MILITARY ARCHITECTURE IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES: FORTIFIED TOWNS AND
CASTLES
The strengthening of the curtain of the castle was perfected in the
concentric plan, in which also was established, for the time being, the
superiority of defence to attack. But the very fact that the castle had
reached a point at which further development in the existing condition
of things was impossible, was fatal to its continued existence as
a stronghold. A castle like Caerphilly did not put an end to local
warfare: it merely warned an enemy off a forbidden track. Its own
safety was secured, because its almost impregnable defences made any
attempt at a siege ridiculous. Other circumstances, however, combined
to render the castle obsolete. The rise of towns and the growth of
a wealthy mercantile class hastened the decline of feudalism. The
feudal baron was no longer the representative of an all-important
class, and his fortress was of minor importance compared with the
walled boroughs which were symbolical of the real strength of the
country. But, in addition to this social transition, there took place
a change in warfare which had a far-reaching influence upon castle
and walled town alike. Fire-arms came into general use in the early
part of the fourteenth century.[298] Missiles, for which hitherto the
only available machines had been those involving discharge by torsion,
tension, or counterpoise, could now be delivered by the new method
of detonation. This produced an artillery which could be worked with
greater economy of labour, and discharged the missiles themselves with
greater force. Not merely can a ball of stone or iron be projected
with greater impetus than can be given by the older methods; but
the direction which it takes is more nearly horizontal than that
given to it by the mangonel and kindred machines. It is true that, at
first, the power of cannon remained relatively weak; but their gradual
improvement made the old systems of defence useless. Lofty walls, which
could resist the catapults of the past, were easily dismantled by
cannon-shot (288). Harlech, with its lofty curtains and angle-towers,
was an ideal stronghold, as long as explosives were not employed for
attack and defence. But, when cannon are directed against such defences
(273), and the surface of the walls is pounded with shot, the height
of the fortifications becomes a danger; and, in order to plant the
cannon of the defence on the walls, those walls have to be as solid as
possible to avoid the constant vibration arising from the discharge,
and as low as possible to increase their stability and to place the
enemy within range. The change is obvious, if we contrast the lofty
and comparatively slender towers of Carcassonne or Aigues-Mortes with
the massive drum towers of the French castles or walled towns of the
fifteenth century, like those of the castle of Alençon (289) or of
the town of Saint-Malo (290). Later still, the flanking of the walls
of towns and castles shows a transition from the round tower to the
bastion; and we find massive projections like the Tour Gabriel at
Mont-Saint-Michel (291), which rise little, if at all, above the level
of the adjacent wall. The ultimate outcome of this transition is the
bastion pure and simple, flanking the low and solid earthen bank
with its reveting wall, as at Saint-Paul-du-Var, or, later, at our
own Berwick-on-Tweed.[299] A step further brings us to the scientific
fortification of the seventeenth century, to Lille and Arras, and those
magnificent fortresses which the progress of the nineteenth century has
already made of historical, rather than practical, interest.[300]
[Illustration: Gatehouse, Barbican, and Curtain wall of Town battered
by cannon-shot]
[Illustration: Alençon]
[Illustration: Saint-Malo; Grande porte]
[Illustration: Mont-St-Michel; Tour Gabriel]
With these modern developments we have no concern in this book; and in
these two concluding chapters we can trace merely the later history,
from a defensive point of view, of that type of fortification whose
advance we have hitherto pursued, and of the gradual amalgamation
of the medieval castle with the medieval dwelling-house. The old
distinction between the castle and the _burh_ still asserted itself.
During the greater part of the middle ages, from the Norman conquest to
the fourteenth century, the castle, the stronghold of the individual
lord, was the highest type of fortification, and the town, as at
Berwick in the reign of Edward I., or at Conway or Carnarvon, was, when
walled, little more than an appendage or outer ward to the castle. With
the introduction of fire-arms, the town began once more to take its
place in the van of the defence. Warfare, from the time of the wars
of Edward III. in France, and even earlier, ceased to be an affair
of sieges of castles. Battles were fought more and more in the open
field, and the reduction of the fortified town, not of strongholds
of individuals, became the chief object of campaigns. The castle,
relegated to a secondary place, developed more and more on the lines of
the dwelling-house; and, finally, as the castle disappeared, the town
with its citadel became all-important as the object of attack and the
base of operations. In brief, the steps in the history of fortification
after the Conquest are these. The timber defences of the Saxon _burh_
became of secondary importance to the timber defences of the Norman
castle. These were subordinated to the keep, the symbol of the dominion
of the feudal lord. The keep reached its climax in the stone tower. At
this point the revulsion began. The strengthening of the stone curtain
made the keep obsolete; and, finally, the perfection of the curtain
of the castle once attained, military science applied itself to the
strengthening of the wall of the town, until, aided by social changes
and scientific improvements, the castle itself became altogether
unnecessary.
[Illustration: NEWCASTLE: town wall]
[Illustration: SOUTHAMPTON: town wall]
The principles of defence of the walled town are those of the castle;
and hitherto we have drawn illustrations from both with little
discrimination. In both cases the same methods of attack are provided
against by the use of the same means. But it must be remembered that
the area of the town is larger than that of the castle, and that
while, in the castle, the bailey is the common muster-ground from
which every part of the curtain can be easily reached, there can be
no such open space enclosed by the walls of a large inhabited town or
city. Thus, while the market-place, in or near the centre of the town,
would serve as a general rallying-ground,[301] it was necessary also
to keep a clear space at the foot of the inner side of the walls, so
that free communication between every part might be preserved. From the
continuous lane which was thus formed between the wall and the houses
of the town, and was crossed at intervals by the main thoroughfares
leading to the gates, access was gained to the rear of the flanking
towers, and to the stairs by which, from time to time, the rampart-walk
was reached. Most towns which have been walled retain traces of this
arrangement. At Southampton the _pomerium_,[302] as this clear space
is called in medieval documents, survives on the east side of the
town in the lane still known as “Back of the Walls.” At Carnarvon it
is nearly entire, except on the west side of the town. At Newcastle
(293) it remains in a very perfect state on the north-west side of the
enclosure, where the walls and their intermediate turrets are also
fairly perfect; and it can be traced in a paved lane on the west side,
where the walls are gone.[303] Nearly the whole extent of the inner
city walls of Bristol, of which little remains, can be easily traced
by the survival of the _pomerium_ in a series of curved lanes. The line
of the east wall of Northampton can be recovered in the same way; and
although, as at York, modern encroachments have in many places removed
the _pomerium_, it usually survived to mark the site of town walls,
even long after those walls had been destroyed.
[Illustration: Conway; Porth Isaf]
During the epoch at which fortification reached its highest point, the
wall of a town was systematically flanked by towers, which, as we have
seen at Conway and Avignon, were left open upon the side next the town.
Gates were made in the wall, where main roads approached the place.
Thus the gates of Coucy were three, admitting the roads from Laon,
Soissons, and Chauny. At Conway (256) there were three gates; but of
these one communicated merely with a quay, while another gave access to
the castle mill: the third or north-western gate alone was the direct
entrance to the promontory on which the town and castle were built. At
Chepstow, where the town also formed a _cul-de-sac_, there was only one
main gateway, at the north-west end of the town. The main gateway of
Carnarvon was on the east side of the town; while, opposite to it, in
the west wall, was a smaller gateway opening, like the Porth Isaf[304]
(295) at Conway, upon the quay. Not all towns, however, occupied
positions like Chepstow, Conway, and Carnarvon, where water takes so
large a share in the defence. Great centres of commerce like London and
York, towards which a number of roads converged, had many gates, not
counting the posterns in their walls. Four of the gates of York remain,
Micklegate bar on the south-west, through which the road from Tadcaster
entered the city, Walmgate bar on the south-east, admitting the road
from Beverley and Hull, Monk bar on the east, through which passed
the road from Scarborough, Bootham bar on the north, which was the
entrance from the direction of Thirsk and Easingwold. The gatehouses
are all rectangular structures, the plan and lower portions of which
are of the twelfth century, and recall the stone gatehouses of early
castles: the upper stages, however, are of the fourteenth century,
and have tall bartizans at the outer angles. The great Bargate at
Southampton, through which the road from the north entered the circuit
of the walls, is similarly a rectangular Norman gatehouse, enlarged and
supplied with flanking towers in the fourteenth century: the outer face
was further strengthened, within a century of these additions, by a
half-octagonal projection, the battlements of which were machicolated.
There was another gate on the east side of Southampton, which now has
disappeared. In the west wall the rectangular water-gate and a postern
remain; while, on the quay at the south-eastern angle of the walls,
there is another gate, covered by a long spur-work which projects
from the wall at this point and crossed the town-ditch. For smaller
gatehouses like the western gatehouses of Carnarvon and Southampton,
the old rectangular form was sufficient; but the principal entries of
towns needed effective flanking. As a rule, town gatehouses of the
Edwardian period and the fourteenth century generally were flanked
by round towers at the outer angles, like those at Conway (295),
Winchelsea, or the West gate at Canterbury. In the fifteenth century,
the warlike character of the defences of English towns was considerably
lessened. The Stonebow or southern gatehouse at Lincoln, a long
rectangular building with slender angle turrets of no great projection,
had no special provisions for defence beyond the gates by which it was
closed. Here and there, when the need of military defence ceased to
exist, churches were built upon the walls and gateways of towns. Thus
above the St John’s gate of Bristol, on the south side of the city,
rise the tower and spire which were common to the churches of St John
the Baptist and St Lawrence; while churches were built close to or
immediately above the east and west gates of Warwick.
[Illustration: Monmouth; Gatehouse on Monnow bridge]
Where one of the main approaches to a town crossed a river, the defence
of the passage was of course necessary. In the case of the St John’s
gate of Bristol, already mentioned, the course of the narrow river
Frome, on which it opened, was defended by an additional wall on the
other side of the stream; and in this wall, covering St John’s gate,
was the strongly fortified Frome gate. The case of York, where the
river nearly bisects the walled enclosure, is most unusual. In other
instances, the town was confined to one side of the stream, and the
approach from the river was protected by a barbican, which could take
the form either of an outer defence to the gateway itself, or of a
_tête-du-pont_ on the opposite side of the stream, or of a fortified
passage across the bridge. Of barbicans in general much has been
said already; and we have seen at York and Tenby something of town
barbicans, while in the Porte de Laon at Coucy, we have had an instance
of a barbican acting as a _tête-du-pont_ on the further side of a town
ditch. The arrangement of the south-western approach to Kenilworth
castle is a good instance of the combination, in castle fortification,
of _tête-du-pont_, fortified causeway, and gatehouse with barbican.
Fortified bridges were not uncommon in the middle ages, but those which
remain are few. The finest example of all is the fourteenth-century
Pont Valentré at Cahors (Lot), a noble bridge of six lofty pointed
arches, divided by piers which are supplied with the usual triangular
spurs or cut-waters. At each end of the bridge is a massive rectangular
gateway tower, battlemented, with pyramidal roofs, and machicolated
galleries below the battlements; while in the middle of the passage is
a third tower, the ground-floor of which was gated and portcullised.
The brick bridge, called the Pont des Consuls, at Montauban
(Tarn-et-Garonne), was somewhat similarly defended. Examples from
other countries are the thirteenth-century covered bridge at Tournai,
the bridge of Alcantarà at Toledo, and the bridge of Prague, which
was defended about the middle of the fourteenth century with a tall
rectangular gate-tower at one end, and a gateway, flanked by towers of
unequal size, at the other. In England two small examples of fortified
bridges remain. Upon the bridge at Monmouth (297) is a gatehouse with a
machicolated battlement and a gateway which was closed by a portcullis:
this stood well in advance of the Bridge gate of the town, which was
at a little distance from the stream. At Warkworth, on the side of the
bridge next the town, is a plain rectangular gatehouse, the arch and
ground-floor of which remain intact. The triangular patch of land,
south of the Coquet, on which Warkworth is built, was well defended on
two sides by the river, and on the third side by the castle, and the
gatehouse at the bridge was its only stone fortification.
[Illustration: WELLS: gatehouse of bishop’s palace]
The progress of the art of defence under Edward I. was accompanied
by the enclosure within defensive walls of areas and houses not
originally intended for military purposes. Disputes between the
cathedral priory and the citizens of Norwich led to the enclosure of
the monastery within a fortified precinct:[305] the royal licence for
the construction of the water-gate bears date 27th July 1276.[306] On
8th May 1285, the dean and chapter of Lincoln obtained their first
licence for the enclosure of their precinct with a wall 12 feet
high;[307] and ten days later a similar licence was issued to the
dean and chapter of York.[308] On 10th June the dean and chapter of
St Paul’s,[309] and on 1st January following the dean and chapter of
Exeter,[310] had letters patent to the same effect. Bishop Burnell
had licence to wall and crenellate the churchyard and close of Wells,
15th March 1285-6,[311] while he was busy building his strong house
at Acton Burnell. Licence to crenellate the priory of Tynemouth,
on its exposed site, was granted 5th September 1295.[312] Bishop
Walter Langton had licence to wall the close of Lichfield, 18th
April 1299.[313] Licence to the abbot and convent of Peterborough to
crenellate the gate of the abbey and two chambers lying between the
gate and the church was granted 18th July 1309.[314] At Lincoln, where
a large portion of the close walls may still be seen, there was some
delay in building. Two licences, confirming the letters patent of
1285, were granted by Edward II. in one year.[315] On 6th December
1318, the licence was again renewed: the wall might be raised to a
greater height than 12 feet, and might be crenellated and provided
with crenellated turrets.[316] Further, on 28th September 1329, Bishop
Burghersh received letters patent, permitting him, in the most liberal
terms, to “repair, raise, crenellate, and turrellate” the walls of the
bishop’s palace.[317] Thus, in the reign of Edward III., there were no
less than three fortified enclosures within the circuit of the walls
of Lincoln—the castle, the close round the cathedral, and the bishop’s
palace. To-day, as we stand in the open space at the head of the Steep
Hill, to our left is the gatehouse of the castle; while to our right
is the Exchequer gate, the inner gatehouse of the close. This is a
lofty oblong building of three stages, with a large central archway,
and a smaller archway on each side for pedestrians. On the west or
outer side the face is plain, but on the eastern side it is broken by
two half-octagon turrets, containing vices. There was also an outer
gatehouse, some yards to the west.[318] The south-eastern gatehouse of
the close, known as Pottergate, still remains, a rectangular building
with an upper stage. At Wells, Salisbury,[319] and Norwich, the
_enceinte_ of the close may still easily be traced; while at Wells,
close by the gatehouse of the close, is the outer gatehouse of the
bishop’s palace. The palace itself retains its wet moat, and is still
approached by its drawbridge and through a formidable inner gatehouse,
which is flanked by two half-octagon towers (300).
[Illustration: Thornton Abbey; Gatehouse]
[Illustration: Thornton Abbey; Plan of gatehouse]
Of gatehouses of abbeys and priories, many still remain, some of which,
like those at Bridlington, Tewkesbury, and Whalley,[320] are of
great size, and were capable of offering defence, if necessary. But
by far the most important of monastic gatehouses is that at Thornton
abbey in Lincolnshire, a magnificent building of brick with stone
dressings (302). The licence to the abbot and convent to “build and
crenellate a new house over and beside their abbey gate” bears date
6th August 1382.[321] The gatehouse is an oblong of three lofty stages
with half-octagon turrets at the angles. The single archway on the
ground-floor is approached through a narrow barbican, set obliquely to
the building (331). On each side of the entrance is a bold half-octagon
buttress. The inner face of the entrance is flanked by half-octagon
turrets, in the southern of which is the vice which gives access to the
upper floors. There are no straight side-passages as in the Exchequer
gate at Lincoln, where the porters’ lodges are between the main and
lateral entrances; but at Thornton an archway was built in the south
wall of the central passage, and a diagonal side entrance constructed,
with a wide inner archway. The outer entrance (303) was protected by
a portcullis, and the lodges and turrets on either side had loops to
the field. On the first floor of the gatehouse is a spacious room,
which communicates by mural passages with the first floor of the
angle-turrets and with galleries in the adjacent walls. These are
all provided with loops, so that the approach to the monastery was
effectually commanded. This gatehouse is nearly contemporary with the
West gate of the city of Canterbury, which was begun by Archbishop
Sudbury about 1379;[322] but the Canterbury gateway takes the orthodox
form of a central passage recessed between two round towers, which are
bold projections from a rectangular plan, and its architecture cannot
compare with the moulded archways, elaborate ribbed vaulting, and
canopied niches of Thornton.[323]
[Illustration: STOKESAY: hall]
[Illustration: STOKESAY CASTLE from south-west]
Fortified closes, abbeys, and bishop’s palaces bring us back to the
castle, in the history of which is the epitome of the art of defence.
The concentric plan displayed the resources of the defenders in their
most scientific form, but the concentric plan, as we have seen, is
not very common, and its systematic use in English architecture was
practically confined to a single period. The site, as at Kidwelly,
did not always allow of the full extension of the outer ward, so as
completely to encircle the inner. As a rule, we find that the English
castle of the fourteenth century consists, like Richmond and Ludlow in
their earliest form, or like Carew or Manorbier, of a single bailey
without a keep. This enclosure is flanked by towers at adequate
intervals, and is entered through an imposing gatehouse between two
drum towers. No English castle of this type can compare with the
fourteenth-century castle of Saint-André at Villeneuve d’Avignon (307),
which kept watch upon the castle of the popes on the opposite bank of
the Rhône, or with the Breton castles of Fougères (250) and Vitré. The
castle of Caerlaverock (364), near Dumfries, not the famous castle
besieged by Edward I., but a castle founded in 1333 on a new site, is
a good instance of a simple plan, in which a single ward is surrounded
by a flanked curtain. The castle stands on low and marshy ground near
the Solway firth. An island, surrounded by a broad wet ditch, which,
in the rear of the castle, assumes the proportions of a small lake, is
enclosed by three sections of curtain forming an equilateral triangle.
A drum tower, low and of rather slender proportions, covered each angle
of the base;[324] while at the apex was a lofty gatehouse, flanked
by drum towers, and approached by a drawbridge. The interior of the
castle is somewhat confined, and the older domestic buildings were
much enlarged in the sixteenth century by a mansion, somewhat in the
style of the French Renaissance, which was built against the curtain to
the left hand of the entrance. The old hall occupied the base of the
triangle, while the kitchen offices were against the right-hand curtain.
[Illustration: Villeneuve d’Avignon]
Licences to crenellate mansions are common in the Patent rolls of the
Edwards and Richard II. In this way, many private dwelling-houses
reached the rank of castles, while still retaining strongly marked
features of their domestic object. The fortified house of Stokesay
(306) in Shropshire, which Lawrence of Ludlow had licence to
crenellate, 19th October 1290,[325] is a case in point, where the
moated manor-house, with its strong tower, well deserves the name
of castle. At the same time, many of the houses for which licences
of crenellation were granted were never more than manor-houses to
which were added fortifications of a limited kind. This was the case
with Henry Percy’s houses of Spofforth, Leconfield, and Petworth,
the licence for which bears date 14th October 1308.[326] Markenfield
hall in Yorkshire, for which a licence was granted 28th February
1309-10,[327] is still one of our most valuable examples of domestic,
as distinct from military, architecture. Such fortifications as these
houses had or still have were not designed to stand a siege, but to
ensure privacy and keep off casual marauders. Even in the sixteenth
century, dwelling-houses like Compton Wyniates in Warwickshire or
Tolleshunt Major in Essex were surrounded by a moat or simply by a wall.
Against these minor fortifications, however, we must put the cases
in which the process of crenellation definitely meant conversion
into a castle. Dunstanburgh, which Thomas of Lancaster had licence
to crenellate in 1315,[328] is a military stronghold of the most
pronounced type. Its exposed position upon the Northumbrian coast was
one reason of its strength: coast castles needed strong defences, and
we find that, during the period of the wars with France and later,
the fortification of castles like Dover was a constant method of
precaution against invasion.[329] Dunstanburgh has much in common with
the ordinary strong dwelling-houses of Northumberland. Its base-court
is a very large enclosure, occupying most of the area of the promontory
on which the castle is situated; while the actual castle consists of a
small and gloomy bailey. A wall, flanked at each end by a rectangular
tower, shut off the enclosed space from the mainland. In the wall
between the two towers rose the great gatehouse, which, standing in the
front of attack, gave access to the smaller ward, and contained upon
its upper floors the chief domestic apartments. Strongly defended as
this gatehouse was, with two drum towers of great size flanking the
entrance, the immediate access which it gave to the heart of the castle
was evidently a source of danger. At a later date, the entrance was
walled up, and a new gateway made in the curtain at a point near by.
The gatehouse thus was practically turned into a keep, and the process
which had taken place at Richmond towards the end of the twelfth
century was virtually repeated, with this exception, that the actual
fabric of the gatehouse remained, and was not superseded by a new form
of strong tower. Precisely the same thing happened at Llanstephan
in Carmarthenshire. This castle, one of the most imposing of Welsh
strongholds, stands on a steep and almost isolated hill, where the Towy
enters the Bristol Channel. It is divided by a cross-wall into a large
outer ward and an inner ward which occupies the top of the sloping
summit of the hill. The chief buildings were in the outer ward, and the
finest of them was the great gatehouse, situated at the head of the
landward slope of the hill, and concealed from the river by the convex
curve of the curtain and by a large tower at the eastern angle of the
enclosure. This gatehouse is of trapezoidal form: the gateway and its
drum towers front the field, but the building spreads inwards, and has
two much smaller round towers at its inner angles. It was undesirable,
however, that the gatehouse, which, from the military and domestic
point of view alike, was the principal building in the castle, should
be the point on which the besiegers could concentrate all their force.
Consequently, the gateway was blocked not long after it was built, and
a new entrance was made beside it in the curtain. The way into the
higher ward at Llanstephan was closed by a small rectangular gatehouse,
built near one end of the dividing curtain.
Thus at Dunstanburgh and Llanstephan, castles in which the system of
defence was not founded upon the concentric plan, but relied upon
the strength of an adequately flanked curtain, gatehouses which are
worthy of Caerphilly and Harlech, and stand upon the outer line of
defence,[330] reverted to the condition of keeps. The possible use of
a keep as an ultimate refuge never ceased altogether to have weight
with castle-builders. The Percys, after their purchase of Alnwick early
in the fourteenth century,[331] although there was ample room for a
large mansion in one or other of the wards, built their dwelling as
a cluster of walls and towers round a courtyard on the mount between
the two wards. Some part of the substructure, the gatehouse with its
octagonal flanking towers, and the curious triple-arched recess at
the head of the well (310), are the most that remains to us of the
early fourteenth-century mansion; but with these is incorporated
twelfth-century work, which shows that the Percys built their house
upon the lines of an older house upon the mount.[332] Thus the
dwelling-house at Alnwick is in reality a keep of unusual form, a
large building with flanking towers built upon a mount which has been
considerably levelled to allow of more room for the house and its
internal courtyard (115).
[Illustration: Alnwick Castle; Well-head]
[Illustration: RABY CASTLE, DURHAM
GROUND PLAN.]
The strong tower, representing the survival of the keep, is found in
another great northern castle of the fourteenth century, Raby, the
castle of the Nevilles, where in other respects the domestic element
is very prominent (311).[333] Raby, like Alnwick, is occupied to-day,
but no such drastic changes as have converted the house on the mount
at Alnwick into a comfortable modern residence were necessary here.
There is an outer gatehouse slightly in advance of the north angle of
the castle, which was surrounded by a moat and is nearly rectangular.
The buildings are clustered round a main courtyard, the entrance to
which is a gatehouse with a long vaulted passage behind it in the west
block of buildings. At either end of the west front are two massive
rectangular towers: Clifford’s tower, at the north end, is almost
detached, and covers the north angle immediately opposite the gateway.
The remaining tower, known as Bulmer’s tower, projects on five sides
from the south angle of the building, and is the strong tower or keep
of the castle. The kitchen, in the north block, is also contained
within a strong tower, which does not project, however, from the rest
of the buildings. But it was in the north of England that the keep
survived most persistently. Middleham castle received much alteration
at the hands of its Neville owners in the fourteenth century; but
the twelfth-century keep was retained as the central feature of the
enclosure. The rectangular keep of Knaresborough is entirely of the
fourteenth century: it stood between an outer and inner ward, and its
great peculiarity is that the only passage from one to the other was
through the first floor of the keep.[334]
[Illustration: BELSAY CASTLE]
The tradition of the rectangular tower, however, was systematically
preserved in the buildings known as pele-towers. These formed the
chief defensive structures of enclosures called “peles,” a word
derived from the Latin _pilum_ (a stake). The twelfth-century tower
of Bowes, a large and important rectangular tower which guarded the
pass over Stainmoor from the valley of the Eden to that of the Tees,
is an early instance of the pele-tower; and probably a large palisaded
enclosure or “barmkin” was attached to it. In the fourteenth century
we find large pele-towers like those at Belsay (313) or Chipchase,
or the great tower-house of East Gilling, the proportions of which
recall the rectangular keeps of a century and a half earlier. Belsay,
with its traceried two-light openings on the first floor, and large
bartizans corbelled out at the angles of its battlements, is the most
handsome building of its kind in the north of England. The ordinary
pele-tower, however, is of a rather later date, and the large majority
of Northumbrian examples are of the fifteenth, and now and then of
the sixteenth century.[335] Halton tower, near Aydon castle, and the
small tower in the corner of the churchyard at Corbridge,[336] are
well-known examples; while one of the most imposing specimens is the
oblong tower of the manor-house of the archbishops of York at Hexham.
The normal elevation was of three stories. The ground-floor, in which
was the doorway, was vaulted as a protection against fire; it may have
been used as a stable, and certainly was used as a store-room. The door
was of wood, but its outer face was protected by a heavy framework
of iron. The first floor, reached by a mural stair, was the main
living-room. The second floor was a sleeping-room; and the battlements
at the top were generally machicolated. Garde-robes are usually found
in these towers; but they can hardly be called comfortable residences,
and had all the disadvantages of the twelfth-century tower-keep,
without its roominess. They are found, not only in Northumberland, but
throughout the northern counties and the south of Scotland, while, in
the hill country of Derbyshire, the pele seems to have been a favourite
form of stronghold. The twelfth-century tower of Peak castle is one of
those examples which allies the pele-tower to the normal tower-keep;
while Haddon hall gradually developed from an enclosure which was
neither more nor less than a pele with a tower at one angle.[337]
In this connection a word should be said about the fortification of
churches. Ewenny priory church in Glamorgan, with its crenellated
central tower and transept, is our only important example of
fortified religious buildings such as were common in the centre and
south of France—the cathedral of Albi (Tarn), the churches of Royat
(Puy-de-Dôme) or Les-Saintes-Maries-sur-la-Mer (Bouches-du-Rhône).[338]
None of our abbeys is protected by a donjon, like that of Montmajour,
near Arles. There are, however, a certain number of churches, in
districts exposed to constant warfare, the architecture of which,
if not exactly military, was yet possibly constructed with a view
to defence. The massive structure of some twelfth-century towers,
like Melsonby in north Yorkshire, is probably due to the idea that
they could be converted into strongholds, in case of a raid from
the Scottish border. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
when Scotland was dreaded as a constant foe, the habit of giving
additional security to the church towers in this district was common.
Some otherwise simple church towers, as at Bolton-on-Swale and Danby
Wiske in north Yorkshire, have their lowest stage vaulted, probably
to minimise the danger of fire. The doorway to the tower-stair at
Bedale was defended by a portcullis, and there are a fireplace
and garde-robe upon the first floor. At Spennithorne, in the same
neighbourhood, the battlements of the tower borrowed an ornament from
military architecture, and are crowned with figures of “defenders.”
In border districts it is not unusual to find the ground-floor of the
tower roofed with a pointed barrel-vault, as at Whickham in county
Durham, where the church stands on a high hill near the confluence of
the Tyne and Derwent. This is a very general custom in South Wales,
where the towers are usually massive and unbuttressed, and stand upon
a battering plinth.[339] In Pembrokeshire a more slender type of tower
prevails, which usually batters upwards through its whole height: the
ground-floor is vaulted, and in many cases the whole church, or, at any
rate, the nave, is ceiled with a barrel-vault. It does not follow that
the object of this form of construction is defensive: lack of timber,
and the consequent employment of local stone for rubble vaulting, is
partly responsible for it. But in no part of the country are military
and ecclesiastical forms of architecture so closely allied. The
barrel-vaults of Monkton priory church and St Mary’s at Pembroke are
similar to those of the chapel and its substructure which occupy the
north-west corner of the inner ward of Pembroke castle: those of the
church at Manorbier have their counterparts in the vaults of the castle
chapel and the large room on its ground-floor.
If the pele-tower may be regarded as a direct survival of the
rectangular keep in a simplified form, it is probable that the
rectangular keep, with its angle turrets, also had a share in the
origin of a type of castle or strong house, which became common,
especially in the north of England, during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries.[340] The plan of this species of castle is a rectangle,
which, in the largest examples, as at Bolton in Wensleydale, has an
open courtyard in the centre; but its distinguishing feature is the
provision of four towers, each at an angle of the structure. Such
keeps as those of Colchester and Kenilworth, where the turrets are of
considerable size and projection, suggest this plan; and some of the
earliest examples, like Haughton on the north Tyne, the oldest parts of
which are of the thirteenth century, have little to distinguish them
from the ordinary rectangular keep. The angle-towers at Haughton are
of no great prominence; but, in the early fourteenth-century castle
of Langley, to the west of Hexham, they are a striking feature of the
building, and one is entirely devoted to a series of garde-robes,
arranged in three stories, with a common pit in the basement. A
building with a somewhat similar plan to these northern castles is the
manor-house or castle which Robert Burnell, bishop of Bath and Wells,
and chancellor of England under Edward I., built at Acton Burnell,
in Shropshire.[341] Here, however, the building is of a thoroughly
domestic type, with large two-light window-openings of great beauty,
which at once remove any suspicion as to its military character. The
castle of the Scropes at Bolton and that of the Nevilles at Sheriff
Hutton represent the highest development of this quadrangular plan.
The licence to crenellate Bolton was granted in 1379:[342] the licence
for Sheriff Hutton bears date 1382.[343] Both castles are large
buildings with a central courtyard, and in both the military ideal
was uppermost. Sheriff Hutton is now in a complete state of ruin, but
Bolton is fairly perfect; and from its structure one important fact
may be deduced. While the usual precautions for defence were carefully
preserved, and the outer openings in the walls interfered little with
the general solidity of structure, the domestic buildings round the
courtyard formed part and parcel of the fabric itself. They were not
merely built up against or within the curtain, but the curtain was
actually their outer wall, and not simply their defensive covering. In
fact, the manor-house in these cases was not a separate building within
the enclosure of the castle; but the castle was also the manor-house.
The same combination of military with domestic aims is noticeable in
the contemporary castle of Raby (1378), of which the plan, already
described, approximates irregularly to the type.[344] Castles akin
to Bolton and Sheriff Hutton are Lumley, the licence for which was
granted in 1392,[345] and Chillingham, the angle-towers of which are
of a much earlier date than is usual in castles of this plan.[346]
At Chillingham the medieval work is somewhat obscured by alterations
made in the seventeenth century, but the original plan is retained.
Survivals of the quadrangular plan may be traced in some of the great
manor-houses of the early Renaissance period. It is not difficult to
detect in the plan of Hardwick hall (1587), while the ground-plan
of Wollaton hall (1580) is probably derived from a similar source.
Smaller houses like Barlborough hall, near Sheffield, or Wootton lodge,
near Ashbourne, have a kinship with it, although in these cases, and
especially in the first, the elevation is more tower-like than is usual
in medieval buildings of the type. It is needless to say that these
Renaissance buildings are without any military character.
The traditional form of the rectangular keep was also responsible, no
doubt, for the great tower-house which formed the principal feature,
and is now the only portion left, of the castle of Tattershall in
Lincolnshire. The discussion of this building belongs more properly
to the last chapter of this book, for its general construction and
architectural features are those of an age in which the military
architecture of the middle ages was already little more than a
survival. This age of transition begins in the last quarter of the
fourteenth century; and, as already pointed out, castles like Bolton
and Raby clearly show its influence. During the later half of the
fourteenth and the fifteenth century, outside the north of England, it
is rare to find a castle which actually deserves the name. The large
private residence, with a certain amount of defensive precautions,
became increasingly common; and, where alterations were made to
existing castles, they were generally entirely in the direction of
domestic comfort.
[Illustration: WARWICK: Guy’s tower]
[Illustration: Warwick Castle; Cæsar’s tower]
There are, however, a few striking exceptions which belong to the later
part of the fourteenth century. The two polygonal towers, Guy’s tower
(319) and Cæsar’s tower (321), which cover the angles of the eastern
curtain at Warwick and flank the gatehouse with its barbican, are cases
in point. Few castles show features of the military architecture of
all periods to such advantage. The plan is that of an early Norman
mount-and-bailey castle, which has in course of time been surrounded
with a stone curtain;[347] while a magnificent residence, in the
main a building of the fourteenth century, has grown up on the south
side of the bailey next the river.[348] The most commanding military
features, however, are the towers just mentioned, 128 and 147 feet high
respectively. The whole character of these towers is French rather
than English. Their great height may be contrasted with that of the
contemporary rectangular towers at Raby, the loftiest of which is only
81 feet high, and depends for its defence almost entirely upon the
thickness of its walls. The nearest parallel to the Warwick towers, on
the other hand, is such a building as the fifteenth-century Tour Talbot
at Falaise, a lofty cylindrical tower built at an angle of the donjon,
as is generally stated, during the English occupation of northern
France.[349] The chief characteristics of the towers at Warwick are the
bold corbelling out of their parapets, with a row of machicolations,
and the provision of a central turret, rising some distance above the
level of the rampart-walk—a feature common in France, but most unusual
in England.[350] The vaulting of both towers throughout is also a
French feature; and in every respect they bear traces of an influence
which, beginning in the cylindrical donjons of Philip Augustus’ castles
and of Coucy, survived to a late date in France, and may have affected
English military work in that country, but had little result in England
itself. While, throughout the fifteenth century, the French castle
maintained its character as a stronghold, and even kept that character
when Renaissance influence was strong in that country, the military
character of the English castle steadily diminished. The wars of the
Roses were a succession of battles in open field, in which castles and
walled towns played very little part. And while the military character
of Warwick continued to be emphasised during the period of transition,
the neighbouring castle of Kenilworth, in common with most English
castles, was transformed, during the same period, from a stronghold
into a palace.
[Illustration: HURSTMONCEAUX: gatehouse]
[Illustration: BODIAM: north front and gatehouse]
The most imposing of our later castles, which may be considered
primarily as military buildings, is Bodiam in Sussex (323). On 21st
October 1385, Sir Edward Dalyngrugge had licence to crenellate his
manor of Bodiam “by the sea,” and “to make a castle thereof in defence
of the adjacent country against the king’s enemies.”[351] The main
object of this licence was evidently to provide against a French
attack upon the ports of Rye and Winchelsea, at the mouth of the
Rother: in the following March, Sir Edward was named first upon the
commission appointed by letters patent to fortify and wall the town of
Rye.[352] Bodiam stands upon the left bank of the Rother, some miles
above Rye, and commands from its site, at some little height above the
valley, a long stretch of marsh in the direction of the mouth of the
river. The walls of the castle descend sheer into a lake, formed by the
damming up of a stream. The castle is simply a rectangular enclosure
surrounded by a lofty curtain. Each angle is capped by a cylindrical
tower, and in the middle of each face is a rectangular tower: the great
gatehouse, however, in the north face, has two rectangular towers, one
on each side of the entrance. The tower in the centre of the opposite
face is the lesser gatehouse of the castle. The plan bears a striking
analogy to that of the castle of Villandraut (Gironde), built about
1250: Nunney in Somerset (1373) and Shirburn in Oxfordshire (1377)
are coeval English examples. The interior is surrounded by domestic
buildings. Against the south curtain were the hall and kitchen: the
screens at the west end of the hall formed a passage to the lesser
gateway. The wall dividing the screens from the kitchen still remains,
with the three doorways which gave access to the kitchen, pantry,
and buttery (326). The private apartments were returned along the
east curtain, and at their north end was the chapel, which had the
usual arrangement of a western gallery, entered from the chambers on
the first floor of this range of building. Servants’ quarters and
barracks occupied the west side of the enclosure. All the buildings
were plentifully supplied with garde-robes in the towers; and the upper
portion of the south-west tower was arranged as a pigeon-house.
In spite of the ample space given to the domestic buildings, the
defensive nature of the works at Bodiam is very clearly apparent, not
only in the strength of the walls, the height of which (40 feet) is
equal to the height of the walls at Harlech, but in the provision made
for the defence of the approaches. The main gateway was protected by
a barbican, which occupied a small island in the lake, some 54 feet
in front of the gatehouse. A causeway, which is in part, at any rate,
original, connected the gateway with the barbican; but it is probable
that this had a bridge at one or both ends. A bridge, spanning a gap
of 6 feet, connected the outer end of the barbican with an octagonal
island in the middle of the broad moat. The straight causeway by which
this island is now reached from the mainland does not represent the
original approach; but a longer and more tortuous approach was planned
from a pier set against the west bank of the moat and joined, probably
by a double drawbridge, to the octagonal island, which thus stood at
a point where the road, commanded throughout by the curtain and its
flanking towers, turned at a right angle towards the north gatehouse
of the castle. The approach to the smaller or south gate has now
disappeared; but two walls project into the moat on each side of the
entrance, and against the south bank of the moat remains the pier on
which the outer drawbridge dropped.
[Illustration: Bodiam Castle; Courtyard]
The labour and pains which were taken to strengthen this castle are
shown by the revetting of the earthwork, not only of the main island,
but also of the lesser islands in the moat, and of portions of the
causeways of approach. The isolation of the castle in the middle of a
lake may have been suggested by the plan adopted, at a much earlier
date, at Leeds in Kent. The great barbican of Leeds, however, divided
by wet ditches into three separate parts, forms the approach to the
main bridge across the moat. It is, in fact, the _tête-du-pont_ of the
castle, and does not occupy a separate island, as at Bodiam, between
the mainland and the gateway.
The gatehouse of Bodiam is an imposing building, and the
castle-builders, from the days of Edward I. onwards, paid an attention
to their gatehouses almost equal to that which the late Norman builders
had given to their tower-keeps.[353] To the same twenty-five years
within which Bodiam was built and the two great towers at Warwick
were completed, belongs the greatest of English gatehouses, that of
the castle of Lancaster. It is known to have been built as late as
about 1405; for the arms of Henry V. as prince of Wales appear on a
shield above the gateway. It is therefore one of the latest military
works in the castles of the duchy, and the last of the series of
gatehouses which owed their origin to lords of the house of Lancaster,
and includes the noble structures at Dunstanburgh, Tutbury, and the
great tower between the wards at Knaresborough. The castle to which
it was added was surrounded by a curtain, largely of twelfth-century
date,[354] and contained a tower-keep and domestic buildings which
appear to have been in the main of the thirteenth century. Situated
at the head of a very steep hill, and flanked by two huge octagonal
towers, this gatehouse is the perfection of the type which is seen,
with more slender flanking towers, at Bothal and in the keep of
Alnwick. The window openings towards the field are few and small: the
battlements are boldly corbelled out, and machicolations of large size
are left between them and the wall. In a corner of each of the flanking
towers rises a turret, the interior of which apparently served as a
magazine for ammunition. The interior of this gatehouse, although the
space is ample, is fully in keeping with its sombre exterior. Each of
the two upper floors contains three rooms, one in the central block of
the gatehouse, the others in the towers at the sides. These rooms are
large and lofty, and their original wooden ceilings still retain traces
of colour; but they are gloomy and ill-lighted to the last degree. The
apartments on the first floor communicate directly with one another,
but those on the second floor are entered from an outer passage, which
passes between them and the inner or west wall of the gatehouse. The
guard-rooms on the ground-floor are approached in the usual way, by
doorways near the inner entrance. The main stair is a vice in the
south-west corner of building.
In the important additions made to the castle of Warkworth about 1400,
the compromise attained between the requirements of defence and comfort
is very striking. The plan of this castle, throughout its history, like
the plan of Warwick, remained that of the original mount-and-bailey
fortress. We have noticed already the addition of the stone curtain to
the bailey, and the building of a large mansion against its western
and southern faces. It is probable that a shell-keep was added to the
mount, when the stone curtain was made; for the foundations of the
present strong house on the mount are of masonry of an earlier and
rougher character than the elaborately dressed stonework of the house
itself. This house (221), which combines the features of keep and
private residence in a most unusual way, appears to have been built
by the first earl of Northumberland, who died in 1407.[355] The shape
is that of a square with chamfered angles; but from the centre of
each face projects a bold half-octagon, so that the ground-plan is a
Greek cross with short arms and a large central block. The elevation
consists of a basement and three floors. The basement contains tanks
and a vault with a corbelled roof, which was certainly a prison, and
bears a strong likeness to a similar vault in the inner gatehouse at
Alnwick. There is no basement stair, communication with the vaults
being through trap-doors in the floor above. On this floor are a number
of dark vaulted store-rooms, one of which was the wine-cellar, and
has its own stair to the daïs end of the hall on the floor above. The
two upper floors are comparatively cheerful and well lighted: a shaft
in the centre of the building gave light to the inner passage between
the hall and kitchen. The main stair is in the south half-octagon,
the chief doorway being in the west face of this projection, on the
first floor. From the lobby on the second floor, at the head of the
stair, two doorways open. That on the right leads into the hall, which
occupies the south-east angle of the central block, and is of the
full height of the two upper floors. That on the left leads to the
servants’ quarters and the kitchens, which occupied the western part
of the second floor, and communicated by separate doorways with the
hall and chapel. The great kitchen filled the north-west angle of the
central block, and, like the hall, was two stories in height. The north
half-octagon and the north-east angle of the main block adjacent to it,
were divided into two floors. The lower room in the half-octagon was
probably the private room of the master of the house, communicating
with the lower room in the main block, which was probably the common
room of his immediate retinue. Similarly, upon the upper floor were a
ladies’ bower and a separate room for the countess of Northumberland’s
own use. Between the private apartments and the hall, occupying the
centre of the east side of the main block and the half-octagon beyond,
was the chapel. The chancel, in the half-octagon, was the height of
both floors; but the western part of the chapel was in two floors, the
upper forming a gallery, with a doorway from the ladies’ bower. From
the south-east corner of this gallery, another doorway opened upon a
narrow stone gallery, formed by the internal thickening of the lower
part of the east wall of the hall: this may have served the purpose of
a minstrels’ gallery, or may have been used by the ladies of the house,
when they wished to watch the festivities below. The wall beneath this
gallery is pierced by a long vestry or priest’s chamber, opening out
of the south wall of the chapel, and built with a rising floor, in
order to give head-way to the stair from the wine-cellar below. The
ground-floor of the chapel also communicated with the hall and the
men’s apartments. In addition to the rooms already mentioned, there
were third-floor rooms in the south-west angle of the main block and
in the western half-octagon, which communicated with the gallery of
the chapel. The area covered is not large, but the ingenuity of the
plan is remarkable; and the disposition of the various apartments must
have required an amount of thought and skill, which no other medieval
dwelling-house shows in so high a degree.
[Illustration: RAGLAN CASTLE]
[Illustration: THORNTON ABBEY: gatehouse and barbican]
While the lower portions of the walls of the strong house at Warkworth
are of great solidity and strength, the upper floors are lighted by
large traceried window-openings, and the tall oblong windows of the
hall, and those of the chancel of the chapel, convey no idea of the
military purpose of the building. It is a curious fact that, in spite
of the pains which were evidently expended upon this tower-house, the
period of its employment as a residence seems to have been unusually
short. The various lords of Warkworth were never satisfied with one
residence for any length of time; and there is evidence that when
John, duke of Bedford, was sent by his father, Henry IV., to pacify
the north after Northumberland’s rebellion, he took up his quarters at
Warkworth in the gatehouse. Later in the fifteenth century, the old
mansion, already described, in the bailey, was restored and altered:
a porch-tower was made at the north-east end of the hall, and a
stair-turret intruded in the south-east angle. The dwelling-house,
which had been built within the castle about 1200, was converted,
in fact, into a stately mansion; and the house on the mount was
practically abandoned. No better instance could be found of the gradual
weakening of the military ideal in favour of domestic comfort. All the
castles of the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are examples
of this in some degree. At Warwick the domestic buildings are at
least of equal importance with the defences. The dwelling-house at
Ludlow gradually increased in size and splendour, while nothing was
added to its military defences. Even the outer walls of Bolton, a
strong and well-guarded castle, are pierced with windows which admit
a considerable amount of light. Bodiam and Raglan (331), relying on
the great breadth of their moats, have large outward window openings.
In all these instances, however, the dwelling-house, even at Raglan,
is still regarded as a house within a castle. In the planning of the
tower house at Warkworth the military and domestic ideals were both
present to the minds of the builders. Neither can be said to prevail:
the building was equally useful as house and castle. The hall at
Warkworth, on the other hand, when it was rebuilt, was treated with
an architectural splendour quite apart from any idea of its position
within the walls of a place of defence. Those walls had become
obsolete, and the house was the one object present to the aims of the
restorers. A step further was taken at Hurstmonceaux (323), where the
great brick house has the semblance of a castle, but little of its
reality. At Carew in Pembrokeshire, three stages in the development
of the domestic ideal as applied to military architecture can be
studied in close proximity. On the east side of the ward are the
earlier domestic apartments, somewhat cramped and gloomy, with outer
windows which, wherever they occur, as in the chapel (248) and adjacent
rooms, admit daylight very faintly. On the west side is the great hall
built in the fifteenth century by Rhys ap Thomas, with its imposing
porch-tower and entrance stair, a large and amply lighted room. On the
north are the additions made in the sixteenth century by Sir John
Perrott. The eastern rooms are those of a house within a castle: the
western hall is that of a house which, although military considerations
have had no part in its planning, is still confined within an earlier
curtain. On the north side, however, the curtain has been broken
through, and a series of apartments has been built out beyond its
limits, proclaiming, with their long mullioned windows piercing the
walls from floor to roof, that the day of castles is over, and that the
dwelling-house has the field to itself.