gatehouse for about 80 feet. It is composed of a sort of lofty gallery,
or curtain, terminating in a rectangular tower, about 22 feet square,
with buttresses capping the two east or outer angles diagonally. It
is of three stories, and is built across the eastern ditch, no doubt
to contain and protect its sluice communicating with the sea, which
originally flowed up to the wall of the tower. There are seen large
arches in the north and east faces, which look as though there had
been a passage for boats; but these seem really to have been arches of
construction only, intended to throw the weight of the building upon
the corners, which probably are more deeply founded than the curtain.
In the north face is also a large modern arch, a relic of the canal
which was to have been carried beneath the tower. The spur-work and
the gatehouse were long used as a Bridewell. All still bear marks of
that degrading occupation. The whole spur-work is good Perpendicular.
Leland calls this the south gate, and the spur tower the Castellet.
Grose gives a view of it about 1770. From the Spur Gate the town wall
is tolerably perfect as far as the first half-round tower, 60 yards.
From hence the wall may be traced 35 yards to a flat buttress, 14 feet
broad and 3 feet deep, of which there are some remains. Beyond this, at
37 yards, is the site of a rectangular tower, 30 feet broad and 24 feet
deep These two are said to be additions of the time of Edward VI. They
look much older.
From hence to the north-east angle of the tower the wall has been
pulled down, but its line may be traced, partly by occasional
foundations, partly by its materials which have been used in the houses
built on its site, and partly by the direction of the lane called “Back
o’ the Wall,” which runs along its rear, and by the parallel road which
runs along the counterscarp of the ditch, and is called “Canal Walk,”
from an abortive canal which was carried along the line of the ditch at
the commencement of the present century.
The east gate spanned East-street, and was taken down in 1772. Grose
gives a drawing of it, and attributes its erection to the year 1339, 13
Edward III. Between this gate and the north-east angle was one mural
half-round tower.
Of Polnymond Tower, which caps the north-east angle, there are
considerable remains. It is a three-quarter drum tower, about 28 feet
diameter. From it to the bar, 160 yards, the wall, or part of it,
remains, but so clustered with buildings as to be inaccessible to
ordinary visitors. Here are remains of two half-round towers, and a
breach in the wall, called York Gate, probably representing a postern.
The east ditch is marked by a depression, in part due to the canal. The
north ditch is completely obliterated and built over, and its breadth
is not recorded, and has not been ascertained by probing. If Hanover
Buildings mark its counterscarp, it was 46 yards broad; but if, as is
much more probable, its limit is marked by Cold Harbour, it was only 24
yards, which tallies with that along the east front.
THE CASTLE.
The castle was very probably the oldest, and perhaps the only
præ-Norman fortification connected with the town. It occupied nearly
the whole of the north-western quarter of the walled area, and included
also the highest ground. In plan it was a rough semicircle, the chord
of 124 yards being the town wall, and the arc measuring about 300
yards. There is, however, also a considerable knoll, on the south-east
of the area, of about 45 yards diameter, about half of which lay
outside the curved _enceinte_.
This was the keep. Leland calls it the dungeon (donjon), and the “glory
of the castle.” “It is,” says he, “both large, fair, and very strong,
both by works and by the site of it;” and other writers describe it as
a lofty mound. As usual, in forming such works, advantage was taken
of high ground to make it the base of an artificial mound encircled
by a deep and broad ditch. The keep, no doubt a shell of masonry like
Arundel, towered above the rest of the works. Of the curved wall of the
_enceinte_ a part remains to the north. It was built on piers about
8 feet square and 9 feet apart, a round-headed arch with a tendency
to a point connecting these. The tops of these arches were about 12
feet above the base of the piers, and upon them rested a wall, which
carried the battlement. The arches were buried in a bank of earth about
15 feet high. This bank has been removed to allow houses to be built
up to the wall, which now, therefore, stands like a Roman aqueduct.
The foundation is excellent, so that this plan was adopted solely to
save material and to profit by the older bank. The roughness of the
masonry shows the height of the bank, above which the remaining wall
rises about 4 feet. It is much to be regretted that this curious piece
of Norman wall has been so badly treated. About 90 yards of it remain,
including eighteen arches. It stops at the Castle-lane, where was the
main gate of the castle, removed at the end of the last century.
The wall, beyond the gate, was continued up the mound to the keep, and
beyond it till it reached the southern gate, whence it was continued
till it again struck the town wall. Thus the keep was upon and formed
part of the _enceinte_, as was usual. From the south gate, also removed
in the last century, a winding road, commenced from the wall, led down
to Simnell-street, a few yards within the postern.
Near the castle, against and within the town wall, is a large
subterranean vault, now closed; and, judging from the openings in the
wall, there was a corresponding vault to the south of this.
The whole area of the castle is high, and much of it has been still
higher, the mound having been lowered, the ditch partially filled up,
and the bank along which the wall was built having been removed.
To judge from the material evidence afforded by an inspection of the
works, it would appear that the castle represents the Saxon or Danish
earthwork, probably the earliest strong place, and was composed of a
truncated mound, its circular ditch, and a bank of earth encircling an
area, of which the mound or a moiety of it made part: the whole forming
a burh of the first class.
The Normans, probably in the reign of Henry I., enclosed the castle
and town in a rectangular wall, and dug the east and north ditches.
Also the castle was enclosed with a wall built in part on arches, and
a shell keep placed on the flat summit of the mound. The wall of the
castle, and much of the west wall of the town, and the two houses in
Blue Anchor-lane, may be attributed to this period.
Then it became necessary to strengthen the town wall, and this was
probably done in the reign of King John, who, it appears, remitted to
the citizens £200 out of their fee-farm rents for the enclosure of
their town and the thickening of the wall, and perhaps the west and
spur gates were begun at that time.
Much must have been done to the fortifications during the reign of
Henry III. or Edward I. To this date are probably due the older drum
towers and much of the wall connected with them, and the recessing of
the Bargate and the addition of its flanking towers.
It appears that the town was attacked by pirates and sacked in October,
1338, 12 Edward III., and in consequence it was strengthened in the
next year. The south and east gates may have been of this date, and the
spur tower and its gallery, unless this latter be, with the completion
of the Bargate, the work of Richard II. This king seems to have done
much to the castle.
The vault indicated on the plan as on the north side of the water-gate
is at present wholly underground, being built against and within the
exterior wall, its floor being about the level of the footing of the
wall. The vault measures 55 feet 3 inches north and south, by 19 feet
6 inches east and west, and is about 25 feet high. Sir H. Englefield
says it has much the air of a chapel. Others call it a guard-room to
the water-gate. A chapel would scarcely have stood north and south, and
a guard-room, especially so large a one, however necessary for a main
gate, would be quite out of place beside a mere postern. The vault was
entered a few weeks ago through a long closed-up opening in the west
wall, but the writer has been unable to learn what was then observed.
To the south of the water-gate is, or was, a similar vault, indicated
by the openings in the wall, one 3 feet and one 1 foot from the ground,
both long since built up. Probably these two were the substructures of
two buildings which formed a part of the exterior wall, and were used
for stores or cellars.
It is difficult to speak too highly of the large scale plan of
Southampton executed under Sir H. James, upon which the lines of the
old wall, and position of other objects of antiquity, are shown in a
manner which leaves nothing to be desired.
TAMWORTH CASTLE, WARWICKSHIRE.
Tamworth Castle stands at the confluence of the Anker with the Tame, on
the right bank of either, between the town and the latter river, and
close above St. Mary’s Bridge. It occupies a position near the east end
of the south, or river front, of the old town, the outlines of which
are still indicated by a bank and ditch, showing it to have been in
plan a parallelogram, with one side resting upon the Tame, and the east
end defended by the Anker. The low ground about the junction of the
rivers, the broad meadows on the left bank of the Tame opposite to, and
on both banks below the town, in their natural condition a deep morass,
must have rendered the place nearly inaccessible upon its east, south,
and west fronts; and, no doubt, led to its conversion into a safe
residence at a very early period.
As the ground rises from the river, the town and its grand old church
occupy positions rather higher than the castle, and which must always
have been dry and airy and, in consequence, salubrious.
The line of the town defence upon the east side is known as the King’s
Ditch, in reference, it is supposed, to the Mercian Offa. Though
without anything like sharpness of outline, and occupied as a nursery
garden, the work is by no means obliterated, and may be traced nearly
from the Anker below Bolebridge for about 300 yards northwards. It
is composed of a raised bank, which formed a terrace behind the wall
or palisade, a ditch more or less filled up, and beyond this a slope
representing a glacis, or space outside the works, which it was the
custom from a very early period to keep clear of cover. Bank and ditch
are about 45 feet broad. The Market-street intersects the line of
defence, and, being old, probably was crossed by a gatehouse. There
are some slight and uncertain traces of masonry upon its north side.
Further north, a modern road affords a good section of the bank.
This side joins the north front at a right angle, within which is a
sort of tump, remembered as somewhat larger, and which looks as if it
marked the site of a mural tower, or perhaps a cavalier or small mount.
The defences of the north front skirt the Lichfield and Polesworth
road, and are traceable nearly to the cross-road from Seckington.
Beyond this, the line, now built over or enclosed in walled gardens,
was traced by Dugdale along a front altogether of 400 paces, to a mount
marking the north-west corner, from which the line passed at right
angles southwards to the river. This would give a space of about 300
yards by 400 yards as the enclosure of the town. Outside the west front
the ground sinks rapidly into the meadows, among which, on the river
bank, and just outside the town, is the Moat House, an old seat of the
Comberfords, still standing in all its dampness, although the moat has
been filled up.
The principal bridge, that across the Tame, close below the castle,
known as St. Mary’s or Lady Bridge, is of modern construction. It
succeeded a mediæval structure, shown in Shaw’s plate of 1780, the
precursor of which was probably a bridge, or perhaps a ford, of Saxon
times. In Leland’s day, a stone upon it bore the arms of Lord Basset,
of Drayton.
Bow, or Bolebridge, crosses the Anker, and leads to the hamlet of
Bolehill and to Nuneaton.
The church is a large structure of considerable merit, containing some
Norman work, apparently once connected with a central tower, and in
which may be seen traces of herring-bone masonry. East of it are some
ruins, known as the Deanery, part of which seems also to be Norman. The
Market-place, though much altered, represents an early space set aside
for trading purposes.
Tamworth has no historical pretensions to either British or Roman
origin. The Britons would have designated it from the smaller stream.
The earliest mention of it is in the records of the people in whose
tongue it is named. Offa, King of Mercia, in a charter of A.D. 781,
announces himself as “Ego Offa rex, sedens in regali palatio in
Tamoworthige,” an evidence of its distinction at that time, and one
which renders it probable that it had an earlier history. Cenwulf dates
a charter of A.D. 816, “In vico celeberrimo qui vocatur Tomoworthig,”
and other royal charters are dated from it in 841 and 854. So that in
the eighth and ninth centuries it was already a royal residence and a
place of celebrity.
The Danes ravaged it in common with much of Mercia early in the tenth
century, and in A.D. 913–14 it was restored by Æthelflaed,
Elfleda potens! O terror virgo virorum!
daughter of Alfred, sister of Edward the Elder, and the foundress of
Tutbury, Warwick, and many other well-known Saxon places of strength.
She is reputed to have cast up the mound, and to have placed her
residence on the summit. She died here A.D. 918–22.
The castle and half the town are in the shire of Warwick; the other
half and the church in Stafford. There is no mention of the castle in
Domesday.
At the Conquest, Tamworth became the property of Robert Marmion, who
seems to have fortified it, as such earthworks were fortified in
Normandy, and to have made it strong enough to be obnoxious, some
time later, to King John, who, in 1215–16, ordered it to be razed.
Under Henry III. another Robert was its lord, and Philip Marmion died
seized of it in 1291–92. From Marmion it descended to Frevile, thence
to Ferrers, thence with Ann Ferrers, at the end of the seventeenth
century, it came in marriage to the house of Shirley, from whom,
through Compton, it passed to the Townshends, whose representative,
Marquis Townshend, is sixteenth Baron Ferrers by writ of 1299, and
owner of Tamworth Castle, while Earl Ferrers, the male heir of the
Shirleys, is Viscount Tamworth, by creation in 1711.
From the Norman Conquest to 20 Edward I., the castle descended through
five generations of Marmions; from thence to 7 Henry V., through six of
the house of Frevile, and from thence to 1680 through eleven descents
of the name of Ferrers; being twenty-two lords from the Conquest to
1680. King James and Prince Charles lodged here in 1619.
The castle is composed of a mound, a platform, buildings upon the
mound, a curtain-wall ascending it, and the remains of a gatehouse.
The mound is wholly artificial, about 50 feet high, circular, and about
100 feet diameter at its flat summit. Its sides stand at the natural
slope of mixed dry earth and gravel, the _débris_ of the new red
sandstone of the district; and its base may be about 12 feet above the
river.
South-east of the mound is a triangular platform, also more or less
artificial, and raised about 15 feet above the river. One side is
straight, and fronts the water. That to the east is at present a hollow
curve, and has evidently been retained by a wall against which it
formed a terrace. This side extends northwards to the ruined gatehouse,
indications upon which seem to show that part of the platform has been
removed, and that it originally extended a few yards eastwards into the
present brewery; so that this front was, no doubt, straight, and not,
as now, concave.
The third side, or hypothenuse, of the platform lies towards and partly
encircles the mound, and is therefore concave; and between the two is a
ditch. Excepting this “valley of elevation,” there is no present trace
of a ditch at the foot of the mound.
Below the south front, between it and the Tame, and close above St.
Mary’s Bridge, is the castle mill, rebuilt in modern times. It is
worked by the Anker, which, sweeping round the south-east front of the
castle, serves as a mill leat. Above the mill, and between the leat and
the line of wall, is a narrow strip of land, now a garden, and probably
once a pasture beneath the castle wall.
North of the platform a curtain wall runs from the gatehouse up the
mound, with the summit of which its top is level. This wall in plan is
angular, or slightly convex, towards the exterior or town side. It is
10 feet thick, and has a rampart wall of 7 feet, a parapet of 2 feet,
and a rere wall of 1 foot. The rampart walk or allure was probably
the only way from the gatehouse to the top of the mound. It rises
gently, but has no steps. It is about 20 feet high at the central part,
ending and commencing at nothing. It is of herring bone masonry, of
flat stones laid obliquely on edge, each course being separated by a
horizontal bed, sometimes single, sometimes double, of small stones,
resembling flat pebbles. At the deepest there are twenty-one courses.
Here and there the surface has been patched, but on the whole the
wall is in its original state, very rough, but perfect. The joints
are very open. The exterior face is less perfect, and is, besides,
concealed by clumsy buttresses, perhaps of Tudor or earlier date. The
herring-bone structure is not seen in the rere wall, which is probably
a restoration, but it appears in the front parapet for a foot or two
above the rampart walk. This is a very remarkable wall, and should be
photographed in detail.
The continuation of the wall to the upper lodge or gatehouse from the
town is in part old, but of later date than the curtain. The gatehouse
itself is chiefly modern, but part is old; and connected with it are
the remains of an arch jamb and portcullis groove, probably traces of
the main entrance to the castle. This gate leads by a short lane into
the market-place. The lower lodge, or entrance from the bridge side,
was built in 1810, and with its adjacent wall is wholly of that date.
The mound is crested by a many-sided shell of wall, about 9 feet thick,
and from 30 feet to 40 feet high. This wall is in part very old. The
base has been supported by a modern facing, which batters considerably,
and is about 2 feet high; but above this, for 6 feet or 8 feet, the
workmanship is open-jointed rubble, with stones of large but irregular
size and shape. The quoins are, however, of ashlar, rude but sound.
Above this to the rampart height, the wall seems to have been rebuilt
in early times in a better manner, but as though the old work had been
left where sound, so that the two run much into one another.
The upper 10 feet of the wall, all parapet, seems of still later date.
It is crenellated, and occasionally looped at the rampart level. At
the south-west quarter is a loop about 6 feet from the ground, and two
others higher up, all which are apparently of the age of the wall,
and being near the well probably lighted the offices. This wall is
much obscured by ivy. It has been materially altered at two points; on
the south side entirely rebuilt for several yards to form the outer
wall of the southern private apartments; and on the opposite side by
the insertion at the same time of several large late Tudor windows,
to light the northern apartments. Under these latter are three heavy
masses of stone-work to support balconies. One is of somewhat earlier
date and of better design than the others.
In the circuit of the wall, to the south, and commanding the way up the
curtain, is a tower 24 feet square, and having 5 feet projection from
the wall. Its angles within are plain, but those without are flanked by
two narrow pilaster strips, leaving a free angle between them. These
strips rise about 20 feet, and clumsily pass into a sort of octagon,
which at the top of the tower becomes a cylinder, and is so seen on the
battlements. These, however, may be an alteration. The tower is about
40 feet high, and the walls are 7 feet thick. It somewhat batters.
On its exterior face are two Tudor windows; and about half-way up a
string-course, stopped by the pilasters, which in the centre rises as a
half-round drip, probably once heading a Norman window. This tower is
of rubble, of the date of the wall, with ashlar pilasters. In its outer
wall is a very serious crack, which seems to be getting worse.
A few feet south of the tower, and therefore close to the curtain
ascent, is the doorway into the keep. This is of small size, with an
equilateral arch, plain square jambs continued up through the arch
moulding, which is very plain, the angle only being rounded off. The
drip, if one there was, has mouldered away. This doorway traverses the
wall rather obliquely. The inner front has a ribbed head, and two faces
carved upon it near the springing. There is neither portcullis groove
nor large bar hole. The defence was a single door.
Between the door and the tower a sort of oriel has been corbelled out
at an early period, possibly to defend the approach. At present it has
a loop in its basement, and two Tudor windows above, and is surmounted
by a small gable of the same date.
Round the base of the wall is a terrace, about 10 feet wide and 8 feet
high, above the slope of the mound. The retaining wall is in part old,
and is supported by short stout buttresses, apparently of Decorated
date. This wall has been patched, and in places rebuilt, in Tudor and
later times, and its low circumscribing parapet is mostly modern. What
it was, or when constructed, is uncertain. It may have carried a low
parapet, a sort of chemisette, defending the base of the keep wall, and
intended to supplement the ditch at the foot of the mound. In the last
century it was crossed on the south side by a wall, with a gate in it,
but this probably was not original.
The buildings within the shell are next to be described. The entrance
lies beneath a sort of gatehouse, of the date of the other buildings,
having on the right the tower court, and on the left a small court
having the outer wall for one of its sides, and in that wall a small
doorway, whence a mural staircase ascends, winding with the wall, to
the battlements. The inner entrance, opening to the private apartments
and hall, is a rather elaborate doorway of the style of James I. This
opens into a passage or lobby, having on the right the great hall, on
the left a buttery, or modern housekeeper’s room, and in front the way
to the kitchen.
The hall lies north and south, and occupies nearly the centre of the
enclosure. At each end of it are distinct suites of apartments, having
no direct communication save through the hall. On its east side is the
tower and tower-court; on its west side the kitchen and kitchen-court.
The hall is 40 feet by 20 feet, the end of honour being the north. The
entrance-door is on the middle of the south end. The north end is
blank. Of the east side, about the south half is occupied by a large
oak window-frame, with square apertures, glazed, reaching from about 5
feet high to the eaves of the roof, and looking into the tower-court.
In the same side at the north end a door leads by a stair to the
northern apartments and the tower. On the west side, in the centre,
is a large fireplace; to its north a window similar to the other, but
rather smaller; and to its south a door, opening on a stair, leading to
the southern apartments.
The roof of the hall is of open-work, supported by two detached and two
engaged principals, one against each gable. The stone floor has lately
been replaced by boarding. The three doorways are round-headed, of the
age of James I. The aspect of the hall is gloomy, the roof heavy and
unskilful, the windows unpleasing, and the walls thin and of brick.
There are here four good wrought-iron candelabra about 6 feet high.
The southern apartments upon the basement are, with the exception
mentioned, private. On the first floor are the library and
drawing-room, and one or two private rooms. The library is panelled
with oak to the cornice, and along the upper tier of panels are painted
Ferrers and his matches. The fireplace is very handsome, and above
it is a large atchievement, carved in black oak, of Ferrers and his
quarterings, crest, supporters, and motto. The drawing-room, also
panelled and larger, has a good fireplace. Each room has a large Tudor
window to the south, and is exceedingly cheerful. The second floor is
not shown.
The northern apartments lie between the hall and the north wall, in
which the windows are pierced. The basement is composed of cellars, on
the ground level, opening from the tower and kitchen courts. The first
floor contains a large drawing-room and two smaller lateral rooms. All
are dismantled, stripped of the panelling, and in a state of decay. The
second floor contains bedrooms, also disused. From this floor a door
opens upon the rampart of the _enceinte_ wall, where it is seen to be
7 feet thick, and to have a parapet about 10 feet high. Below is the
kitchen-court, and against the wall may be seen a sloping water table
marking a roof, probably of an early kitchen. At the other end these
rooms communicate with the tower, the floors of which are ruinous. The
tower basement is entered from the court. The stairs throughout are in
rectangular staircases, and each step is a heavy log of oak.