntingdon “Terror virgo virorum,” built, in 912, a burgh at Bricge,

to which Florence adds, “on the western bank of Severn.” Bricge could

scarcely be Bridgenorth, which is not even mentioned in Domesday. We

ought, however, to find near the river, about Bridgenorth, earthworks

thrown up by the Danes and by Æthelflæda, and it will be seen that

there remain at the least three distinct works, any one or all of which

may be of the ninth or tenth centuries. These are Oldbury, Quatford

Castle, and Quatford.

Bridgenorth is not mentioned in Domesday. The Norman castle did not

then exist, and there is no reason, strong and tempting as is the

site, for supposing that it was occupied either by the Danes or by

Æthelflæda. Mr. Eyton is of opinion that the site of the later town

and castle is included within a certain two hides of land which in the

survey constituted the demesne lands of the Norman Earl of Shrewsbury,

within his great manor of Morville. Quatford, not Quatbridge, is

mentioned in that record in conjunction with Ardintone. “Ibi,” that

is in Ardintone, “Molendinum de iij oris et nova domus et burgum

Quatford dictum nil reddens,” “there is a mill worth three ounces (5s.

per annum), and a new house, and the borough called Quatford, paying

nothing.” In 1085, therefore, it may be accepted that the earl had a

new house at Quatford, where, indeed, it is known that at the request

of his second wife Adelais, and in acknowledgment of her escape from

shipwreck, he founded, about 1086, a collegiate church. The foundation

charter of this alludes to the mount nigh to the bridge; the latter,

probably an appendage to the new house, the former possibly part of the

older earthwork of what is now known as Quatford Castle.

Earl Roger was succeeded in his English Honour and estates by his

second son Earl Hugh, who was slain in Wales in 1098, and left the

succession open to his elder brother, Robert de Belesme, who had

already inherited his father’s estates in Normandy, and was Count

of Ponthieu in right of his wife. Robert, who thus became Earl of

Shrewsbury, though a cruel tyrant, was a man of great ability and

energy, not only a great soldier, and “princeps militiæ,” or “Commander

of the Forces” to Rufus, but a great military engineer. He selected the

site and planned the works of the celebrated castle of Gisors on the

Franco-Norman frontier. His brother’s death found him beleaguered in

his castle of Balaon by Fulk, Count of Anjou, and the siege was raised

by Rufus, who granted him, or confirmed him in, his brother’s Honour.

When he came to England is uncertain, probably not before the end of

1099.

On the death, in 1100, of Rufus, Earl Robert took part with Duke

Robert, whose claims, however, were not at first brought forward. It

was probably while preparing for their open assertion that he decided

to fortify the strong position which rose unoccupied scarce a mile

from his father’s church and residence. His decision was prompt, and

followed at once by his acts. He transferred the “Burgus” of Quatford

to a new town on the hill, and with it his father’s house and bridge,

which he also rebuilt. The result was the borough town, castle, and

bridge of Bridgenorth, the latter structure giving name to the whole as

Bridge or Bruge, the distinctive “north” not being added till the reign

of Edward II. or III.

With Bridgenorth, Earl Robert also founded the castle of “Caroclove”

in Wales, and such was his need that the works were carried on day

and night. He also fortified Arundel, Shrewsbury, and Tickhill. His

exertions in 1100 and 1101, when he seems to have built the castle,

must have been excessive. King Henry, however, was not less active. He

despatched Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, to lay siege to Tickhill, while

he himself, having commenced with Arundel, proceeded to Bridgenorth.

He took it, after a three weeks’ siege, in September, 1102, and this

brought to a close Earl Robert’s short tenure of power in England. The

earl fled to Normandy, his earldom of Shrewsbury was forfeited, and

Bridgenorth was after a time granted to Hugh de Mortimer of Wigmore,

the son of one of Henry’s most trusted supporters. In 1126, Waleran,

Earl of Mellent, was here imprisoned, as was Meredith ab Llywarch in

1128. In 1130 wine was sent hither for the king’s use, so that Mortimer

was probably rather constable for the Crown than the owner in fee.

Mortimer, in the new reign, took the part of Stephen, at whose death

he held both Wigmore and Bridgenorth. As he was in rebellion against

Henry II., the king took the field against him, and in April, 1155, the

castle a second time stood a royal siege. Cleobury, one of Mortimer’s

castles, surrendered in July, and Wigmore and Bridgenorth followed.

Henry was for some time before the place, and his charter to Stoneley

Abbey is dated “apud Brugium in obsidione.” It was at this siege that

Hubert de St. Clair is said to have stepped forward to receive the

arrow aimed at his sovereign, a romantic but unfounded tale. Henry

retained the castle for the Crown, and used it largely as a prison

for his Welsh hostages. In 1173-4, when Prince Henry rose against

his father, Bridgenorth was victualled at a cost of £22. 5s. 2d. In

1175-6 the king dated a Wenlock Abbey charter from hence. The frequent

charges for repairs between 1166 and 1189 show the importance attached

to this castle by Henry II. In 1176 the Pipe Roll gives a charge of 1d.

per day for the castle porter.

King John was six times at Bridgenorth, passing there about fourteen

days. He confirmed a charter of incorporation to the town. Both he

and his predecessor, Richard, kept up the castle, as is attested by

frequent charges for repairs during sixteen years. In 1198 there was

paid 6s. 3d. for the hire of the barge in which the wife of Griffith

ab Rhys was conveyed from Bridgenorth to Gloucester. In 1203 John

presented to a prebend in the castle chapel. In 1209 a stag from the

adjacent forest entered the castle through a postern and was captured,

and no doubt converted into venison by the castellans. For this they

were prosecuted by the verdurers, and the proceedings imply that the

castle was then in charge of five persons only, of whom one was the

constable. No doubt in time of peace the royal castles were left almost

to themselves, and often not even kept in repair. When a war arose

they were repaired, garrisoned, and victualled in all haste. So far as

repairs went, Bridgenorth, however, seems to have fared well. We read

of repairs on the king’s house, on the basement of the castle, on the

“Barbe-kana et Pons-tornalis” or barbican and drawbridge; on the turret

of the outer wall, the chimney of the great chamber, the castle walls,

the tower, the well, the glass windows in the hall, the queen’s oriel,

and the chapel.

These charges are continued through the reign of Henry III., and well

into that of Edward I., from 1218 to 1281. In 1232 the sheriff was to

cause to be repaired the castle stable, and the kitchen within the

barbican of the tower, and in 1244-5 was a charge for covering the

tower at Brug with lead. This was probably the keep. In 1267, Henry

III. and his queen were at Bridgenorth, and it would seem that the

Mortimers were still connected with the castle, for, in 1273, on the

death of Hugh de Mortimer, Edward I. continued his successor Ralph in

the offices of sheriff of the county and constable of the castle.

In 1281 an inquisition was held upon the state of the building, which

had latterly been neglected. The timbers of the great tower were

rotten, the leaden covering having been carried away; also the castle

bridge was broken down, so that carriages could not cross it.

In common with most other castles held by the Crown and therefore

not inhabited, Bridgenorth seems to have been allowed to fall into

decay from the reign of Edward I., so that probably little remained

beyond the walls. At any rate, it played no part in English history

until the great rebellion, when the town declared for the king,

for whom the castle was garrisoned. The tower was attacked by the

Parliamentary forces on the north side, and was entered by a breach

near St. Leonard’s Church. Upon this the town was burned up to the

castle, which still held out. The Parliamentary batteries are said to

have been posted upon the Oldbury earthwork, which is probable enough,

though there are no traces of parapets or breastworks of that date,

which, however, from the distance from the castle and the deep valley

between, were probably not needed. The garrison held out three weeks,

and capitulated on honourable terms. The castle was blown up, and the

materials probably sold.

Any account of Bridgenorth Castle would be very imperfect that

did not take notice of the very remarkable earthworks seen in its

neighbourhood, and which are evidently connected with the events

referred to as of the ninth and tenth centuries. These are three in

number—Oldbury, Quatford Castle, and Quatford; and first of Oldbury.

On the left bank of the Severn, about a quarter of a mile below and

south-west of the castle, and on the opposite side of the deep dry

valley that forms its western defence, the high ground of Oldbury is

broken by three deep combes which descend to the river, and between

which are two high ridges or knolls, steep towards the Severn and the

combe on either side, and on the west connected by a neck with the

higher land. The larger of these, that nearest the castle, is known by

the inelegant but most descriptive name of “Pan Pudding Hill.” It does,

in fact, much resemble in figure a beef-steak pudding just turned over

out of the pan in which it was boiled. Naturally oblong, it has been

scarped and rounded. The circular flat top is 150 feet diameter. In the

centre is a slight nipple-like mound 3 feet high, and a raised bank now

about 4 feet high crests its circumference. Towards the river the slope

is steep for 50 feet or 60 feet, towards the land it is protected by a

cross trench about 50 feet broad and 10 feet to 12 feet deep. Half-way

down the slope on the eastern side is a narrow ledge or path which may

have been protected by a stockade. Towards the south this ledge expands

into a stage or shelf from 90 feet to 100 feet broad, and which is

excavated so as to carry a ditch. The arrangements are very simple,

and the mound is mainly natural, though scarped and fashioned by art.

It was probably here that the Parliamentary guns were posted in the

seventeenth century.

Close south of this hill is a second work, lower, smaller, and less

clearly defined. Its summit is also circular, and about 100 feet

diameter. These two works are of one general type, and probably of one

date, and if not the work of Æthelflæda are no doubt of her period.

They are either English or Danish, not British. That the main work is

older than the Norman fortress is evident from a document of 1299, in

which it is called “the old castle.” Moreover, it is the burgh which

gives name to Oldbury, the parish in which it is situated.

Quatford Castle is on the left bank of the Severn, one and a quarter

miles below Bridgenorth, and a furlong from the river, the intervening

ground being a strip of meadow, while Danesford is still the name of

an adjacent ford and village. A short steep combe descends from the

high ground to the north-east, and, branching below, includes a knoll

of rock perhaps 150 feet above the valley and 200 feet above the

river. The soft red rock has been pared and scarped, and a part of

the material employed to give an artificial top to the hill. This is

somewhat of an oval, and seems to have had a sort of mound at its east

end, now occupied by a modern castellated house. The slopes are steep,

especially towards the west, and they are broken by narrow terraces,

now walks, but which may have been ditches. The approach is by a sort

of causeway on the north-east or least steep side. The summit and sides

of the work are converted into a house and gardens, but the general

arrangement of the original hill can readily be detected. It must have

been very strong, and resembles generally Devizes and similar works

of English origin. Probably this is the site of the “nova domus” of

Earl Roger, as it was the seat of his English predecessor. It is a

very curious work, and deserves to be surveyed on a large scale by the

officers of ordnance. It may be mentioned that in the courtyard is a

small passage cut in the rock, at an angle of forty-five degrees, and

which descends by ninety-four steps to a well, whence the house is

supplied. The passage is evidently an addition, the original well shaft

descending, as now, vertically from the surface.

A little north-west of the castle, towards Bridgenorth, the tail of a

piece of detached highish ground has been cut off by a trench, near a

place called, in the inch ordnance, “Dog in the Wall.” It seems to have

been a light temporary work for the accommodation of a small body of

men.

On the same road, two miles south of the town, is Quatford, close to

the parish church of that name, where the road crosses a steep ridge

in deep, but probably modern, rock cutting. The ridge abuts upon the

Severn, in a bold rocky promontory about 70 feet high. Upon it is

thrown up a mound about 30 feet high, and mainly artificial. It is

circular, and about 60 feet diameter on the top, which has been much

cut about, probably for modern purposes. The sides are steep, about

three quarters to one in slope. This mound is divided from the root

of the promontory by a trench cut in the rock about 12 feet deep and

12 feet broad, which extends from cliff to cliff, and includes about

three-fourths of the mound. Outside this ditch and to the east of it

is an area of irregular figure, governed by the outline of the ground.

Its north and south sides are defended by a ditch, which to the south

is deep and wide. This probably included the east side, but is now

superseded by the hollow road. The area is not very large, and would

perhaps accommodate about two hundred men.

West of and beyond the road is the church, a building with some Norman

remains. It stands rather higher than the camp, and its churchyard

would, with a little care, have formed a part of and doubled the area

of the camp. Whether it ever did so it is difficult to say, probably

not. The ford, which gives part of its name to the village, is still in

use when the river is low. It crosses the Severn below the camp.

This camp is omitted in the ordnance map, and of the earthwork of Burf

Castle, placed a mile and a half to the west on that record, but one

side remains.

It may be observed that the character of the surface of the country

hereabouts is very favourable for the construction of these earthworks

with mounds. There are scores of natural rounded hillocks of red

sandstone that have an artificial aspect, and that, with a little

scarping, would be strong. There is one, especially, close east of

the road between Quatford and Dudmaston Park, that looks very like an

English earthwork, and wants nothing but a ditch to make it perfect.

Besides the earthworks above described are others in the district

which appear to be of the same type. Such are Castle Hill, nine miles

south-east from Bridgenorth, and the isolated knoll called “the Devil’s

Spittle Dish,” two miles south-east of Bewdley.

BRONLLYS TOWER, BRECKNOCKSHIRE.

Bronllys tower, on the left bank of the Llyfni, a tributary of the Wye,

is situate in the parish of the same name, close north of the town of

Talgarth, on the regular and ancient way between Hereford and Brecknock.

The tower occupies the summit of a mound or knoll of earth, in great

part artificial, which crowns the steep bank of the adjacent river;

rising, perhaps, 60 feet above the stream, and 30 feet or so above the

ground to the west of and behind the building. The mound is placed at

the apex of an earthwork of rather a pear-shaped outline, of which

the river-bank forms the steep east side, while to its base, or north

face, has been applied a vallum nearly rectangular, and which may or

may not be a Roman addition to a Celtic camp. The mound, which has

borne the very considerable weight of the tower in safety, must be of

considerably earlier date; and altogether the work resembles much one

of those numerous instances in which advantage has been taken of an

earlier mound to give elevation to a Norman or early English keep.

There are, however, it is said, remains of masonry, of the character

and probable age of the tower, still standing upon a part of the

vallum, and indications that, as is known to have been the case, the

tower did not stand alone, but was within a base court. These walls are

not now of any extent, and seem to be included within a modern house

built upon the old enclosure.

This tower is at its base 37 feet in diameter, and batters inwards to

12 feet high, when it is girt by a bold cordon or string-course, much

eroded, but apparently of a half-round section, with a water-groove

on its under side. Above this the tower is cylindrical, and 34 feet

diameter, or very nearly so, to the summit, which is at present about

60, and may have been 70 feet high. Besides the battering base there is

a slight rough set-off, apparently part of the foundation, above ground

on the southern face. Round the whole is a walk of about 18 inches

broad, so that the mound is about 40 feet across at its top.

The tower is composed of a basement and three floors, above which was

the battlement, now completely destroyed. The basement within was

cylindrical, 18 feet diameter, with walls 9 feet 6 inches thick, and

covered by a pointed vault, the ridge of which runs about north-east

and south-west. This room was aired rather than lighted by a stepped

recess, terminating in a small loop or hole at a considerable height,

through which nothing could be seen. It was entered on the opposite

or west side by a trap door in the first floor, which lifted within a

window recess, and disclosed a flight of eight very steep stairs, 2

feet 7 inches broad, terminating in a doorway rather above 7 feet from

the floor; below which, therefore, was probably a wooden ladder. The

rebate shows the door to have opened inwards, and to have had bolts on

its outer side. The floor is on the level of the top of the mound, and

in its centre is a depression which may indicate a well.

Two openings have been broken into this chamber from the outside, on

the east and west sides. Why nine feet of masonry should have been

twice pierced, at immense labour, it is difficult to say; nor is there

any trace of door or loop which might have made the task easier, or

have suggested these openings. The broken walls do, however, show at

the very base of the structure, on each side, a horizontal or nearly

horizontal square drain, of very rough construction, in the substance

of the wall. These holes have been the subject of much speculation.

They were evidently drains from the upper floors of the tower,

collected to fall into one outlet. Such drains may be seen in the

heart of an overthrown solid tower at Corfe. It is not improbable that

one of the breaches may have contained a recess or garderobe, which

communicated with the drain, and suggested the penetration of the wall

in that direction.

The first floor, of 17 feet 9 inches clear diameter, was entered by an

exterior door in the wall, at the level of the cordon, or 12 feet above

the ground, on the east side. There must have been exterior steps;

but they did not bond into the wall, and may have been of wood. The

door has 3 feet 3 inches opening, with a drop arch and plain chamfered

moulding. It was defended by an interior door; but there was no

portcullis or other defence. The door-recess is 4 feet broad, and has a

drop arch.

This floor had two windows towards the north and south-west, the

openings of which are about 18 inches broad, with plain equilateral

heads. The former opens from a recess 7 feet 4 inches broad, having

stone side-seats; between which, in the floor, is the trap descending

into the dungeon. The other window has a recess 6 feet 10 inches broad,

with a stone seat on its left side. In its right, or west jamb, is

a door 2 feet 5 inches wide, square headed, beneath a drop relieving

arch; from which rises a mural stair 2 feet 5 inches broad, lighted by

two exterior loops, and with a flat covering, leading to the second

floor. The window recesses are segmental, and are formed of excellent

limestone tufa ashlar.