THE DWELLING-HOUSE IN THE CASTLE
The castle needed, among its chief requirements, a dwelling-house which
might be occupied by the owner and his household. Thus the stronghold
of the lord of Ardres upon its mount was planned as a capacious
dwelling, with a kitchen attached; and where, as in this case, the
keep was the castle, it necessarily served the double purpose of
fortress and residence. Enough has been said of the rectangular and
cylindrical forms of tower-keep to show that the domestic and military
elements were often combined in their arrangements. But the use of the
tower-keep as the principal residence within the castle was a fashion
of comparatively short duration. The example of its double use had
been set in the great towers of London and Colchester, and in the
rectangular towers of Norman and French castles. Of the towers of Henry
II.’s reign, those which, like Castle Rising, are low in proportion
to the area they cover, generally have the best provision for living
purposes. Lofty towers, like Newcastle or Conisbrough, can never have
been comfortable residences; and it is not surprising to find that at
Newcastle, about half a century after the building of the tower, a
more commodious dwelling-house was built within the castle area.[224]
But we have seen already that in early castles, as at Oxford, a hall
for the lord or his constable was generally, if not always, built
within the bailey. The practical necessity of this is obvious in
mount-and-bailey castles, where the tower on the mount, or the stone
shell which took its place, was reserved for the main purpose of a
final refuge in time of siege. No one who examines the sites of castles
like Lincoln, Launceston, or Clare, with their formidable mounts, can
fail to realise that the mount was an inconvenient place of residence,
and that domestic buildings would be naturally provided in the annexed
bailey. Bishop Bek’s thirteenth-century hall at Durham, built against
the western curtain of the bailey, stands upon the substructure of a
far earlier building. The domestic buildings in the bailey at Guildford
appear to be of earlier date than the stone tower on the mount; while
at Christchurch in Hampshire (123), the dwelling-house next the river
and the tower on the mount appear to be almost contemporary.
Castles which, for reasons already explained, were surrounded from
the beginning with a stone wall, and had at first no regular keep,
contain even better examples of the existence of a separate hall.
The eleventh-century hall at Richmond is almost perfect, although
some additions, made nearly a century later to the upper part of
the structure, have led to the mistaken attribution of a later date
to the whole building.[225] At Ludlow, mingled with the fabric of
the fourteenth-century hall, are clear indications of the earlier
stone hall, built, as at Richmond, against the curtain on the least
accessible side of the inner ward. The fabric of the great hall at
Chepstow, much enriched and beautified in the thirteenth century, is
contemporary with the foundation of the castle in the eleventh century.
Part, at any rate, of the substructure of the hall at Newark belongs to
the castle founded in the twelfth century by Bishop Alexander, although
the whole building on that side of the enclosure, with the exception of
an angle-tower, bears witness to reconstruction and repair at two later
periods. At Porchester, again, the substructure of the hall contains a
considerable amount of early Norman work, which may be attributed to
the time of Henry I.
The situation and plan of the hall remained very much the same
throughout the middle ages. What we find at Richmond, Ludlow,
Chepstow, or Durham, we find also at Manorbier, Caerphilly, Harlech,
and Carnarvon, at Warwick and at Naworth. The domestic buildings were
placed against the curtain on one side or at an end of the inner ward,
and preferably where a precipice or steep slope made the assault of
the curtain on that side difficult or impossible. This position is
well illustrated in the fortified thirteenth-century house of Aydon
in Northumberland. Here there was, on the side of entrance, a large
walled outer ward, or, as it was called in the north of England, a
“barmkin.”[226] The house was built round two sides of a walled inner
courtyard, the hall and main apartments standing on the brink of a
deep ravine, where they were safe from approach or from the peril of
siege-engines. The curtain was therefore pierced with window-openings
of a fairly large size, which gave the house more light and comfort
internally than would have been possible upon a more exposed face of
the site. The hall at Warkworth (49) was built against a solid curtain
upon the steepest side of the peninsula occupied by the castle, and,
although there were no window-openings in the curtain at the level of
the hall, it was pierced by a postern, through which the kitchen could
be supplied, at the end nearest the tower. Castles on comparatively
level sites show the same disposition. At Cardiff (191), the domestic
buildings are on the west side of the enclosure, built against the
curtain, and protected by the river, and bear the same relation in the
plan to the main entrance and the shell-keep on the mount, as the hall
at Warkworth bears to the gateway and the mount with its later strong
house.[227]
[Illustration: Cardiff Castle; Plan]
The plan of the hall and its adjacent buildings was, and continued
to be, that of the ordinary dwelling-house. The _aula_ of Harold at
Bosham in Sussex is represented in the Bayeux tapestry (36) as a house
with a basement, apparently vaulted, and an upper floor approached by
an external staircase. No division of the upper floor is shown: it
consists apparently of one large room. This plan, with the division of
the hall by a cross-wall into a main and smaller chamber, is precisely
what we find, at the end of the century after the Conquest, at the
large town house in Bury St Edmunds known as Moyses hall, or at the
manor-house of Boothby Pagnell in Lincolnshire. It is represented in
manor-houses of the later Gothic period at the so-called “Goxhill
priory” in Lincolnshire or at the house of the bishops of Lincoln at
Liddington in Rutland. Its most familiar survival in non-military
architecture is in the halls of several of the Oxford colleges, like
Christ Church or New college. In the plan of the monastery, the frater
or dining-hall followed the same lines of an upper room upon a vaulted
substructure. Similarly, the hall of a castle was simply an ordinary
_aula_ placed within an enclosure walled for military purposes. The
hall at Christchurch is the exact counterpart of Harold’s _aula_ in
the Bayeux tapestry. It is a rectangular building, probably of the
third quarter of the twelfth century, with a basement, originally
vaulted, and lighted by narrow loops. The first floor formed one large
apartment, and was well lighted with double window openings, one of
which, at the south end, received special architectural treatment.
There was a fireplace in the east wall, on the side next the stream:
the cylindrical chimney-shaft still remains. The entrance, near the
south end of the west wall, was probably approached by an outer stair
at right angles to the wall, and led into the lower end of the hall,
opposite the daïs for the high table. The fireplace, set diagonally
to the entrance, warmed the daïs and the body of the hall: the end
near the doorway, corresponding to the “screens” of the ordinary hall,
was probably left free for the coming and going of the servants. The
basement was simply a cellar and storehouse. It had a doorway in the
west wall, while in the east wall was a gateway communicating with
the water. The elevation is nearly identical with that of the house
at Boothby Pagnell; but at Boothby Pagnell a cross-wall divides both
upper floor and basement into larger and smaller chambers; while
at Christchurch there was at the south-east corner a rectangular
garde-robe turret, built out into the stream, which kept the vents from
both basement and upper floor continually flushed.[228]
The division of the first floor into a larger and smaller apartment
corresponds to the division of the ordinary dwelling-house into hall or
common-room of the house, and bower or withdrawing-room and sleeping
apartment for the chief members of the family.[229] In the developed
plan of the medieval private house, the small vaults below the bower
became the cellar, and, as at Manorbier, a vice was provided by which
wine could be brought directly from it to the high table. The bower
or solar[230] itself was known in large houses as the great chamber,
and access to it was obtained through a door near one end of the
cross-wall behind the daïs. There was, however, a variation upon this
plan in which the hall and bower are on a different floor-level, and
this appears at a fairly early date. In this case the hall occupied the
whole height of the basement and first floor, and was entered from the
ground-level of the bailey: the cellar, in this case, was on a level
with the floor of the hall, and the solar was reached from the daïs by
a stair. This plan became very common in the later Gothic period; and
is well illustrated in manor-houses like Haddon and Compton Wyniates,
and in the colleges of Cambridge, where the common-room or parlour took
the place of the cellar, and the solar was occupied by the master’s
lodging. But it is also found in castles and fortified houses, as at
Berkeley and Stokesay. An indication of its employment at a date not
long after the Norman conquest is found in the story of the insult
offered to Robert of Normandy by William Rufus and Henry I. They came
to visit him, about the year 1078, at the castle of L’Aigle, where he
was staying, either in the constable’s house or some dwelling near the
castle. William and Henry played dice “upon the solar,” and indulged
in horseplay, which took the form of making a deafening noise, and
pouring water on Robert and his followers, who were below. Robert lost
his temper, and rushed into the dining-hall (_cenaculum_) to punish
his brothers: the quarrel, stopped for the time being by their father,
was the beginning of the long feud which ended for Robert in his
confinement at Cardiff. The mention of the “solar” distinctly implies
a room upon the upper floor, probably at some elevation above the
hall.[231]
This alternative plan supplied more direct communication with the
kitchen than was possible, where the hall was upon an upper floor; and
in connection with it, a kitchen and its accompanying offices are very
frequently found at the lower end, near the entry of the hall. This
became, in manor-houses and in the colleges of Cambridge, the normal
position of the kitchen, buttery, and pantry, divided from the body of
the hall by the “screens.” Most of the cooking in the earlier castles
must have been done either in temporary sheds or in the open air: the
basement of the hall, which, in later manor-houses, was sometimes used
as a kitchen, was not so used at an early period. The apartment in
a corner of the cleverly planned first floor of the keep at Castle
Rising was probably a kitchen, and is a rare instance of a room set
apart for this purpose before the end of the twelfth century. It must
be remembered, however, that the domestic buildings of castles were
very often, as at Ludlow, enlarged and entirely rebuilt, until they
became, as at Cardiff and Warwick, splendid mansions; and details with
regard to the original arrangement of the lesser apartments are thus
hard to recover.
[Illustration: LUDLOW: interior of building west of great hall]
At Warkworth (49), probably a little before 1200, a house of
considerable extent, including more than one private apartment and
a kitchen, was built against, and at the same time with the, west
curtain.[232] Up to this time, the castle had been an ordinary
mount-and-bailey stronghold with timber defences, and no earlier
stonework remains. The new house was much beautified by additions
made in the fifteenth century, but the plan was little altered. Its
central part was the hall, parallel with the curtain which it joined.
The entrance was in the side wall next the bailey, and led, as usual,
into the lower end of the hall, which occupied the full height of
the house, and thus formed the only internal means of communication
between the lord’s and the servants’ quarters. An unusual feature of
the hall, which cannot have been well lighted, was an eastern aisle,
over which the sloping roof was probably continued. At the upper
end, behind the daïs, the cellar was entered directly from the hall:
a straight stair next the curtain gave access to a landing, from
which a doorway gave access to the great chamber. The great chamber
communicated with a polygonal angle tower, called by the curious
name of “Cradyfargus,”[233] the first floor of which, next the great
chamber, may have been the chamber of the master of the house, while
the upper floor was probably used by the ladies. Nearly at right angles
to the great chamber, against the south curtain, was a chapel, of
which enough remains to show us that the ground-floor, entered from
the bailey, was used by the servants and garrison: while the west end
was divided into two stories, the upper one of which was entered from
the private apartments, and was a gallery for the use of the lord and
his family. It is difficult to speak positively of the arrangements of
the kitchen, which stood against the west curtain at the other end of
the hall. It may originally, like the kitchen at Berkeley, have had no
direct communication with the hall: the passage and offices between,
in their present state of ruin, are fifteenth-century additions or
reconstructions. But all the elements of the larger English house are
here. The chief alterations in the fifteenth century were the building
of a porch and gateway-tower in front of the hall entrance, and the
insertion of a lofty turret, with a vice and vaulted vestibule to the
great chamber, to the north-eastern angle of the hall, where it blocks
the last bay of the aisle.
An aisled hall, as at Warkworth, was a very exceptional feature. There
are, however, a few existing examples of a hall with a nave and two
aisles, the most famous of which is the thirteenth-century hall at
Winchester. The midland castles of Leicester and Oakham also had aisled
halls: that at Leicester was divided by arcades of timber, and still
exists, although many of its original features, including the timber
columns, have been removed or obscured. The hall at Oakham has been
more fortunate. This castle, upon a flat site which had no strategic
advantages, was really an _aula_ or manor-house, enclosed by a strong
earthen bank, and was probably not surrounded by a wall until the
thirteenth century. Within this enclosure Walkelin de Ferrers, towards
the end of the twelfth century, built an aisled hall of four bays, the
architectural details of which are of unusual beauty, and of great
importance in the history of early Gothic art in England. The building
runs east and west, the original entrance, from the ground-level of
the bailey, being, as usual, in the last bay of a side-wall, in this
case the easternmost bay of the south wall.[234] The daïs was at the
west end; and two doors, which probably communicated with the kitchen
and buttery, remain in the east wall. The aisles would doubtless be
kept clear of tables, to facilitate the service from the kitchen.[235]
At either end of the building, the arcades spring, not from responds,
but from corbels. Semicircular responds would have interfered with
the benches behind the high table, and with the free passage of the
servants between the kitchen and the aisles.[236] The columns are
slender cylinders of Clipsham stone: the capitals are tall, and carved
with a great variety of stiff-stalk foliage, with which are mingled
bands of nail-head and dog-tooth. The arches are rounded: dog-tooth
is used in the hood-mouldings, which rest upon figure-corbels. The
classical character of the foliage, and the refined sculpture of the
figures and heads in the corbels throughout the hall, have analogies in
one or two other buildings of the district: they recall very closely
the early Gothic work of the Burgundian province, and its English
derivatives at Canterbury and Chichester. Nothing, however, is known
of the masons employed; and the fabric has no documentary history. In
the low side-walls are double window-openings, each with a sculptured
tympanum beneath an enclosing arch: the pier dividing each of the
windows is faced with a shaft, and the jambs are adorned with elaborate
dog-tooth. These windows may be compared with those of the aisled
hall of the episcopal palace at Lincoln, built about a quarter of a
century later, where the arcades at both ends sprang from corbels. A
close parallel to the arrangements of the hall at Oakham is provided
by the contemporary hall, built by Bishop Pudsey at Auckland castle,
near Durham. Here, again, the so-called castle was simply an _aula_
without the strong earthworks which give Oakham a military character.
The proportions of the Auckland hall are larger, and its architecture
more simple, but with even more advanced Gothic characteristics. At the
end of the thirteenth century, considerable alterations were made in
the structure, and at the Restoration the hall was converted by Bishop
Cosin into a chapel.[237] This involved the blocking up of the original
entrance, the position of which exactly corresponded to that of Oakham.
A new doorway was made in the west wall, and the bay which originally
was set apart for the daïs was converted into an ante-chapel. In
neither case do any other contemporary buildings remain: the mansion at
Auckland, on the west side of the old hall, is a building of several
periods, of which the earliest existing portion is not earlier than the
reign of Henry VII.
[Illustration: DURHAM CASTLE
HISTORICAL GROUND PLAN]
Hugh Pudsey (1153-95), the prelate responsible for the hall at
Auckland, did much to increase the splendour of the episcopal
castle at Durham (199). Durham castle is an excellent example of a
mount-and-bailey fortress on a strong triangular site, with precipitous
natural defences on the north and west. The entrance was on the one
accessible side, from the plateau on which the cathedral and monastery
stood. At the apex of the site, on the right of the entrance, was the
mount, with a shell-keep on its summit; while to the left, along the
west side of the bailey, was the original hall. The eleventh-century
chapel was on the north side of the bailey, nearly opposite the
entrance. Pudsey’s chief work was the construction of a long building
of three stories in connection with the north curtain. The eastern part
of the basement was formed by the early chapel; the rest was probably
devoted to store-rooms and cellars. On the first floor was a great
hall, entered by a doorway (201) which may fairly be called the most
magnificent example of late Norman Romanesque art in England. Above
this, on the second floor, approached by a vice in the south-east
corner, was another hall, known as the Constable’s hall, and to-day as
the Norman gallery. The walls of this upper structure were lightened by
their construction as a continuous arcade, the arches forming frames to
window-openings, and the piers between them being faced with detached
shafts in couples (203). The internal arrangements of this building
are now much obscured by the partition of the lower hall into several
large rooms; while the south part of the upper hall has been cut up by
smaller partitions. Early in the sixteenth century a new chapel was
built on the east side of the lower hall, and against the south wall of
the basement and first floor was made a stone gallery of two stories.
The outer stair to the lower hall was then taken away; but Bishop
Pudsey’s doorway was left, and light was thrown upon it by a large
mullioned window in the outer wall of the gallery.[238]
Meanwhile, about the end of the thirteenth century, Bishop Bek, who
also improved upon Pudsey’s work at Auckland, raised against the
west curtain, and upon the substructure of the early hall, the great
banqueting-hall, which is now used as the dining-hall of University
college. This hall, again, has inevitably been much altered, but
its actual plan and arrangements are very fairly maintained to-day,
and the long two-light windows with simple geometrical tracery in
the side walls represent, with some restoration of stone-work, its
original lighting. The entrance, up a flight of stairs and through a
porch added by Bishop Cosin, is in the south end of the east wall,
and leads into screens roofed by a gallery, on the south of which
are the kitchen and servants’ offices. A doorway in the east wall
led from the daïs to the bishop’s private rooms; but at this end the
older arrangements were altered by the construction of Tunstall’s
gallery in the sixteenth century, and, later, still, by the addition
of Cosin’s splendid Renaissance staircase—alterations which provided
covered access from Bek’s hall to Pudsey’s building at right angles
to it. The buildings just described are some of the most beautiful
and instructive remains of domestic architecture in England, and have
no military characteristics. The strength of the castle, however, was
not forgotten. No English castle, even when Bamburgh and Richmond
are remembered, presents a more formidable defence than the curtain,
pierced by a few spare openings and by the narrow western windows of
Bek’s hall, which revets and crowns the cliff above the Wear; while, in
the fourteenth century, Bishop Hatfield (1345-81) replaced the older
keep by a new and probably more lofty polygonal shell.
[Illustration: Durham Castle; Doorway]
At Durham the buildings of Pudsey and Bek alike stand upon basements,
which were used as cellars and store-rooms; and the preference for
first-floor halls in castles was doubtless due to the necessity of
providing plenty of room for magazines, both for provisions and arms,
within a confined space, and keeping the muster-ground in the centre
of the bailey as clear as possible. At Newark (157), where the ground
fell away towards the river, the hall was built on the slope, and was
entered from the level of the bailey, the slope being utilised for the
construction of a large vaulted basement, lighted by loops from the
river side, and communicating with the water by a sloping passage and
a gateway opening on a small quay. The use of every available space
for storage is illustrated at Carew castle in Pembrokeshire, where
the whole space beneath the lesser hall and its adjacent buildings
is occupied by cellars, while the basement of the greater hall, on
the opposite side of the courtyard, appears to have been used as
stables. At Pembroke a large natural cavern below the hall and its
adjacent buildings was turned to use as a lower store-house. A vice
was constructed in the rock from a ground-floor chamber north of the
hall, and the mouth of the cavern was closed by a wall, in which was a
gateway, opening upon a path from the water-side.
[Illustration: DURHAM: arcading on south side of Constable’s hall]
If Henry II. may be given the chief credit for the construction of
rectangular keeps in castles, Henry III. was almost as active in
building halls. The finest example of his work now remaining is at
Winchester. At the Tower of London, at Scarborough, and at Newcastle,
the name alone of his halls, rectangular buildings with high-pitched
roofs, remains. But, in and after his reign, the hall and the adjacent
domestic buildings became a fixed feature of the plan of the castle.
In castles which, up to this time, may have possessed small and
inconvenient halls, or possibly halls built merely of timber, new
and more permanent domestic buildings were constructed. Thus, at
Rockingham castle, the beautiful doorway of the thirteenth-century hall
(205), with deeply undercut mouldings and jamb-shafts with foliated
capitals, still forms the entrance to the house of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, the hall of which is probably of the exact
dimensions of its medieval predecessor.[239] In castles which are the
most perfect examples of fortification, such as Caerphilly or Conway,
the hall forms an integral part of the plan, filling its natural place
in the design; and of these, Caerphilly was completed about the end of
the reign of Henry III. The enthusiasm of Henry for fine architecture,
domestic as well as ecclesiastical, was imitated by many of his
powerful subjects; and it is actually from this period that we may
trace that prominence of the domestic element in our castles which was
eventually cultivated at the expense of fortification.
[Illustration: Rockingham Castle; Doorway of hall]
In the dwelling-houses, often of palatial size, which grew up within
castles, and reached their perfect development in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, the main apartments, in addition to the hall,
were the great chamber, the kitchen with its offices, and the chapel.
The normal plan, as already shown, was that of the first-floor hall,
with the great chamber at one end, and the kitchen at the other. The
plan of the chapel was not fixed, but, where it formed part of the
block of buildings, it is usually found in connection with the great
chamber end of the hall.
The main points of the hall may be briefly recapitulated. The entrance
was invariably in the side wall next the bailey, at the end nearest
the usual place for the kitchen. This end was screened off from the
hall by curtains or by a wooden partition containing one or more doors.
This shut out draught; while the passage thus formed was generally
covered by its own ceiling, the space above forming a gallery, which
was entered from a vice at a corner of the end wall. At the further
end of the hall was the daïs with the high table, at right angles to
which were placed the long tables in the body of the hall. The hall
was covered by a high-pitched timber roof, the principals of which
were borne by corbels in the side walls. In early examples, warmth was
supplied by a large hearth in the middle of the floor, a little below
the daïs, the smoke from which escaped through a louvre in the roof
above; but it became customary to make a fireplace in one of the side
walls.[240] Light was admitted through window-openings in the side wall
next the ward; but, where the outer wall of the castle was secure from
attack, as at Warwick or Ludlow, windows were made there also. These
windows were usually of two lights, divided by a mullion, with simple
tracery in the head. They also had a transom, below which they were
closed by shutters, the upper part of the window alone being glazed. In
the hall at Ludlow, the date of which is about 1300, there were three
two-light windows next the ward, while the curtain was pierced by three
single-light openings. The hearth stood in the body of the hall just
below the daïs, and was carried by a pier in the cellar beneath. In the
fifteenth century the middle window next the ward was blocked, and a
fireplace inserted: the hearth was then removed. The hall formed the
chief living-room of the house, and in it the majority of the lord’s
retinue not only had their meals, but slept.
The great chamber, as time went on, became the nucleus of a number of
private apartments. In the most simple examples, it is a rectangular
apartment behind the daïs, communicating with it directly through a
doorway on one side of the end wall. Where the hall occupied the ground
floor, a vice, or, as at Warkworth, a straight stair, furnished an
entrance to it. At Ludlow, where the kitchen was a detached building,
and at Stokesay (207), there was a first-floor chamber at both ends
of the hall. The domestic buildings at Ludlow are very symmetrically
arranged, the hall, in the middle, being slightly recessed between two
projecting blocks of building, each with a chamber on the first floor
(195). Of these, that at the east end of the hall, behind the daïs, was
evidently the more important; and, in the fifteenth century, it was on
this side that an additional block of private apartments was built.
From each floor of the great chamber block a large garde-robe tower was
entered: this tower projects from the north curtain of the castle, and
was added when the earlier hall was remodelled and the hall and its
adjoining blocks assumed their present shape.
[Illustration: Stokesay]
[Illustration: Manorbier Castle; Outer stair to Chapel]
Manorbier castle contains an interesting example of the enlargement
of domestic buildings, with a solar block at either end of the hall.
The castle stands on rising ground in a deep valley, about half a
mile from the sea. The inner ward or castle proper is surrounded by
a curtain, with a gatehouse in the east wall. The dwelling-house is
upon the west side of the ward, at the end opposite the main entrance,
and consists of two distinct portions. The earlier consists of a
first-floor hall and great chamber above cellars. There was a floor
above the great chamber, probably forming a bower for the ladies of
the household, the hall corresponding in height to these two upper
stages. The present entrance to the hall is in the side wall at the end
next the great chamber, and was probably made, with the outer stair
against the wall, in the thirteenth century. The hall itself with its
adjacent buildings appears to be originally of the later part of the
twelfth century: the cellars below have semicircular barrel vaults. In
the second half of the thirteenth century a new block of buildings was
made at the opposite or south end of the hall. It was now probably that
the new entrance was made. The position of the daïs seems to have been
reversed, and a window in the south end-wall of the hall blocked by a
fireplace. Behind this wall, and entered by a doorway in its west end,
was the new great chamber, a long, narrow building, with its principal
axis at right angles to that of the hall, and with a floor above. At
each end of the south wall of this apartment is a passage. That at the
west end passes along the line of the curtain to a garde-robe tower
which projects at the south-west angle of the castle: the passage is
still roofed with flat slabs on continuous corbelling, and is well
lighted by loops in the curtain. The other passage, at the south-east
corner of the great chamber, forms a lobby to a large chapel, which
was built across the south-west angle of the ward, so that a small
triangular yard was left between it and the curtain. There is a
separate outer stair to the chapel (208), placed, like the stair to the
hall, at right angles to the wall. The whole group of buildings, with
its two outer stairs, is unexcelled for picturesqueness in any castle.
The kitchen at Manorbier was placed, at any rate when the
thirteenth-century alterations were undertaken (probably about 1260),
at right angles to the hall and older great chamber, against the north
curtain. Owing to the confinement of the space within the curtain, and
the growing necessity of private accommodation, the position of the
kitchen was not fixed so regularly in the castle as in the ordinary
dwelling-house. At Berkeley (186), where the hall was built against the
east curtain of the inner ward, the kitchen is a polygonal building,
divided from the screens by a buttery, and occupying a more or less
normal place in the plan. At Warkworth (49), as we have noticed, the
kitchen is in its proper place, near the entrance end of the hall, but
may have been at first a separate structure. The original position of
the kitchen at Cardiff (191) seems to have conformed to this plan. The
desirability of placing the kitchen within easy reach of the hall is
obvious. At Kenilworth, where the magnificent hall, built towards the
end of the fourteenth century, occupies the whole north side of the
inner ward, and is on a first floor above a vaulted cellar, the private
apartments formed a wing against the west curtain of the ward, while
the kitchen was against the east curtain, and was within easy reach
of the stair to the hall, and the passage below it which led into the
cellar. The kitchen at Ludlow (106) was a separate building, opposite
the entrance to the hall and the western solar block, and placed
against the north outer wall of the small courtyard which covers the
keep. In the two great Edwardian castles of Conway and Carnarvon, where
the halls were large and the space limited, the kitchens were built
against the curtain opposite the hall.[241]
The chapel was also a variable factor in the plan. It has already been
remarked that, in some early castles, the chapel was a collegiate
church, standing separately within the precincts of the castle, and
sometimes, as at Hastings, filling up, with the houses of the dean and
canons or their deputies, a very considerable part of the enclosure.
Indeed, nearly all the ruins left within the curtain at Hastings are
those of the large cruciform church and the buildings in connection
with it. At Ludlow the Norman chapel was a detached building in the
inner ward (106). This was the private chapel of the lord of the
castle, and in the sixteenth century was joined by a gallery to the
block of buildings at the east end of the hall: the nave was then
divided into two floors, so that the first floor formed a private
gallery or solar, while the household used the ground-floor. This
method of division of the west end of the chapel into two floors is
very usual: it was employed twice at Warkworth, both in the chapel
attached to the domestic buildings already described, and in the
chapel of the later tower-house on the mount. It may also be seen
in the chapel at Berkeley, and in many manor-houses, as at Compton
Wyniates. At Ludlow we have noticed that there was a second chapel for
the garrison in the outer ward, built in the fourteenth century: with
this the arrangement at the Tower of London may be compared, where
the royal chapel of St John is in the White tower, but the garrison
chapel of St Peter was built on the north side of the inner ward. The
chapel at Kenilworth was against the south wall of the outer ward.
There was a chapel on the south side of the inner ward at Alnwick. As
a rule, however, only one chapel would be provided. The chapels found
in tower-keeps have already been discussed: with the exception of
Newcastle and Old Sarum, they were, as a rule, private chapels or mere
oratories.
In later castles, two considerations determined the planning of the
chapel. It was placed so that the altar should be as nearly as possible
against the east wall, and so that there should be direct access from
the private apartments to the gallery at the west end. These conditions
are met both in the earlier and later chapels at Warkworth: they can
be traced in the plan of Bodiam and other late medieval castles. At
Berkeley (186) where the solar block was at right angles to the hall,
against the south, or, more correctly, the south-west curtain, the
chapel fills the angle between the buildings, and the entrance is
masked by a vestibule from which a vice led to the private apartments.
The altar is placed rather north of east, against the wall at the back
of the hall daïs, and the gallery at the opposite end was entered
from the great chamber. The main axis of the chapel is at an obtuse
angle to that of the hall, and a vestry was made in the south-east
corner, where the wall dividing it from the hall is thickest. In the
plan of the great Welsh castles of the later part of the thirteenth
century the chapel was usually in close connection with the domestic
buildings. At Conway, where there is also a beautiful oratory, with
a vaulted chancel, on the first floor of the north-east tower, the
chapel was formed by screening off the eastern portion of the great
hall. At Harlech the chapel was built against the north curtain, the
solar block probably occupying the angle between chapel and hall. The
chapel at Kidwelly was in the two upper stages of the south-east tower
of the inner ward, and was in close communication with the hall and the
apartments adjoining it. The position of the beautiful little chapel at
Beaumaris is somewhat isolated, on the first floor of the tower in the
middle of the east curtain of the inner ward. The only communication
with the hall block on the north side of the court was through a long
and narrow passage in the thickness of the curtain; and the chapel is
too small to have served for the devotions of a large garrison. It was
so arranged, however, that, if the entrance to the tower were left
open, the service might be followed by worshippers in the bailey below.
Ample room, however, was given to the congregation in most cases: the
first-floor chapel at Manorbier is a chamber of considerable size. It
has a pointed barrel-vault and stands above a cellar, which also has a
pointed barrel-vault and contains a fireplace. The fashion of founding
collegiate establishments in castles did not cease until the end of the
middle ages. The chapel—the third within the castle—which was begun
during the fifteenth century at Warkworth bears witness to an intention
of this kind on the part of one of the earls of Northumberland; but the
actual details of the proposed foundation are not known, and probably
were never placed on paper.