THE AGE OF TRANSITION: THE FORTIFIED DWELLING-HOUSE
Some account has now been given of the change which came over the
English castle in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The life
of the feudal warrior in his stronghold gradually became the life of
the country gentleman in a house whose fortification, such as it was,
was of a merely precautionary character. It now remains for us to say
something of those domestic buildings which are the principal feature
of the English castles of the later middle ages, and of those houses
which, while preserving the name and to some extent the appearance of
castles, were designed primarily as dwelling-houses. In these examples
the main lines of the normal dwelling-house plan, which have already
been described, were preserved. The hall still formed the nucleus of
the buildings and the centre of the life of the household: the kitchen,
buttery, and pantry still took their place at the end of the hall next
the screens, while the two-storied block, with the great chamber on
the first floor, was found at the other end behind the dais. But, with
the increase of comfort and splendour, came the desire for more space
and greater privacy. The great hall at Ludlow (96), reconstructed in
the early part of the fourteenth century, had a first-floor chamber
at either end of the hall; and the additions made to these domestic
buildings in the fifteenth century considerably increased the number
of private apartments in a house which was already of great size. At
Manorbier (208) the whole dwelling-house was enlarged and the number
of rooms increased by a reconstruction in the second half of the
thirteenth century. The dwelling-house in the inner ward of Conway,
the hall and its adjacent rooms at Caerphilly, were planned on a more
liberal scale than had been thought necessary in the castles of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries. The essentially military character,
however, of the Edwardian castle cramped the free development of
domestic buildings within the precinct; and it was not until the middle
of the fourteenth century that the plan of the dwelling-house in the
castle had reached the stage at which it began to be considered for its
own sake, apart from the curtain wall which protected it.
The development of the private mansion within the castle is well
illustrated at Porchester. The outer defences of the castle, the
twelfth-century great tower, the curtain of the inner ward, the
fourteenth-century barbican, were all kept under repair; for the French
wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries made the defence of
Portsmouth harbour a desirable factor in English strategy, and the
considerations which prompted the building of Bodiam also demanded that
the military character of Porchester castle should be preserved. The
barbican, however, was the last important addition to the defences. The
later work included the remodelling of the twelfth-century hall against
the south curtain.[356] This was in great part rebuilt, the hall on the
first floor being supplied with large traceried windows towards the
interior of the bailey: late in the fifteenth century, a porch with
an upper floor was added at the end next the screens. Along the west
side of the inner ward, between the great hall and the keep, a smaller
hall was added late in the fourteenth century, the towers upon the east
curtain were converted to domestic purposes, and a range of buildings
was eventually added upon this side of the bailey (97).
[Illustration: Carew Castle; Entrance to great hall]
Externally, Porchester castle is simply a fortress: internally, the
domestic buildings rivet the attention, and only the imposing mass of
the keep (131) reminds us of the military origin of the stronghold.
Similarly, in the Cornish castle of Restormel, where the one ward
is nearly circular in shape, and is surrounded by a deep ditch, the
whole interior face of the curtain is covered by a series of domestic
buildings, with partition walls radiating from the centre of the plan.
The position of the hall, kitchen, and great chamber can easily be
traced: the chapel was on the east side of the ward, separated from the
hall by the great chamber, and the chancel, with a substructure, formed
a rectangular projection from the curtain at this point. Here, too,
as at Porchester, Ludlow, or Manorbier, the dwelling-house was masked
by the fortress. But there are also castles in which the importance
of the dwelling-house, as time went on, began to overshadow its
military surroundings. At Tutbury the strong position of the castle, an
entrenched stronghold which was probably ditched about for the first
time long before the Conquest, the high mound raised by the Norman
founder of the castle, and the fine fourteenth-century gatehouse[357]
(237), approached by an ascent which was commanded by the whole length
of the eastern curtain, strike the visitor far less than the remains of
the great hall and its adjacent chambers. This beautiful work, often
attributed, like so much else in castles of the duchy of Lancaster,
to John of Gaunt, is probably of the middle of the fifteenth century:
there is a remarkable similarity between the details of the stonework
here and at Wingfield, a house the date of which is well known to be
somewhat later than 1441. As a whole, the castles which, like Tutbury,
became merged in the possessions of the house of Lancaster, and came
to the Crown on the accession of Henry IV., furnish us with some of
the best examples of castle dwelling-houses on a palatial scale. At
Pontefract, for example, a range of buildings, known later as John
of Gaunt’s buildings, rose upon the site of the eastern mound. The
drawings of Pontefract and of Melbourne in Derbyshire, preserved
among the duchy records, show us castles which have utterly changed
their aspect, and have become palaces. Nowhere, however, is this more
noticeable to-day than at Kenilworth, where the erection of the great
hall may be fairly attributed to John of Gaunt.[358] The whole of the
north and part of the west side of the inner ward, on the summit of
the raised ground on which the castle stands, are covered by a splendid
series of late fourteenth-century buildings, chief among them the hall,
probably the finest apartment of its date in England, Westminster hall
alone excepted (337). Later still, just as at Carew, the transformation
of the stronghold was completed by the addition, in Henry VIII.’s time,
of apartments, which have now disappeared, along the south side of the
ward; and, in the reign of Elizabeth, the south-west angle was filled
by a tall block of buildings erected by the earl of Leicester.
[Illustration: Kenilworth Castle; Entrance to hall]
One may compare the growth of the domestic element at Kenilworth
with that of the French château of Blois, where the military aspect
of the building was obliterated by degrees. To the great hall in the
north-east corner of the castle bailey[359] were added, first, the
buildings of Charles of Orléans (1440-65) on the west face.[360] Then
came the late Gothic work, on the east, of Louis XII. (1498-1502). In
the sixteenth century the hall was joined to Charles of Orléans’ block
by the Renaissance pile of building raised under Francis I. and Henry
II. The castle by this time had become a palace, and the transformation
was completed in the seventeenth century (1635) by the erection of the
tall range of Palladian buildings in the north-west angle, which is the
most prominent feature in the northern view of the château.[361] A
similar work of transformation took place at Amboise under Louis XII.
and Francis I. In both these instances, however, the chief changes
were made at a period when the Renaissance was exercising a powerful
influence on French life and thought. As a rule, French castles of
the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, while increasing in
splendour, preserved much of the character of the feudal stronghold.
The two splendid halls and the northern range of buildings at Coucy,
built by Enguerrand VII., lord of Coucy, in the last quarter of the
fourteenth century, were added without detriment to the strength of
the fortress; and to this same period belongs the talus covering the
spring at the foot of the donjon curtain, a work of purely military
character.[362] In the châteaux of Méhun-sur-Yèvre (Cher), built by
John, duke of Berry, between 1370 and 1385, and Pierrefonds (Oise),
built by Louis, duke of Orléans, between 1390 and 1420, the splendour
of the palace was equally balanced by the strength of the fortress.
In tracing the development of the castle until it is merged in the
manor-house, we must not forget that the fortified dwelling-house was
not merely the creation of an age which was ceasing to build castles.
Many of the strongholds to which allusion has been made, especially
in the north and west of England, were dwelling-houses rather than
castles. Acton Burnell, Aydon, Markenfield, Haughton, or those
houses which, like Mortham in Yorkshire or Yanwath in Westmorland,
have pele-towers attached to them, whether as part of their original
equipment or as a later addition, are all fabrics in which military
precautions had to be taken, but the everyday needs of the occupants
were first considered. A castle is a military post which may include
one or more dwelling-houses within its walls: the house which may
be turned into a castle, when occasion requires, is on a different
footing. Bishops’ palaces, such as Auckland, Cawood, Wells, or Lincoln,
are examples of the large manor-house in which fortification was
merely a measure of precaution. The splendid houses of the bishops of
St David’s are not the least remarkable of the remains of medieval
architecture, half-domestic, half-military, which are common in
south-west Wales. Bishop Henry Gower (1328-47) developed at Swansea
castle, and at his manor-houses of Lamphey and St David’s, a type of
architecture which deserves mention on account of its originality. The
three houses mentioned are somewhat different from each other.
[Illustration: HADDON: upper courtyard and tower]
[Illustration: Lamphey Palace]
Swansea castle is a large block of building, obviously military in
character, and in general appearance not unlike the earlier castle
which so nobly commands the town of Haverfordwest. Bishop Gower’s
hall at Lamphey is a plain building, the chief architectural feature
of which is the great cellar on the ground-floor: this was covered by
a pointed barrel-vault, originally strengthened by heavy transverse
ribs, most of which have fallen away. The vast palace of St David’s,
on the other hand, displays in all its details, and especially in the
ogee-headed doorway of the porch of its larger hall, a sumptuousness
of decoration which is not often found in the domestic architecture of
the time. The great hall on the west side of the courtyard, the smaller
hall and private apartments on the south side, the vaulted cellars
which occupy the whole of the basement in each range, are planned upon
a scale equal to that of a castle of first-rate size. But, although
these buildings differ so much in general character, they have a common
feature in the parapet, pierced with a row of wide pointed arches,
and corbelled out above the top of the walls. Comparatively rough and
coarse at Swansea and Lamphey (341), this parapet at St David’s is
treated with much delicacy, and the jambs of the arches are furnished
with slender shafting. Whether there was any thought of its employment
in war is a doubtful point; although it might be useful in such a
case, it was probably intended in the first instance merely as an
ornament. The corbelling is very slight, without machicolation. The
whole design of the parapet is a curious feature which deserves special
notice. There is another and later hall at Lamphey, west of the earlier
building; and adjoining this on the north is the handsome chapel, built
by Bishop Vaughan early in the sixteenth century. The gatehouse at
Llawhaden, another manor of the bishops of St David’s, appears to be
of the fifteenth century, and, with its flanking towers, rounded to
the field, has a more distinctly warlike appearance than anything at
Lamphey or St David’s.
[Illustration: HADDON: chapel]
We may now take a few typical examples which illustrate the change
from the fortified residence to the large dwelling-house, which
was accomplished by the beginning of the sixteenth century. At a
comparatively early date, a divorce between military and domestic
architecture is manifest in such a house as Stokesay (306). Here the
hall and its adjacent buildings are those of a private house pure
and simple; and the defensive portion of the plan is confined to the
polygonal tower at the south end of the range of buildings, which,
in time of war, could be used as a separate stronghold, and was
ingeniously planned and well lighted.[363] But at Stokesay (207) the
tower appears to be a somewhat later addition to a thirteenth-century
dwelling-house. Defensive precautions are added. Of the opposite case,
in which they disappear, Haddon hall (340), the most attractive and
most thoroughly preserved of English medieval houses, is the best
example. In its earliest state, it appears to have been a mere pele,
occupying a portion of its present site, with a tower at its north-east
and highest corner. The chapel (343), in which large portions of
twelfth-century work still remain, was probably built outside the
palisade, as the parochial chapel of the hamlet of Nether Haddon.
As time went on, the fortified enclosure enlarged its boundaries. A
wall was built round it, and the chapel was taken into the line of
circumference.[364] In the fourteenth century the present hall was
built between the upper and lower courts.[365] At its north end were
the screens, forming the communication between the two courts, with
the pantry, buttery, and passage to the kitchen leading directly out
of them. At the south end, behind the dais, was the cellar with the
great chamber above. Later on, a porch with an upper chamber was built
at the entry to the screens. During the fifteenth century, the upper
courtyard was gradually surrounded by buildings; a new chancel and
octagonal bell-turret were built to the chapel; and, at the end of this
period, the old curtain wall, between the chapel and the great chamber,
was covered by an outer wall on either side, and reduced to the state
of a mere partition wall on which wooden upper buildings were carried.
Wide windows were opened in the west walls of the cellar and the great
chamber, and the cellar was turned into a private dining-room at the
back of the hall. Early in the sixteenth century, the buildings round
the entrance court were completed, and the timber stage east of the
chapel was rebuilt in stone. Finally, in the reign of Elizabeth, came
the addition which marks the last stage in this transition from pele
to dwelling-house, when, on the south side of the upper courtyard,
was built the long gallery, with its row of wide mullioned windows,
and deep bays projecting towards the garden. While the manor-house at
Wingfield, not many miles distant, is practically all of one period,
and illustrates a definite compromise between war and peace, Haddon is
a growth of from four to five centuries, and from an early date showed
a tendency to rid itself of its military character.
[Illustration: Wingfield Manor; Plan]
Wingfield manor is probably the most striking example of a later
English manor-house with certain defensive features. It was begun by
Ralph, Lord Cromwell, between 1441 and 1455. Its position is naturally
strong. From an almost isolated hill, with steep slopes to the east,
north, and west, it commands the valley in which it stands, but is
itself commanded by the much higher hills which separate it from the
Derwent valley on the west.[366] The buildings are arranged round two
courtyards (346). The outer and larger court, which is entered by
a wide gateway, with a postern on one side, at the south end of the
east wall, contained store-houses and farm-buildings, with a large
barn on the south side. This base-court, like the “barmkin” of a
fortified house in the north of England, would be useful in time of war
for the protection of tenants and their flocks and herds, who had no
other means of defence. A gatehouse in the north wall gives admission
to the second court, which was surrounded by buildings on all sides
but the east. The whole length of the north side was covered by a
magnificent block of buildings, which included the hall, kitchen, and
chief private apartments (349). These buildings have not received the
full attention which they deserve, but they obviously belong to two
periods of work, the great kitchen block at the west end being added
as an afterthought.[367] The plan is curious and unusual. The hall
occupies the eastern extremity of the block. Although the roof and a
large part of the south wall are entirely gone, and the north wall was
mutilated by the later partition of the hall into two floors and a
number of rooms, the porch, with its upper chamber, and the bay-window,
at opposite ends of the south wall, are still fairly perfect. The hall
was the full height of the block, and had a high-pitched roof, with
large window openings in the gables: it is not certain whether the
fireplace was in the centre of the room, with a louvre in the roof for
the smoke, or in the south wall. The porch led into screens at the
west end, over which was probably a minstrels’ gallery. At the north
end of the screens was a lobby, from which a vice led to the upper
floor of the building dividing the hall from the kitchen; while a wide
and well-moulded doorway opened upon a stair which descended into the
garden behind the hall. On this side the slope of the ground is very
abrupt, and the hall is built upon a very large and handsome cellar
(348), divided into two longitudinal halves by a row of five columns.
The aisles thus formed are vaulted in oblong compartments upon broad
four-centred ribs. The bold wave-mouldings of the ribs and the carving
of the bosses at their junction are carved with a masculine vigour of
design which gives this cellar a place among the chief architectural
masterpieces of its age. There is a short vice with broad steps at
each corner of the cellar: those at the north-east and south-east
corners communicated directly with the dais and sideboard of the hall,
the entrance to the south-east stair being a lobby opening on the
bay-window. The south-west vice was entered from the courtyard, while
the north-west stair opened into a room on one side of the passage from
the hall to the kitchen.
[Illustration: Wingfield Manor; Cellar of hall]
[Illustration: WINGFIELD: bay-window of hall]
The kitchen and its offices were not entered in the usual way,
directly from the screens. A block of buildings, with its main axis
at right angles to that of the hall, intervenes. There are, however,
three doorways, as usual, in the west wall of the hall. Of these,
the middle and largest was that of a central passage leading to the
kitchen. A smaller doorway, on either side of this, gave access to two
ground-floor rooms, beneath which were cellars. The whole floor above
these, entered by a vice from the large lobby at the garden end of the
screens, was the great chamber, which had a high-pitched roof, and
was lighted, towards the courtyard, by a large window-opening of four
lights, with good rectilinear tracery and transoms, beneath a segmental
arch. It need hardly be said that the position of the great chamber,
at the entrance end of the hall, is most unusual. The best parallel
example is found in connection with the hall of the thirteenth-century
bishop’s palace at Lincoln. Here the slope at the north end of the hall
prevented the construction of a large block of buildings on that side.
At the south end the ground fell away almost vertically, and here, upon
a vaulted substructure, was built a block of two stories, the lower
of which contained the pantry, buttery, and passage to the kitchens,
while the upper was the great chamber. The kitchen was contained in a
detached tower, between which and the intermediate block was a bridge,
with a covered passage on the first floor. The two-storied block has
now been converted into the bishop’s chapel, of which the windows of
the great chamber form the clerestory; while the passage across the
kitchen bridge has been turned into a vestry.
At Wingfield the great chamber was evidently placed at the entrance end
of the hall to avoid the type of construction which had been adopted
as a _pis aller_ at Lincoln, and the side of the hall was chosen where
the ground was comparatively level. Nevertheless, at the dais end of
the hall, where there is a fall of several feet in the ground, there
are considerable remains of buildings on the lower level; and it is
possible that the first kitchen buildings may have been planned at
this end. The position, with easy access to the large cellar, and,
by a stair which still partly remains, to the hall, would not have
been inconvenient, and expense in building would have been saved by
this reversal of the usual arrangement, which placed the more costly
great chamber block on level foundations, although at the far end of
the hall. The four stairs of the cellar made it easy, whatever the
position of the kitchen might be, to serve food directly to the dais,
or through the screens to the lower end of the hall. However, whether
this was the original arrangement or not, the kitchen block west of
the great chamber was an addition made probably a few years after the
original planning of the house.[368] The central passage below the
great chamber was continued to the kitchen, passing between a large
pantry and buttery. Its south wall, next the buttery, is pierced by
two broad arched openings, forming a buttery hatch upon a magnificent
scale, through which drink would be served. There were upper floors to
the buttery and pantry; but the kitchen itself, which contained three
fireplaces, filled the whole west end of the block. Its floor is sloped
and grooved, to facilitate drainage: the floor-drains were emptied
through spouts in the west wall.
The use of the buildings on the south side of the inner courtyard,
on either hand of the gateway, cannot be determined with certainty;
but the west side of the court is covered by an important range of
buildings, between the kitchen on the north and the high tower at the
south-west corner of the enclosure. Of these buildings, which belong
to the original fifteenth-century work, little remains but the west
and the foundations of the east wall, in which were two bay-windows.
They were probably a suite of private rooms, containing a smaller hall
or private dining-room, such as is found at Conway and Porchester, and
in most of our castles from the later thirteenth century onwards.[369]
At the south end of this block stands the one distinctively military
feature of the manor-house, the tall tower of four stories, which,
containing comfortable apartments in time of peace, could be isolated
and converted into a stronghold in time of war.[370]
[Illustration: WINGFIELD: strong tower]
This provisional arrangement for defence is characteristic of the
age. The primary object of the house at Wingfield was comfort and
pleasure; and its type is as far removed from the military perfection
of Caerphilly or Harlech as it can possibly be. The need of a
perpetual garrison was not felt; for, in case of war, siege would
be only the last resort of an attacking force. Consequently, the
defences of the house, apart from the accommodation for barracks and
the safety of refugees in the base-court, and from ordinary strength
of the gateways,[371] were restricted to the provision of a tower as
a last resource. The house, however, which the builder of Wingfield
constructed at Tattershall in Lincolnshire between 1433 and 1443, on
the site of an earlier stronghold, took the shape of a brick tower
of four stages, with a basement half below the ground (356). There
is an octagonal turret at each angle, the vice which leads from the
ground-floor to the roof being contained in the south-east turret
(357). The walls are of considerable thickness throughout, but are
pierced above the basement with large two-light windows, two in each
stage of the west wall. In the east wall are the chimneys of the
fireplaces on the ground-floor and first floor; but behind these the
wall is pierced by mural passages, lighted to the field. The north
wall on the first and third floor also is pierced by passages. These
communicated with chambers in the turrets and with garde-robes. The
internal features, the vaulted stairs and passages in the thickness
of the walls, and the stone fireplaces on the upper floors, with
rectangular mantels ornamented with shields of arms,[372] are elaborate
and sumptuous; but the tower is a shell, and the floors above the
vaulted basement are gone. A peculiar feature of the tower, however, is
the covered gallery which is corbelled out on stone arches above each
wall of the building between the turrets: the floor is machicolated
between the corbels, and the gallery has rectangular windows opening to
the field. Such a gallery is seen in French military architecture, as,
for example, in the Pont Valentré at Cahors, but appears to be unique
in England.[373] In the same part of Lincolnshire, and about the same
period, towers of the type of Tattershall are not uncommon. Kyme tower,
in the fens north-east of Sleaford, Hussey tower, on the north-east
side of Boston, and the Tower on the Moor, between Tattershall and
Horncastle, are cases in point: none of these, however, can compare
with Tattershall in beauty and size, or can show anything like the same
union of defensive with purely domestic arrangements.
[Illustration: Tattershall Castle]
[Illustration: BASEMENT
GROUND FLOOR
FIRST FLOOR
SECOND FLOOR
THIRD FLOOR
FOURTH FLOOR
Tattershall Castle; Plan]
Brick-work was employed in all these Lincolnshire towers: they lie in
a district where stone was not abundant, and where brick-making on the
spot was a more simple process than the conveyance of building-stone
from Ancaster or Lincoln. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
brick was very freely used for domestic architecture in the eastern
counties; and houses like Oxburgh in Norfolk or the rectory at Hadleigh
in Suffolk, with their gatehouse towers, are prominent examples
of late fifteenth-century work.[374] The old hall at Gainsborough
in Lincolnshire is a large mansion of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. This again is chiefly of brick, but with a considerable
amount of timber and plaster employed in the hall and one of the wings;
while the bay-window of the hall is of the grey Yorkshire limestone in
large blocks, which was much used in the churches of the lower Trent
valley. At one corner, however, is a polygonal tower entirely of brick,
with cross-loops in the walls of the ground-floor, and battlements
at the top. These battlements are corbelled out, so as to give an
impression of machicolation: there is, however, no machicolation at
all, and the spaces between the corbels are arched and filled with
simple tracery. The principle here is the same as that at Wingfield
and Tattershall: the residence is provided with its strong tower,
which, at Tattershall, as at Warkworth, is identical with the residence
itself. But while, at Warkworth, considerations of safety and comfort
were fairly balanced, with perhaps a slight inclination of the scales
to safety, at Tattershall, in spite of the covered gallery with its
machicolated floor, the balance is on the side of comfort. Both at
Tattershall and Wingfield the splendid residence is studied in the
first instance, while the defensive stronghold is a secondary idea. The
tower at Gainsborough is simply an imitation of the strong towers of
the past, conceived in admiration of their strength and conservative
love of their beauty, but with no serious idea of practical
utility.[375]
The fine manor-house of Compton, in a secluded Devonshire valley a few
miles west of Torquay, was probably built about 1420 by one of the
family of Gilbert. The main entrance, in the centre of the east front,
beneath a tall archway including the ground-floor and first floor in
its height, is flanked by bold rectangular projections finishing in
corbels some feet above the ground. It does not lead, however, into a
vaulted passage barred by portcullises and flanked by guard-rooms, but
into one giving direct access to the hall. This no longer exists, and
a modern building covers part of the site, but the weathering of the
high-pitched roof still remains, and at its south end we can still see
the entrances of the kitchen and buttery, and the stair-door of the
minstrels’ gallery. The courtyard and domestic buildings are enclosed
by a wall with a continuous rampart-walk, from the parapet of which
are corbelled out at intervals machicolated projections which are so
arranged as to be directly above doorways and windows, and thus to
protect the most vulnerable points of the house, such as the large
four-light east window of the chapel, north of the hall. The house
was not surrounded by a ditch; but the space between it and the road
probably formed a base-court, although any remains of fortification
have disappeared. The whole building is a good example of the reversal
of the usual process. The dwelling-house has not grown up within a
castle, but has been converted by a very thorough process of walling
and crenellation into a fortified post to which the name of castle may
well be applied. The situation is anything but commanding, but the
house lying hidden in its valley, might be a formidable obstacle, like
the neighbouring castle of Berry Pomeroy, to marauders pushing their
way inland from Tor Bay.
[Illustration: Hurstmonceaux Castle; Chapel]
The character of house first, and castle afterwards, which is
remarkable at Wingfield, is also prominent in two of the great
Yorkshire residences of the house of Percy, Spofforth and Wressell,
princely manor-houses dignified by the name of castle. But perhaps the
best example in England of a castle which is one only in name is the
brick house of Hurstmonceaux in Sussex. This splendid building was
begun about 1446 by Sir Roger Fiennes. Its position, in a sheltered
hollow at the head of a small valley, has no military advantages: it
may be compared with the secluded site of Compton Wyniates, or with
the low sites, within easy reach of water, which the builders of
Elizabethan houses were fond of choosing. The house was surrounded by
a wet ditch—a feature shared by Compton Wyniates, Kentwell, and other
Tudor houses.[376] The imposing gatehouse is in the centre of the south
front, a rectangular building flanked by tall towers,[377] with its
portal and the room above recessed beneath a tall arch which at once
recalls the machicolated archways that guard the entrance to castles
like Chepstow and Tutbury. The gatehouse has certain military features:
its rampart and that of the towers is machicolated, and the entrance
was closed by a portcullis (323). If cannon had made the curtain of
comparatively little importance, it was still advisable to defend the
gatehouse. There was no base-court, like that at Wingfield, in advance
of the main buildings. The castle was simply a collection of buildings
arranged round a series of courtyards, none of which was of any great
size, or corresponded to that distinctive feature of the military
stronghold—the open ward or bailey, which served as the muster-ground
for the garrison. The hall was in its usual position, on the side
of the first court opposite the main entrance. Most of the private
apartments were against the east wall, from which the chancel of the
chapel (359) projected in a half-octagonal apse.
An unrivalled opportunity for studying the progress of the castle
in England is provided by a comparison of Hurstmonceaux with its
neighbours at Pevensey and Bodiam. Pevensey, taking us back, in its
outer circuit, to the Roman era, is, so far as the actual castle
area is concerned, a Norman mount-and-bailey stronghold, with stone
fortifications chiefly of the thirteenth century. Bodiam represents
one of the last and highest efforts of perfected castle building in
England. Hurstmonceaux is a house designed for ease and comfort,
but keeping something of the outer semblance of the stronghold of
an English landowner. A further step was taken at Cowdray, near
Midhurst. Here the house, nominally a castle, was built about 1530 by
Sir William Fitzwilliam: the battlements of the great hall and its
beautiful porch-tower are the only relic of military architecture
which it retains; and these are really no more military in character
than the battlements of a church tower or clerestory. The comparison
and contrast between these Sussex buildings may be further extended
by including in the list the early fortresses of Lewes and Hastings,
and the episcopal castle of Amberley.[378] In these, with what remains
of the early castle of Arundel, we have as perfect an epitome of the
history of the rise and decline of castle architecture in England as
any county can afford.
Castle building, after the fitful examples of later Plantagenet times,
ceased altogether under the powerful monarchy of the Tudors, when
prominent subjects were made to feel the reality of the influence of
the Crown. Only once again, during the civil wars of the seventeenth
century, were castles generally resorted to as strongholds. The three
sieges of Pontefract, the operations of the royal troops in the Trent
valley, between the castles of Newark and Belvoir and the fortified
house of Wiverton, the defence of Denbigh, Rockingham, and Scarborough,
show that the private fortress could still be used on occasion; while
such a mansion as Basing house proved itself capable of stubborn
resistance. To this belated castle warfare we owe much destruction: it
was followed by the “slighting” of defences, and the general reduction
of castles to their present state of picturesque ruin. In concluding
this account of military architecture, it may be useful to gather, from
some of the surveys drawn up in the reign of Henry VIII., the state
of some of our principal castles at a period when medieval ideas were
disappearing. The coloured drawings, already mentioned, of castles
among the duchy of Lancaster records, which probably belong to the
early part of the reign of Elizabeth, may owe something to fancy. But
of the general accuracy of these verbal surveys, apart from inadequate
measurements, there can be less doubt. They all show clearly that
castles, as military strongholds, were obsolete, and that not merely
their defences, but even their domestic buildings, were allowed to
go to decay in time of peace. A survey of Carlisle castle, returned
22nd September 1529, is eloquent of the neglect of the fortress by
its constable, Lord Dacre. The wooden doors of the gatehouse of the
base-court had rotted away: the lead of the roof had been cut away,
probably with an eye to business, so that the rain soaked through the
timber below, and had leaked through the vault into the basement, which
was at this time used as the county gaol. The gatehouse of the inner
ward was in a not much better state; but the gates were of iron and
offered more resistance to the weather. The domestic buildings, on the
east side of the inner ward, had been roofed with stone slates: the
roof of the great chamber had fallen in, and the gallery or passage
between the great chamber and hall was “clean gone down.” The chapel
and a closet adjoining were partly unroofed: the closet chimney had
fallen, and the parlour beneath was in a ruinous state. The hall itself
was “like to fall”: the kitchen and some of its offices had fallen, and
the bakehouse and pantry were on the point of falling, while rain had
gone through the pantry floor into the buttery, which in this case was
apparently on a lower level. The great tower, “called the Dungeon,”
was, through the decay of the leaden roof, open to rain, and the floors
of its three “houses” or stages were gradually rotting. The castle
was supplied with artillery, but this was of “small effect and little
value.” It included twenty-three iron serpentines or small cannon, six
of which were provided with iron axletree pins or trunnions for use
on gun-carriages; a small brass serpentine, a foot long; nine other
serpentines; forty-five chambers; one iron sling for discharging stone
shot; four “hagbushes” (arquebuses or hand-guns); and two bombards or
mortar-shaped cannon. The ammunition for the serpentines and arquebuses
consisted of 560 leaden bullets: there was also some stone shot and
gunpowder. Some gun-stocks, bows, and arrows complete the list of
artillery.[379]
Sheriff Hutton castle in Yorkshire, surveyed during the same year, was
better off as regards its dwelling-house; for this, as we know from
contemporary history, had been occupied with little intermission from
the end of the fourteenth century onwards. There were three wards,
the outermost being evidently a large base-court, and the middle ward
probably, as at Carew, a small court in advance of the inner gatehouse.
The hall, kitchen, buttery, pantry, bakehouse, chapel, and lodgings for
the lord were in the inner ward. In the base-court were the brew-house
and horse-mills, with stables, barns, and granaries. The lead on the
roofs was in a generally bad state, and the gutters and spouts wanted
mending; but the timber of the inner roofs was still fairly good. The
walls and towers of the inner ward, the plan of which, as we have seen,
was akin to that of the contemporary Bolton castle, were “strong and
high, but must be mended with lime and sand.” Three tons of iron were
required to mend the gate of the inner ward. The “mantlewall” of the
middle ward was defective and partly in ruin; while the base-court was
“all open,” its walls decayed, and its gates gone. In the inner ward
was a well, and ponds “for baking and brewing” were near the outer
walls. The artillery included “six brass falcons with their carts” and
twenty-one arquebuses, for which six barrels of powder and ten score
iron shots were provided, bows, bowstrings, and arrows, and two bullet
moulds.[380]
[Illustration: CAERLAVEROCK CASTLE]
[Illustration: MAXSTOKE CASTLE]
After the attainder and execution of the third duke of Buckingham in
1521, two royal escheators took a survey of his lands and houses.
Their return, contained in a book of eighty-eight pages,[381] supplies
details as to eleven manor-houses and castles. Of these, Caus castle,
in west Shropshire, was a mere ruin. Huntingdon castle was decayed,
but a tower was reserved for prisoners. The description of Oakham
castle might be repeated at the present day. It was “all ruinous, being
a large ground within the mantell wall.” The hall, however, was in
excellent repair, “and of an old fashion”: the escheators recommended
its preservation, because the courts were held there. The three
towers of the castle of Newport next the Usk are mentioned, with the
water-gate below the middle tower, “to receive into the said castle a
good vessel”: the hall and other lodgings were decayed, especially in
timber, but the stone could be renewed with a quantity of freestone
and rubble stored in the castle. Here, as at Carlisle, Launceston, and
elsewhere, the basement of the gatehouse was used as a prison; and its
maintenance is therefore insisted upon. The hall at Brecon castle had
a new and costly roof with pendants: it was “set on height,” with
windows at either end, and none upon the sides. As a matter of fact,
the remains of this hall stand above a twelfth-century substructure,
which was vaulted from a central row of columns: the south side wall
still remains, and is pierced with a row of lancet windows, so that
the statement of the survey may refer to a newer hall which has
disappeared. There was a new hall in the inner ward at Kimbolton, which
had been built some sixty years before by the duke’s great-grandmother.
The old curtain against which it stood was in a bad way, and threatened
to ruin the hall. Round the inner ward was a moat: the base-court on
the outer edge was overgrown with grass, but the barn and stables were
in good condition.
“The strongest fortress and most like unto a castle of any other
that the Duke had” was the castle of Tonbridge, a mount-and-bailey
stronghold whose shell-keep is still one of the finest examples of the
type. The keep or “dungeon”—no mention of the mount is made—was at this
time covered with a lead roof, half of which was gone. Otherwise, the
castle and its curtain were in good repair, the rampart-walk keeping
its battlemented outer parapet and rear-wall. The gatehouse, on the
north side of the castle, was “as strong a fortress as few be in
England”: on the east curtain was a square tower called the Stafford
tower, and at the south-east corner, next the Medway, was the octagonal
Water tower. The river constituted the chief southern defence of the
castle, and there was no south curtain: the substructure of the hall
and lodgings, 26 feet high and built of ashlar, was on this side, but
the buildings themselves had never been finished.
Castles of a later type were Stafford, and Maxstoke (364) in
Warwickshire. Stafford castle at this time consisted of a single block
of lodgings with two towers at either end and another in the middle
of the south front. The hall was in the centre of the block, with the
kitchen, larder, buttery, and pantry beneath it: at one end of the
hall was the great chamber with a cellar below, and at the other was a
“surveying chamber,” or service-room, to which dishes would be brought
from the kitchen. Each of the five towers contained three rooms, in
each of which was a fireplace. The towers were machicolated, “the
enbatelling being trussed forth upon corbelles.” Outside the house
were the chapel, gatehouse, and another kitchen; but this front court
was apparently without defensive walls. Maxstoke, originally a castle
of the Clintons, which was built and fortified in or after 1345,[382]
had been largely repaired by the duchess Anne, the builder of the
hall at Kimbolton. There was a base-court with a gatehouse, stables,
and barns, which were walled with stone and covered with slate. Round
the castle, “a right proper thing after the old building,” was a moat.
The house, with a tower at each corner, was built round a quadrangle,
and in the side next the bridge over the moat was a gatehouse tower,
with a vaulted entry. The hall, the chapel, the great chamber, and
the lodgings generally were in good condition, although they were not
entirely finished and much glazing was still necessary. The provision
of fireplaces is specially mentioned, as well as a point in the
planning of the house—the convenient access to the chapel, or, rather,
to its gallery or galleries, from the various first-floor rooms at “the
over end” of the hall and great chamber.
The moated manor-house of Writtle in Essex can hardly be counted among
castles: it was a timber building round a cloistered quadrangle. There
was no hall, but “a goodly and large parlour instead.” Thornbury castle
in Gloucestershire, however, which was in great part of the duke’s own
building, was one of those houses in which some semblance of military
architecture was kept. There was no moat, but a base-court and an inner
ward. The buildings of the base-court itself had been set out, but
were in a very incomplete state, and little had been finished beyond
the foundations of the north and west sides. The entrance to the inner
ward was in the west face of the quadrangle; but of the west and north
blocks only the lower story had been completed. This was of ashlar,
while in the base-court ashlar had been used only for the window
openings, doorways, and quoins. The hall and kitchen offices formed the
east block, “all of the old building, and of a homely fashion”; but
the south block, of the newer work, was “fully finished with curious
works and stately lodgings,” and from it a gallery of timber cased with
stone, with an upper and lower passage, crossed the south garden to the
parish church and the duke’s chapel therein. A magnificent feature of
this house, which became more and more characteristic of the palaces of
noblemen of the age, were the great parks to the east of the castle,
and the gardens on its east and south side. Between the east garden
and the New park was the orchard, “in which are many alleys to walk
in openly,” and round about the orchard were other alleys on a good
height, with “roosting places,” covered with white thorn and hazel.
Thornbury castle had reached this degree of unfinished splendour only
a few years before the survey was made. The gateway of the outer ward
still bears an inscription with the date 1511, while at the base
of the moulded brick chimneys of the south block is the date 1514.
Remains may still be seen of most of the buildings mentioned in these
surveys. Thornbury and Maxstoke are still occupied, and of Thornbury
in particular the details of the survey still hold good. The great
value of these descriptions is the fact that they tell us something,
on the eve of the Renaissance period, of the state of a series of
fortresses which represented almost every type of an architecture
that had grown up under the influence of conditions rapidly becoming
obsolete. At Tonbridge we see the mount-and-bailey fortress of early
Norman times, built to meet needs which were purely military, and
strengthened with a stone keep and walls and towers of stone as those
needs became more pressing. At Carlisle we have the fortress with its
compact inner ward and great tower, approached through the spacious
base-court which served the needs of the garrison and might shelter
flocks and herds in time of war. No castle of the most perfect type,
planned in the golden age of military architecture, is represented. At
Brecon, however, we can study the growing importance of the domestic
buildings of the castle. At Sheriff Hutton we have the quadrangular
castle of the fourteenth century with its angle-towers, and its walled
base-court serving the purposes of a farm-yard. Stafford castle, the
plan of which has been imitated in the modern house on the site, is
a fortified residence built in a single block, to which some of the
strong houses of the north of England are analogous. The moated house
of Maxstoke preserves the quadrangular plan, and has its provisions for
defence; but its domestic character was the first aim of its builders,
and its walls and towers are without the formidable height and strength
of Sheriff Hutton and Bolton. Here and at Thornbury the base-court
was still retained; but at Thornbury the energy of the builders was
concentrated in the beautiful mansion, and the idea of the defensive
stronghold had almost departed. The day of the castle and the walled
town was over, and, in the face of methods of attack of which the
builders of Norman castles had never dreamed, military engineers were
beginning to move along new lines to which architectural considerations
were no longer a matter of great importance. An architecture which,
developed from earthwork in the beginning, reproduced in stone, at
its height, the disposition of the concentric earthworks of primeval
times, gave place in its turn to a science in which the employment of
earthwork and the natural resources of a defensive position played an
increasingly prominent part.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Plan in Allcroft, _Earthwork of England_, 1908, p. 647. The
same feature is well seen in the fine camp of Bury Ditches (6) in
Shropshire, between Clun and Bishops Castle.
[2] The defences of Old Sarum are now in process of excavation, and the
plan of the medieval castle, in the centre of the early camp, has been
recovered. See _Proceedings Soc. Antiquaries_, 2nd series, vol. xxiii.,
pp. 190-200 and 501-18.
[3] It is well seen at Bury ditches (6), where the diagonal entrance is
also a feature of the south-west side of the camp, and on the west side
of Caer Caradoc, between Clun and Knighton.
[4] The effect of similar conditions on the construction of early
Norman castles will be noticed in a later chapter.
[5] Plan in Allcroft, _op. cit._, p. 686; the camp is described fully
pp. 682-97.
[6] See Bruce, _Hand-Book to the Roman Wall_, 5th ed., 1907 (ed. R.
Blair), pp. 19-21.
[7] The list from the _Notitia Dignitatum_ is given, _ibid._, pp. 11,
12.
[8] The bank is, strictly speaking, the _agger_, the _vallum_ being the
rampart on the top of the bank.
[9] The large villas of Romano-British landowners, as at Bignor
(Sussex), Chedworth (Gloucestershire), Horkstow (Lincolnshire), were
within easy reach of the military roads, but were not directly upon
them.
[10] The topography of Roman Lincoln is described by Dr E. M. Sympson,
_Lincoln_ (Ancient Cities), 1906, chapter I.
[11] See _Archæologia_, vol. liii., pp. 539-73.
[12] See below as to the blocking of the main gateways at Cilurnum
after the building of the great wall. The small single gateways at
Cilurnum are on the south side of the wall. At Amboglanna both gateways
were south of the wall.
[13] Borcovicus is described by Bruce, _u.s._, pp. 140-60.
[14] Plan in Besnier, _Autun Pittoresque_, 1888. The north-west and
north-east gateways of the Roman city remain, but the centre of the
city was shifted in the middle ages.
[15] Plan in Allcroft, _u.s._, p. 322. As Burgh Castle had the sea on
its west side, it possibly had no west wall. Another tower, on the east
side of the north gateway, has fallen away from the wall.
[16] At Pevensey the foundation of the wall is of chalk and flint,
covered in one part by an upper layer of concrete, composed of flints
bedded in mortar. Below the foundation is a layer of puddled clay,
in which oak stakes were fixed vertically at intervals. See L. F.
Salzmann, F.S.A., _Excavations at Pevensey_, 1906-7, in _Sussex
Archæol. Collections_, vol. li.
[17] Cilurnum is described by Bruce, _u.s._, pp. 86-119, with plan. See
also the description and plan in _An Account of the Roman Antiquities
Preserved in the Museum at Chesters_, 1903, pp. 87-120.
[18] This was not invariable. At Cilurnum the main street was from east
to west, and this was also the case at Corstopitum (Corbridge-on-Tyne).
[19] In this case, the first cohort of the Tungri.
[20] The tenth cohort of the legion had its quarters here: hence the
name.
[21] Or the east and west gateways, as already noted, at Cilurnum. The
_forum_ occupied the centre of Cilurnum, the _praetorium_ forming a
block of buildings east of the centre. The first wing or squadron of
the Astures was stationed at Cilurnum.
[22] Prof. Haverfield holds the view that this southern extension is
post-Roman. See _Archæol. Journal_, lxvi. 350.
[23] The same thing happened at Lincoln, where the eastern wall of
the city followed a line now covered by the eastern transept of the
cathedral.
[24] Wat’s dyke, of which remains can be traced south of Wrexham and
near Oswestry, was to the east of Offa’s dyke.
[25] _A.-S. Chron._, anno 547.
[26] Bede, _Hist. Ecc._, iii. 16.
[27] It may be noted that not all names in “borough” and “bury” are
derived from _burh_ and _byrig_. Some are merely derived from _beorh_
or _beorg_ = a hill (dative _beorge_).
[28] See Oman, _Art of War_, p. 120.
[29] In Germany the word _burg_ is also applied to the citadel of a
town or to a castle. In England and France more careful discrimination
was made between the two types of stronghold.
[30] References to _burhs_ wrought by Edward and his sister Æthelflæd
will be found in _A.-S. Chron_. under the dates mentioned in the text.
There is some variety of opinion with regard to the exact accuracy of
these dates.
[31] _A.-S. Chron._, sub anno.
[32] _A.-S. Chron._, sub anno. The true date seems to be 837 or 838.
[33] The chief authority for the early invasions of the Northmen in
France is the _Annales Bertinenses_, of which the portion from 836 to
861 is attributed to Prudentius, bishop of Troyes.
[34] _Timbrian_ is the ordinary Anglo-Saxon word for “to build,” but it
indicates the prevalent material used for building.
[35] This is the main contention of the theory so attractively
enunciated by the late G. T. Clark, and endorsed by the authority of
Professor Freeman.
[36] Nottingham castle is, in fact, considerably to the west of the
probable site of the Saxon _burh_, which was more or less identical
with the “English borough” of the middle ages, the western part of
Nottingham being known as the “French borough.”
[37] The Danes were again at Tempsford in 1010, and, if the earthwork
is of pre-Conquest date, it is more likely to have been thrown up
during the earlier than during the later visit.
[38] The story (_A.S. Chron._, sub an. 755) of the murder of Cynewulf
and its consequences, mentions the _burh_ or _burg_ of Merton with its
gate: the house in which the king was murdered within the _burh_ is
called _bur_ (_i.e._, bower, private chamber).
[39] Dr J. H. Round, _Feudal England_, 1909, p. 324, points to the
phrase _hoc castellum refirmaverat_ in the Domesday notice of Ewias,
as indicative of the existence of the castle before the Conquest, and
gives other reasons for the identification.
[40] Domesday, i., f. 23; “Castrum Harundel Tempore Regis Edwardi
reddebat de quodam molino xl solidos,” etc. “Castrum Harundel,”
however, applies to the town, not the castle; and it does not follow
that the name was given to the town before the Conquest.
[41] Ord. Vit., _Hist. Eccl._, iii. 14; “id castellum situm est in
acutissima rupe mari contigua.” The phrase may be used generally to
describe a site which, in Ordericus’ own day, had become famous for its
castle.
[42] Ord. Vit., _Hist. Eccl._ iv. 4.
[43] The Tower of London was outside the east wall of the medieval
city. Baynard’s castle was at the point where the west wall approached
the Thames.
[44] Ord. Vit., _op. cit._, iv. 4; “pinnas ac turres ... in
munimentis addebant vel restaurabant ... Portæ offirmatæ erant,
densæque turbæ in propugnaculis et per totum muri ambitum prostabant.”
[45] The foundation of these castles is noted by Ord. Vit., iv. 4, 5.
[46] The word “bailey” (_ballium_) literally means a palisaded
enclosure. The synonym “ward,” applied to the various enclosed
divisions of a medieval castle, means a guarded enclosure. The term
“base-court” (_basse-cour_) is also applied to the bailey.
[47] It should be noted that at York there were not two distinct
_burhs_ or fortified towns, such as are found in the earlier cases. The
river passed through and bisected the _burh_, which was surrounded by
an earthen bank, save at the point where the Foss formed the boundary
of the city.
[48] Domesday, i. 248 _b_.
[49] An example of this is the fine earthwork at Lilbourne, in
Northamptonshire. There are many other instances, and the lesser bailey
at Clun partakes of this character.
[50] There are cases, of course, which give rise to perplexity. Thus
at Earls Barton, in Northamptonshire, the famous pre-Conquest church
tower stands on a site which appears to be within the original limit
of the ditch of the adjacent castle mount. It is doubtful, however,
whether the mount was ever ditched on this side; and the church does
not encroach upon the mount.
[51] Cæsar, _De Bell. Gall._, vii. 73; “huic [vallo] loricam pinnasque
adiecit, grandibus cervis eminentibus ad commissuras pluteorum atque
aggeris, qui ascensum hostium tardarent.” See p. 60 below.
[52] See Enlart, ii. 494.
[53] Domfront, however, on its rocky site, may, like Richmond, have
been surrounded by a stone wall from the first.
[54] L. Blanchetière, _Le Donjon ou Château féodal de Domfront (Orne)_,
1893, pp. 29, 30.
[55] See note above, p. 45.
[56] Ord. Vit., iii. 5.
[57] The essential portions of these texts are quoted by Enlart, ii.
497-9.
[58] The “lesser donjon” at Falaise, which contained the great chamber,
is a rectangular projection of two stories from the great donjon.
[59] Mrs Armitage in _Eng. Hist. Review_, xix. 443-7.
[60] Ord. Vit., viii. 12; “fossis et densis sepibus.”
[61] _Ibid._, viii. 24; “Hic machinas construxit, contra munimentum
hostile super rotulas egit, ingentia saxa in oppidum et oppidanos
projecit, bellatores assultus dare docuit, quibus vallum et sepes
circumcingentes diruit, et culmina domorum super inhabitantes dejecit.”
[62] Ord. Vit., viii. 13; “Callidi enim obsessores in fabrili fornace,
quæ in promptu structa fuerat, ferrum missilium callefaciebant,
subitoque super tectum principalis aulæ in munimentis jaciebant, et
sic ferrum candens sagittarum atque pilorum in arida veterum lanugine
imbricum totis nisibus figebant.”
[63] See J. H Round, _Castles of the Conquest_ (_Archæologia_, lviii.
333).
[64] _Adulterinus_ = spurious, counterfeit.
[65] Cæsar, _Bell. Gall._, vii. 68 _seq._ Alesia, near the modern
village of Alise-la-Reine, is in the Côte d’Or department, some 36
miles N.W. of Dijon.
[66] Cæsar, _De Bell. Civ._, ii. 1 _seq._
[67] A detailed account of this siege is given by Oman, _Art of War_,
pp. 140-7.
[68] Enlart, ii. 413, 414.
[69] Ord. Vit., vii. 10.
[70] _Ibid._ “Rex itaque quoddam municipium in valle Beugici construxit
ibique magnam militum copiam ad arcendum hostem constituit.”
[71] _Ibid._, viii. 2.
[72] _Ibid._, viii. 23; Roger of Wendover.
[73] Thus Henry I., in his wars with Louis VI., conducted one blockade
by building two castles, which the enemy called derisively Malassis and
Gête-aux-Lièvres (Ord. Vit., xii. 1). So also (_ibid._, xii. 22) his
castle of Mäte-Putain near Rouen. Many other instances might be named.
[74] Oman, _Art of War_, pp. 135, 139: his authority is Guy of Amiens,
whose poetical rhetoric, however, may not be altogether accurate in
description.
[75] Ord. Vit., viii. 24. _Cf._ viii. 16, where Robert of Normandy,
another great Crusader, besieging Courcy-sur-Dives in 1091, caused
a great wooden tower or belfry (_berfredum_) to be built, which was
burned by the defenders. Robert of Bellême was also present at this
siege.
[76] See below, p. 99.
[77] Suger, _Gesta Ludovici Grossi_ (ed. Molinier, pp. 63-66).
[78] Pent-houses were sometimes elaborately defended. Thus Joinville
describes the large “cats” made by St Louis’ engineers to protect
the soldiers who were making a causeway across an arm of the Nile
near Mansurah (1249-50). These had towers at either end, with covered
guard-houses behind the towers, and were called _chats-châteaux_.
[79] See the account of the sieges of Boves and Château-Gaillard
by Guillaume le Breton, _Philippis_, books ii. and vii. At the
siege of Zara in the fourth Crusade, after five days of fruitless
stone-throwing, the Crusaders began to undermine a tower which led to
the surrender of the city (Villehardouin).
[80] Abbo: see the account of the siege of Paris above.
[81] Ord. Vit., ix. 15: “Machinam, quam ligneum possumus vocitare
castellum.” It was strictly a belfry (see below).
[82] _Ibid._
[83] _Cf._ the account of the operations at the siege of Marseilles
(Cæsar, _De Bell. Civ._, ii. 11): “Musculus ex turri latericia a
nostris telis tormentisque defenditur.”
[84] The _porte-coulis_ is literally a sliding door. Its outer bars
fitted into grooves in the walls on either side. See pp. 227, 229.
[85] Vitruvius, _De Architectura_, x. 13, § 3, mentions among Roman
scaling-machines, an inclined plane, “ascendentem machinam qua ad murum
plano pede transitus esse posset.”
[86] Guillaume le Breton, _Philippis_, book vii. This poem is an
important source of information for the wars of Philip Augustus, and
for the siege of Château-Gaillard in particular.
[87] Ord. Vit., ix. 13.
[88] _Ibid._, ix. 11.
[89] _Ibid._, xii. 36.
[90] This is the usual distinction. But the use of the names varies.
In Vitruvius (_op. cit._, x. 10, 11) the _catapulta_ or _scorpio_ is a
machine for shooting arrows, while the _ballista_ is used for throwing
stones. The pointed stakes at the siege of Marseilles (Cæsar, _De Bell.
Civ._, ii. 2) were shot from _ballistae_. Vitruvius indicates several
methods of working the _ballista_ by torsion: “aliae enim vectibus et
suculis (levers and winches), nonnullae polyspastis (pulleys), aliae
ergatis (windlasses), quaedam etiam tympanorum (wheels) torquentur
rationibus.”
[91] For the injuries inflicted by stone-throwing machines, see
Villehardouin’s mention of the wounding of Guillaume de Champlitte at
Constantinople, and of Pierre de Bracieux at Adrianople.
[92] Oman, _op. cit._, 139, quotes Anna Comnena to this effect.
[93] Stone-throwing engines and _ballistae_ alike were employed by
the Saracens at Mansurah (1250), for hurling Greek fire at the towers
constructed by St Louis to protect his causeway-makers (Joinville).
[94] Thus, in the first siege of Constantinople by the Crusaders
(1203), Villehardouin emphasises the number of siege-machines used by
the besiegers upon shipboard and on land, but gives no account of their
use by the defenders. They were employed, however, by the defence, as
we have seen at Marseilles; see also Chapter I. above, for possible
traces of their use in the stations of the Roman wall. A special
platform might in some cases be constructed for them and wheeled to the
back of the rampart-walk.
[95] Such crenellations are indicated even in the timber defences at
Alesia and Trebonius’ second rampart at Marseilles. They are familiar
features of oriental fortification, _e.g._, of the great wall of China
or the walls and gates of Delhi.
[96] This roof was sometimes gabled, the timbers, as in the donjon at
Coucy, following and resting on the slope of the coping of the parapet.
[97] Sometimes, as at Constantinople in 1204 (Villehardouin), towers
were heightened by the addition of one or more stages of wood. _Cf._
the heightening of the unfinished _tête-du-pont_ at Paris in 885-6.
[98] Clark, i. 68-120, gives an elaborate list of castles in England
and Wales at this date. A large number, however, of those which he
mentions, had been already destroyed; and many were of later foundation.
[99] Accounts of this rebellion are given by Benedict of Peterborough
and Roger of Hoveden.
[100] Nottingham was a foundation of the Conqueror: Newark was not
founded until after 1123.
[101] Ord. Vit., xi. 2, mentions the capture of the castle of Blyth
(Blida castrum) by Henry I. from Robert de Bellême. By this Tickhill is
probably meant. It is four miles from Blyth, where was a Benedictine
priory founded by Roger de Busli, the first Norman lord of Tickhill,
and granted by him to the priory of Ste-Trinité-du-Mont at Rouen.
Ordericus, who, as a monk of a Norman abbey, was familiar with the name
of Blyth priory, may have supposed the castle of Roger de Busli to have
been at Blyth.
[102] See Rymer, _Fœdera_ (Rec. Com., 1816), vol. i. pt. i. p. 429:
“castrum de Pontefracto, quod est quasi clavis in comitatu Eborum.”
[103] The remains are chiefly of the second quarter of the fifteenth
century; but it was a residence of the archbishops as early as the
twelfth century.
[104] A. Harvey, _Bristol_ (Ancient Cities), pp. 35, 116.
[105] Rob. de Monte, quoted by Stubbs, _Select Charters_, 8th ed.,
1905, p. 128: “Rex Henricus coepit revocare in jus proprium urbes,
castella, villas, quae ad coronam regni pertinebant, castella noviter
facta destruendo.”
[106] The curtain (Lat. _cortina_, Fr. _courtine_) is a general name
for the wall enclosing a courtyard, and is thus applied to the wall
round the castle enclosure.
[107] Martène, _Thesaurus Anecdotorum_, iv. 47, quoted by Enlart, ii.
418. From _alatorium_ is derived the word _allure_, often employed as a
technical term for a rampart-walk.
[108] Ord. Vit., v. 19: “Lapideam munitionem, qua prudens Ansoldus
domum suam cinxerat, cum ipsa domo dejecit.” In this case the wall
seems to have been built, not round an open courtyard, but round a
house or tower. The French term for a fortified wall, forming the outer
defence of a single building, is _chemise_. Thus, in a mount-and-bailey
castle, the palisade round the tower on the mount was, strictly
speaking, a _chemise_, while that round the bailey was a curtain.
[109] Ord. Vit., vii. 10.
[110] _Ibid._, viii. 23.
[111] _Ibid._, viii. 5. Robert, son of Giroie, “castellum Sancti
Cerenici ... muris et vallis speculisque munivit.”
[112] “Herring-bone” masonry consists of courses of rubble bedded
diagonally in mortar, alternating with horizontal courses of thin
stones, the whole arrangement resembling the disposition of the bones
in the back of a fish. The horizontal courses are frequently omitted,
and their place is taken by thick layers of mortar.
[113] See _Yorks. Archæol. Journal_, xx. 132, where the evidence quoted
points to the conclusion “that the doorway was not erected later than
about 1075.” Harvey, _Castles and Walled Towns_, p. 85, assumes that
the doorway was cut through the south wall of the tower at a later
date: the evidence of the masonry is decisively against this idea.
[114] The architectural history of Ludlow castle has been thoroughly
examined by Mr W. H. St John Hope in an invaluable paper in
_Archæologia_, lxi. 258-328.
[115] The original design probably included an upper chamber of
moderate height. There was, however, a considerable interval between
the completion of the gateway and the building of the upper stage.
[116] The large outer bailey at Ludlow was an addition to the original
castle, late in the twelfth century, and is contemporary with the
blocking of the gatehouse entrance. Originally the castle consisted
merely of the present inner ward. The outer bailey or base-court gave
enlarged accommodation for the garrison, and contained stables, barns,
and other offices for which there was no room in the inner ward.
[117] The explanation of this passage through the wall was long a
mystery. Clark, ii. 278, recognised that it led from an outer to an
inner “room,” but was puzzled by the bar-holes which showed that the
doors had been carefully defended.
[118] Mr Hope thinks that it was originally intended to cover the
gateway with a semicircular barrel-vault. The lower stage of the keep
at Richmond has a ribbed vault with central column. This, however,
with the vice, now blocked, in the south-west corner, was inserted
many years after the building of the great tower on the site of the
gatehouse.
[119] The string-courses of the upper stages of the tower, and the
windows of the southern chamber, which was of the full height of the
two upper stories, and probably formed the chapel of the castle, have
further enrichment; but the detail is nowhere elaborate. See T. M.
Blagg, F.S.A., _A Guide to Newark, &c._, 2nd ed., pp. 19-22.
[120] Harvey, _op. cit._, p. 98, says that Newark castle “has now no
trace of a keep, and possibly never possessed one.” The gatehouse,
however, may fairly be considered as belonging to the category of
tower-keeps, and has one characteristic of that type of building—viz.,
the cross-wall which divides the upper stages, and is borne by an
archway in the centre of the gateway passage.
[121] The churches of Upton, near Gainsborough, Burghwallis, near
Doncaster, and Lois Weedon in Northamptonshire, are examples of this
type. “Herring-bone” work occurs at Brixworth, in a portion of the
tower to which a pre-Conquest date cannot safely be attributed. At
Marton, near Gainsborough, it occurs in a tower of “Saxon” type, which
was probably not built until after the Conquest. It is found twice at
York, but the date of the so-called Saxon work in the crypt of the
minster is very doubtful; while the tower of St Mary Bishophill Junior,
although Saxon in type, is more likely to be Norman in date. Examples
of “herring-bone” work in the churches of Normandy are found, _e.g._,
at Périers and in the apse at Cérisy-la-Forêt (Calvados).
[122] The donjon of Falaise belongs to the early part of the twelfth
century, and is therefore a late example of “herring-bone” work. The
“herring-bone” work in the keep at Guildford is probably still later,
and that in the curtain wall at Lincoln, raised on the top of earthen
banks, can hardly be attributed to a very early date.
[123] It has also been noted in the tower of Marton church, near
Gainsborough.
[124] The lodge which now occupies its site was built in 1815, while
the present main entrance to the castle, south-west of the mount, was
made in 1810, and is quite outside the original _enceinte_.
[125] See note 122 on p. 100.
[126] A curtain is said to be flanked when its line is broken at
intervals by projections, so near one another that the whole face of
the piece of curtain between them can be covered by the fire of the
defenders stationed in them.
[127] Much of the curtain of Lancaster castle is of fairly early date.
For the supposed Roman origin of the castle and its probable history,
see note 354 on p. 327 below.
[128] These additions have given rise to the common theory that this
hall is a work of late twelfth century date.
[129] Other examples of early stone halls will be mentioned in a later
chapter.
[130] This is very noticeable in Shropshire, where a large number of
parish churches, to which rectors were presented and instituted in the
ordinary way, are described as free chapels in the registers of the
bishops of Lichfield and Hereford during the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries.
[131] See Pat. Rolls, 18 Rich. II., pt. 1, m. 28; 3 Hen. IV., pt. 1, m.
6.
[132] Pat. 2 Edw. III., pt. 2, m. 4. The walls of this chapel,
dedicated to St Peter, remain. In the fifteenth century it was enlarged
as far as the west curtain by a western annexe, and in the sixteenth
century it was divided into two floors, the upper floor being the
court-house, and the lower floor the record-room of the court of the
Marches.
[133] Pat. 2 Edw. II., pt. 2, m. 24.
[134] The word _keep_ is a comparatively modern term, unknown to
medieval castle-builders, to whom this part of the castle was the
_donjon_ or _dungeon_, or the _great tower_.
[135] Other important shell keeps of the normal type are at Arundel,
Cardiff (114), Carisbrooke (111), Farnham, Lewes, Pickering, Totnes,
and Tonbridge—the last one of the most considerable and finest examples.
[136] Clifford’s tower at York is sometimes quoted as a shell keep. It
was actually a tower with a forebuilding.
[137] See Enlart, ii. 500, 676: Anthyme Saint-Paul, _Histoire
Monumentale_, p. 168, gives the date 993, with an expression of doubt.
Fulk the Black was count of Anjou 987-1039.
[138] Enlart, ii. 685, says “début du xiiᵉ siècle.”
[139] Ord. Vit., xii. 14.
[140] _Ibid._, viii. 19.
[141] _Ibid._, x. 18.
[142] _Ibid._, xi. 20: _adulterina castella_ is the phrase used.
[143] Enlart, ii. 710. Blanchetière, _op. cit._, 83, mentions Henry’s
operations in 1123, but believes in an earlier date for the donjon.
[144] Rad. de Diceto, _Abbrev. Chron._, sub anno.
[145] _Pipe Roll Soc._, vol. i., pp. 13, 14; iv. 23.
[146] _Ibid._, i. 27.
[147] _Ibid._, i. 29, 30, 31; ii. 14; iv. 36; v. 50; vi. 57, 58; vii.
11, 12; xii. 79; xiii. 31.
[148] _Ibid._, ii. 12; v. 49.
[149] _Ibid._, iv. 35.
[150] _Ibid._, iv. 39.
[151] _Ibid._, iv. 40.
[152] _Ibid._, viii. 89; ix. 59, etc.
[153] _Ibid._, xiii. 107, 108; xv. 132; xvi. 32.
[154] _E.g._, _ibid._, xiii. 140.
[155] _Ibid._, xvi. 32; xviii. 110.
[156] _Ibid._, xviii. 110.
[157] _Ibid._, xiii. 161.
[158] _Ibid._, v. 35.
[159] _Ibid._, xix. 53.
[160] Charles Dawson, _Hastings Castle_, ii. 524.
[161] _Pipe Roll Soc._, ix. 17; xi. 18; xii. 15; xiii. 95; xv. 2; xvi.
2.
[162] _Ibid._, xviii. 16; xix. 68.
[163] _Ibid._, xix. 167; xxi. 77; see also xvi. 92.
[164] _Pipe Roll Soc._, xvi. 118, 119.
[165] _Ibid._, xvi. 141.
[166] _Ibid._, xvi. 137.
[167] _Ibid._, xix. 81.
[168] _Ibid._, xviii. 7; xix. 173.
[169] _Ibid._, xviii. 66; xix. 110; xxii. 183. Malcolm, king of Scots,
yielded Bamburgh, Carlisle, and Newcastle to Henry II. in 1157; and the
towers at all three places were begun within a few years of this event.
That at Bamburgh is mentioned in 1164.
[170] _Ibid._, xix. 2.
[171] See evidence brought by Mrs Armitage, _Eng. Hist. Rev._, xix.
443-7.
[172] Ord. Vit., iv. 1. He calls these strongholds _firmamenta quaedam_.
[173] _A.S. Chron._, sub anno.
[174] Such cross-walls, found in the larger towers, were not merely
useful as partitions between the rooms. They enabled the builders to
lay their floors more conveniently, as timber of sufficient scantling
for so large an undivided space was obtainable with difficulty. In case
of the great tower being taken by storm, the cross-wall on each floor
formed a barrier to the besiegers, shutting off the tower as it did
into two halves. This is well seen, for example, at Porchester.
[175] At Norham and Kenilworth the towers are at an angle of the inner
ward where the two wards are adjacent. At Porchester it is at an outer
angle of the inner ward, so that two of its sides are on the outer
curtain of the castle.
[176] At Hedingham and Rochester there are mural galleries above the
level of the second floor, the height of which therefore corresponds
to that of two external stories. Both towers are exceptionally lofty,
Rochester being 113, Hedingham 100 feet high.
[177] We know from the Pipe Roll for 1173-4 that work was being done at
Guildford in that year (_Pipe Roll Soc._, xxi. 3).
[178] This points to two separate dates for the structure. The earlier
masonry has been attributed to Bishop Flambard, who founded the castle
in 1121; the later to Bishop Pudsey, who made additions to the castle
about 1157. If this is so, the history of the tower is parallel to that
of Porchester—a low stone tower, possibly of the reign of Henry I.,
heightened in the reign of Henry II.
[179] Porchester, in spite of its great size, is a tower which was
apparently built for exclusively military purposes. The floors are
feebly lighted, and there is no fireplace in the building.
[180] Both these castles belong to the class of cliff strongholds which
were walled from their earliest foundation.
[181] Further alterations were made in the fifteenth century, when a
new stair was inserted in the north-east angle, and the outer stair
against the west wall was removed.
[182] For the reason, see note 174 on pp. 121, 122.
[183] Legends about the cruelties practised on prisoners, often
connected with these basement chambers, need not be believed too
readily. Specially constructed prison chambers in castles usually
belong to a period later than the twelfth century. On the origin of the
word “dungeon” see Chapter III.
[184] See the description of the tower at Ardres in Chapter III. Such
upper floors were probably divided into rooms by wooden partitions.
[185] It was thus impossible to reach the roof from the first floor
without passing through the second-floor chamber—a precaution which was
adopted also in the cylindrical tower at Conisbrough.
[186] Here the basement was probably used as a prison. The upper part
of the original stair still remains.
[187] There are indications, however, of a second chapel in the keep
itself, occupying the south-east angle of the third floor.
[188] The recently excavated chapel of the great tower of Old Sarum was
a vaulted building occupying the south-eastern part of the basement of
the tower itself. It was entered directly from the bailey, and had no
direct communication with the first floor of the tower.
[189] Such as the so-called oratories in the fore-buildings of Dover
and Newcastle.
[190] At Old Sarum, the room in the basement, west of the chapel, was
probably the kitchen.
[191] _Cf._ the employment of one of the angle towers at the later
castle of Langley in Northumberland as a garde-robe tower. Some of the
late medieval pele-towers of the north of England, _e.g._, Chipchase
and Corbridge, provide excellent examples of mural garde-robes with
corbelled-out seats.
[192] Roger of Wendover, ann. 1215.
[193] See the description of the fortifications of Antioch in Oman,
_Art of War_, pp. 527-9; plan facing p. 283.
[194] _Ibid._, 526-7.
[195] Enlart, ii. 504.
[196] _Ibid._, ii. 508: it is attributed to Amaury, count of Evreux
(1105-37): the masonry (_ibid._, 461) is of coursed rubble with
bonding-courses of ashlar.
[197] See note 161, p. 119. The keep of Orford is described at some
length by Harvey, _Castles and Walled Towns_, pp. 106-111.
[198] Enlart, ii. 505.
[199] Possibly there was a trap-door in the centre of each floor: see
below. All the floors are gone above the entrance stage.
[200] An embrasure is the splay or inner opening of a window. The word
is also applied to the openings between the _merlons_ or solid pieces
of a crenellated parapet.
[201] See pp. 217, 230, 233.
[202] It may also be noted that the practice of placing windows
immediately above one another would be naturally avoided, as tending to
weaken the masonry of the whole wall at these points. This is well seen
in the irregular position of the numerous loops which light the vice of
the donjon at Coucy.
[203] Enlart, ii. 735, gives the date of the donjon (Tour Guinette) at
Etampes as about 1140.
[204] Enlart, ii. 674, gives the date of completion at Issoudun as 1202.
[205] Or _mâchecoulis_. _Coulis_ = a groove. The first part of the word
is probably derived from _mâcher_ = to break or crush, and implies the
purpose effected by missiles sent through those openings.
[206] Drawing in Enlart, ii. 504. Here there are two rectangular
towers, with rounded angle-turrets, connected by a lofty intermediate
building.
[207] The same cause undoubtedly led, at an earlier date, to the
covering of Syrian churches with roofs of stone.
[208] Château-Gaillard was on the French side of the Seine, in
territory purchased by Richard I. from the archbishop of Rouen.
[209] E. Lefèvre-Pontalis, _Le Château de Coucy_, pp. 48, 49, shows
that the donjon forms part of the latest work undertaken by Enguerrand
III., lord of Coucy, the founder of the present castle, who died in
1242: it was evidently completed about 1240.
[210] The town walls appear to be rather earlier than the castle
(_ibid._, 34).
[211] On the third floor, these niches are divided into two stages
and connected by an upper gallery which pierces the abutments of the
vault, and surrounds the whole apartment. The method of vaulting this
gallery behind the abutments, so as to give additional resistance to
the masonry of the tower, is described by Lefèvre-Pontalis, _op. cit._
94: see plan _ibid._, p. 93.
[212] In the angle-towers at Coucy, however, the stairs take the form
of vices, and do not curve with the wall, although ceasing at each
floor.
[213] The gabled coping of the parapet formed the central support
for the sloping roof of the outer gallery and of the corresponding
_coursière_ on the inner side.
[214] It stands on a promontory between two creeks at the head of the
inlet known as the Pembroke river.
[215] The domestic buildings may be in part earlier, but were largely
reconstructed in the thirteenth century.
[216] The tower is sometimes described as being of five stages: the
dome, however, was merely a vault, and did not form a separate stage.
[217] An account of Flint castle is given by Harvey, _Castles and
Walled Towns_, p. 123 _seq._ Speed’s map of Flintshire, made _c._ 1604,
shows that the tower was joined to the adjacent curtain by a wall, the
rampart-walk of which probably gave access to the entrance on the first
floor of the tower.
[218] In 1277 the castle of Flint was a timber structure, so that the
present work cannot be earlier than the end of the thirteenth century.
The masonry is composed of large blocks of yellow sandstone, decayed
where they are exposed to the tide. There was an outer bailey, the
platform of which alone remains, with a ditch between it and the castle
proper.
[219] These holes do not, however, surround the tower, so that the
passage may have been only partially roofed.
[220] The keep of Launceston was probably built about the close of the
twelfth century: that at Flint later, as already noted.
[221] Reproduced in _Memorials of Old Yorkshire_, 1909, opposite p. 256.
[222] _I.e._, retaining walls used to face (_revêtir_) a sloping
surface.
[223] A bartizan is a small turret or lookout corbelled out at an
angle of a tower or on the surface of a wall. The word is connected
with “brattice” (_bretèche_); and such turrets, like the machicolated
parapet, are the stone counterpart of the bratticing and hoarding of
timber applied to fortresses at an earlier date.
[224] Ventress’s model of the castle, made in 1852, shows the great
hall near the north-east corner of the outer ward, its west end being
nearly opposite the main entrance of the castle. The outer ward nearly
surrounded the small inner ward, which contained the keep.
[225] At Richmond the hall and its adjacent buildings were unusually
complete for their date, and the tower-keep was not planned as a
dwelling-house. None of our tower-keeps, Porchester excepted, are so
purely military in character.
[226] The origin of this term is doubtful; some think it to be a
corruption of “barbican”—a work covering the entrance to the house
or castle proper. Large outer baileys, as at Ludlow (96) and Coucy,
correspond to the “barmkins” of the north of England.
[227] At Arundel, Cardiff, and Warwick, mount-and-bailey castles which
are still inhabited, the present great halls stand on sites which
were doubtless occupied by the original halls built by the founders.
All three were largely rebuilt at a later date, and have been further
restored in modern times. Warwick was one of the Conqueror’s earliest
castles; Arundel was founded before 1086, Cardiff about 1093. A large
portion of the _enceinte_ at Cardiff follows the line of the curtain of
the Roman station (see _Archæologia_, lvii. pp. 335-52).
[228] At Boothby Pagnell there is a cylindrical chimney-shaft very
similar to that of the hall at Christchurch.
[229] The usual arrangement even in small cottages: _cf._ Chaucer,
_Cant. Tales_, B. 4022 (the house of the dairy-woman in the Nonne
Preestes Tale), “Ful sooty was hir bour, and eek hir halle.”
[230] The word “solar” or “soller” (_solarium_ = a terrace exposed to
the sun) was used indiscriminately of any room, gallery, or loft above
the ground-level of a building: _e.g._, the loft or gallery above a
chancel-screen was commonly known as a “solar,” and the same word
should be applied to the chamber, inaccurately called a “parvise,” on
the first floor of a church porch. The word, however, is sometimes
applied to a well-lighted parlour facing south, without respect to
the floor on which it stands, _e.g._, the abbot’s solar at Haughmond
(_Archæol. Journal_, lxvi. 307) and at Jervaulx (_Yorks. Archæol.
Journal_, xxi. 337).
[231] Ord. Vit., iv. 19: “Super solarium ... tesseris ludere ceperunt.”
The word “solarium” may be used, of course, in this passage with
reference merely to the site of the house—_i.e._, it may mean “the
first floor above the ground.” In this case William and Henry may have
been playing dice in the hall itself, which, as at Christchurch, may
have occupied the whole “solarium.” Robert was evidently outside the
house.
[232] Bates, _Border Holds of Northumberland_ attributes the walling,
etc., of Warkworth castle “on its present general lines” to Robert,
son of Roger (1169-1214), who obtained in 1199, for 300 marks, a
confirmation of the grant of the castle and manor from John.
[233] So called in Clarkson’s survey, made in 1567. One explanation of
the name is that the tower was similar to one in Carrickfergus castle,
on Belfast Lough. Clarkson describes its polygonal form as “round of
divers squares.”
[234] This entrance has been blocked, and the modern entrance has been
cut through a window-opening, in the adjoining bay to the west.
[235] The aisle-walls are low and the whole building is covered by a
single high-pitched roof, so that there is no clerestory.
[236] The same feature occurs at the west end of the great hall at
Auckland, where the daïs was placed: there are regular responds at the
east end, but the eastern bay was made somewhat wider than the rest, to
give room for the screens.
[237] Bishop Bek (1284-1311) probably heightened the aisle-walls and
inserted traceried windows. Cosin (1660-72) rebuilt the greater part
of the outer walls, renewed Bek’s windows, and added the present
clerestory and roof: the splendid screen, which divides the chapel from
the ante-chapel, was also part of his work.
[238] The work of this late period is attributed to Bishop Tunstall
(1530-59). Cosin at a later date made additions to the chapel.
[239] At the fortified manor-house of Drayton, some fourteen miles
south-east of Rockingham, the great hall is a fabric of the later half
of the thirteenth century, although the date has been obscured by later
alterations. The vaulted cellar at the east end of the hall (_c._ 1270)
is almost intact; but the great chamber above was rebuilt about the end
of the seventeenth century.
[240] As at Penshurst. The hearth-stone remains at Stokesay. At Haddon
the great fireplace in the west wall was inserted several years after
the hall was built.
[241] At Harlech the kitchen was at right angles to the hall, against
the south curtain.
[242] The words “horn-work,” “demilune,” or “ravelin,” were applied in
later fortification to flanked outworks which presented a salient angle
to the field, _i.e._, on the side of attack. To such defences in the
middle ages the general name of “barbican” seems to have been given.
[243] The mining operations, so successful at Château-Gaillard, were
not without their own danger to the miners. In the siege of Coucy by
the count of Saint-Pol in 1411, the traditional method was used to
undermine one of the towers of the base-court. A party of the besiegers
descended to admire the preparations. The wooden stays, however, were
not strong enough to support the weight of the tower, which fell
unexpectedly, and buried the men in the mine. Their remains have never
come to light.
[244] These are additions to the wall, probably made soon after the
building of the great cylindrical tower. The wall seems to be of the
earlier part of the twelfth century, and may have enclosed the bailey
from the first. No traces of a mount remain.
[245] The position of Appleby town and castle, within a great sweep of
the Eden, is somewhat similar.
[246] Apartments, known as the Constable’s lodging, were on the first
floor of the gatehouse: the portcullis probably descended through the
thickness of the south wall of this floor, which was not pierced for a
window.
[247] The common idea that molten lead was poured through these holes
on the besiegers is a mere legend. This valuable material would hardly
have been employed for this purpose. Powdered quick-lime, however, may
have been used, with even more deadly effect.
[248] This applies, of course, to almost all vaulted towers which
are cylindrical in plan, and not to gatehouse towers alone: _e.g._,
the towers of the inner ward of Coucy. But, even where there is
no vaulting, the interior plan of cylindrical towers is sometimes
polygonal—_e.g._, in the western angle-towers at Harlech, on all floors
as well as in the basement. In the eastern angle-towers of the same
castle, the interior of the basements is cylindrical. Clark, ii. 73,
describes these angle-towers inaccurately.
[249] The entrances to such guard-rooms, where great thickness was
given to the outer wall, took the form of narrow elbow-shaped lobbies,
which would be a source of difficulty and deception to an attacking
force.
[250] The Black gate was built in 1247: the entrance was protected by
an outer barbican in 1358.
[251] Holes in the masonry for the beam to which the pulley was fixed
may be seen, _e.g._, in the gateways at Conway and Rhuddlan.
[252] At Sandal (86) there was a barbican guarding the entrance to a
shell-keep.
[253] Conisbrough is virtually a castle of one ward set on an isolated
hill, not unlike Restormel in Cornwall.
[254] The entrance may be compared to the more perfect plan of the
barbican and platform at Conway (254).
[255] The wall of _enceinte_ at Scarborough is probably in great part
the wall which defended the castle from its foundation.
[256] They appear to have been a feature of the keep at Pontefract;
_cf._ also Micklegate, Monk, and Bootham bars at York, which have
bartizans at the outer angles. At Lincoln the wall of the upper floor
of the gatehouse, between the bartizans, presents an obtuse angle to
the field.
[257] The main gatehouse (Belle-Chaise) was built under abbot Tustin
(1236-64); the _châtelet_ was added under Pierre Le Roy in 1393.
[258] The fortifications of Coucy were built in the thirteenth century:
the round tower in front of the Porte de Laon was superseded in 1551
by a bastion of pentagonal form. The southern gate of Coucy (Porte
de Soissons) was made in a re-entering angle of the town wall: the
southern gate at Conway (Porth-y-Felin) shows the same disposition. The
walls of Tenby were originally built early in the reign of Edward III.:
letters patent, granting murage for seven years to the men of Tenby for
the construction of their walls, were issued 6th March 1327-28 (Pat. 2
Edw. III., pt. 1, m. 22).
[259] Plan in Oman, _Art of War_, opposite p. 530.
[260] The northern rampart-walk at Coucy was widened by the building
of an arcade of thirteen pointed arches against the inner face of the
wall, connecting a series of internal buttresses. Part of the western
wall of the town of Southampton was widened, some time later than the
actual building of the wall, by the addition of eighteen arches upon
the outer face (293). The soffits of the arches were pierced by long
machicolations—a necessary precaution in so exceptional an arrangement.
[261] In the battlement of the donjon of Coucy, each piece of solid
wall between the arched embrasures is pierced by an arrow-loop (177).
[262] Viollet-le-Duc, _La Cité de Carcassonne_, p. 27, has a drawing
of a similar device with an upper and lower shutter (245): the upper
shutter is propped open by iron guards: while the lower is hung in iron
hooks fixed in the face of the wall.
[263] _Cf._ sections of church parapets in Bond, _Gothic Architecture
in England_, pp. 385-8.
[264] At Kenilworth the Water tower, on the south curtain of the
base-court, has a fireplace in the basement.
[265] Garde-robes built upon arches across re-entering angles of a wall
occur on each side of a large buttress in the west wall of Southampton.
A similar feature occurs at the junction of the north curtain of
Porchester castle with one of the Roman towers. In both cases the
addition was probably made in the fourteenth century.
[266] These towers appear to be of the fourteenth century, and are
therefore much later in date than the towers of the inner curtain.
[267] At Flint, Rhuddlan, and several other castles, the angle-towers
were three-quarter circles, the face towards the bailey being a flat
wall, on which, at Rhuddlan as at Harlech, the rampart-walk was
corbelled out.
[268] These walls, pierced by seven gates and flanked by thirty-nine
rectangular towers, were begun under Pope Clement VI. in 1345, and
finished _c._ 1380. The rampart is reached by stairs set against the
inner face of the walls. The walls of Aigues-Mortes, built 1272-5, and
of Carcassonne, begun earlier and completed later than Aigues-Mortes,
belong to an earlier period of fortification, corresponding to that of
our Edwardian castles. Of other well-known French examples, the walls
of Mont-Saint-Michel are of various dates from the thirteenth to the
fifteenth century: those of Domfront are partly of the thirteenth,
those of Fougères (250) of the fifteenth century, and those of
Saint-Malo chiefly of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The
thirteenth-century _enceinte_ of Coucy has already been referred to. A
list of the numerous remains of town walls in France will be found in
Enlart, ii. 623 _seq._, under the name of each department.
[269] Clark, i. 460, 312, 314.
[270] The cross-wall at Carnarvon is gone.
[271] The polygonal towers which flank the great gatehouse at Denbigh
had the same characteristic of obtuse angles, as can be still seen
where the masonry has not been stripped from the rubble core.
[272] The threshold of the gateway was from 35 to 40 feet above the
bottom of the ditch.
[273] The eastern gateway was defended in the same way.
[274] Le Krak (Kala’at-el-Hosn) was rebuilt in 1202, and held by the
Franks till 1271 (Enlart, ii. 536). It was a frontier fortress of the
county of Tripoli in Syria, commanding the mountain country to the
east, and must be distinguished from the great castle of Kerak in Moab,
near the Dead sea, built about 1140, and surrendered in 1188, “the
eastern bulwark of the kingdom of Jerusalem” (Oman, _Art of War_, 541).
The entrance to the castle of Kerak has been described above, pp. 240,
241.
[275] One feature of the defences of Berkhampstead is the series of
earthen bastions, applied to the outer bank on the north side of the
castle, probably at a date long after the foundation of the stronghold.
[276] The breadth of the “lists” or intermediate defence of
the town-walls at Carcassonne varies. On the steep western and
south-western sides they are very narrow, and in one place are covered
by the rectangular Bishop’s tower. The ground-floor of this was a
gateway, which could be used to shut off one part of the lists from
each other. Of the castle and its defences more will be said later.
[277] At Newcastle the plan was nearly concentric; but the curtains
of the outer and inner ward met at one point, and the outer ward was
a large space, containing the domestic buildings, while the inner was
nearly filled by the keep. The concentric scheme was therefore almost
accidental, and no simultaneous use of both lines of defence was
possible.
[278] _Cf._ the outer ditch constructed to cover the barbican at
Alnwick, where there was possibly a further outwork next the town.
[279] All these gatehouses, like the gatehouse at Rockingham and others
of the same period, have a central passage, flanked by round towers
towards the field. Traitors’ gate, however, has an entrance of great
breadth, wide enough to admit a boat from the river; and the interior
is an oblong pool, without flanking guard-rooms. The round towers cap
the outer angles, but are of relatively small importance in the plan.
The interior pool is actually part of the ditch between the outer ward
and the Thames, and the gateway is “a barbican ... placed astride upon
the ditch” (Clark, ii. 242).
[280] These angle-towers appear to belong in great part to the end of
the twelfth century: the Beauchamp tower is generally attributed to the
reign of Edward III.
[281] These and the adjacent curtain are largely of the twelfth
century: the Bloody tower was added in the fourteenth century.
[282] Thus protecting the quay outside Traitors’ gate. _Cf._ the
spur-wall at Beaumaris.
[283] The thirteenth-century work in the great hall (103) of Chepstow
castle is unusually elaborate for military work of the period: nowhere
in English castles have we such splendour and beauty of detail as that
of which there remain many indications at Coucy.
[284] It was begun about 1267 by Gilbert de Clare, eighth earl of
Gloucester and seventh earl of Hertford (d. 1295).
[285] The inner ward at Kenilworth lay at all points within an outer
line of defence. The outer ward, narrow on the south and west, was
very broad on the east and north, and its western half was cut up into
sections by cross-walls: it was also crossed by a ditch in front of the
inner ward. The lake did not surround the castle, and on the north its
outer defence was a very deep dry ditch.
[286] The partisans of the Despensers held Caerphilly against Queen
Isabel in 1326: its defenders were granted a general pardon, from which
Hugh, son of Hugh le Despenser the younger, was excepted, 15th February
1326-7 (Pat. 1 Edw. III., pt. 1, m. 29). One of the defenders, John
Cole, received a special pardon on 20th February (_ibid._, m. 32).
There is no record of a definite siege.
[287] The earthwork or redoubt on the north-west side of the castle is
probably of this period: no definite details of the destruction of the
castle are preserved.
[288] The inner buildings at Rhuddlan have entirely disappeared: traces
of one or two fireplaces are left in the curtain.
[289] At Rhuddlan a passage, protected by an outer wall ending in a
square tower, descended the river-bank to the water-gate.
[290] Clark (i. 217) places the date of foundation about 1295.
[291] The outer drum towers are large and imposing, though low: the
inner angles are capped by smaller towers, which bear much the same
relation to the gatehouses as the outer round towers to Traitors’ gate
in the Tower of London.
[292] Of these towers, that on the west has an outer salient or spur,
on the sides of which two bartizans are corbelled out: these are united
into one, so that the outer face of the upper stage of the tower is
rounded into a semicircle. The eastern tower is smaller, with a solid
base: the western part of the upper portion is corbelled off in the
angle between the tower and a rectangular southern projection. The
upper stages of the towers completely command the approach, while the
projection just mentioned would conceal a small body of defenders
posted between the gateway and the spur-wall (236).
[293] This was not founded by the Crown, like the great castles
of North Wales, but, like Caerphilly, was a private foundation.
It passed by marriage, early in the fourteenth century, into the
possession of the house of Lancaster. Some of the most important
English castles—_e.g._, Kenilworth, Knaresborough, Lancaster, Lincoln,
Pontefract, and Pickering—came at various times into the possession of
this royal house, and, at the accession of Henry IV., became castles of
the Crown as seized of the duchy of Lancaster.
[294] The stair to the rampart-walk, built against the curtain, was,
however, normal in the defences of towns (241).
[295] It may be compared with the division of the outer face of the
polygonal tower at Stokesay into two smaller half-octagons (306).
[296] Viollet-le-Duc’s drawing (_La Cité de Carcassonne_, p.75) shows
a rampart-walk on each of the enclosing walls of this passage. He also
shows the passage crossed by a series of looped barriers, so placed
that each formed a separate line of defence, guarded by a few soldiers,
and compelled an enemy to pursue a zigzag course through the passage.
Much allusion has been already made to oblique and elbow-shaped
contrivances for impeding an enemy’s progress: the antiquity of these
is evident from the entrances to earthworks like Maiden Castle (see
Chapter I.).
[297] Description and plan in Blanchetière, _Le Donjon ... de
Domfront_, pp. 59-63. The date there given is actually earlier than the
probable epoch of construction.
[298] The progress of fire-arms in English warfare was slow. See the
various articles by R. Coltman Clephan, F.S.A., in _Archæol. Journal_,
lxvi., lxvii., and lxviii. The earliest picture of a cannon is in a
MS. at Christ Church, Oxford, written in 1326 (lxviii. 49), while
the earliest mention of a hand-gun in England appears to be in 1338
(lxvi. 153-4). The long-bow continued to be the popular weapon of the
individual English soldier until long after this date.
[299] The ramparts of Saint-Paul-du-Var (Alpes Maritimes) are said
to belong to the epoch of the wars between Francis I. and Charles
V. To the same period belong the fortifications of Lucca, Verona,
and Antwerp. The present walls of Berwick were begun somewhat later,
in 1558, enclosing a space considerably smaller than the original
_enceinte_ of the town, as fortified by Edward I.
[300] Holes with embrasures for cannon were in many cases pierced
in the walls of fortresses during the fifteenth century, or were
formed, as in the eastern tower at Warkworth, by blocking the ordinary
cross-loops through most of their height.
[301] This is very clearly seen in the fortified towns of Italy, or
in the towns founded by Edward I. and by the kings of France in the
southern districts of France.
[302] _Pomerium_ = the space _pone muros_, _i.e._, at the back of the
walls. The word was at first applied to the sacred boundary of Rome and
other towns, which limited the _auspicia_ of the city.
[303] The re-erection of the rectangular wall-turrets at Newcastle,
which are of very slight projection from the wall, appears to date
from 1386: a writ of aid was granted to the mayor and bailiffs on 29th
November in that year for the repair of the walls and bridge of the
town (Pat. 10 Rich. II., pt. 1, m. 8).
[304] _I.e._, the lower gate. The north-western gateway is the upper
gate, Porth Uchaf.
[305] Every monastery was, of course, surrounded by a wall; but it was
only in certain cases and after a certain period that such walls were
crenellated.
[306] Pat. 4 Edw. I., m. 12.
[307] _Ibid._, 13 Edw. I., m. 22.
[308] _Ibid._
[309] _Ibid._, m. 15.
[310] _Ibid._, 14 Edw. I., m. 24.
[311] _Ibid._, m. 19 (sched.).
[312] _Ibid._, 24 Edw. I., m. 8.
[313] _Ibid._, 27 Edw. I., m. 29.
[314] _Ibid._, 2 Edw. II., pt. 2, m. 25. The abbot and convent of St
Mary’s, York, had licence to crenellate their wall, except on the side
towards the city, 12th July 1318 (_Ibid._, 12 Edw. II., pt. I, m. 31).
[315] September 1315 (Pat. 9 Edw. II., pt. 1, m. 18), and 24th February
1315-6 (_Ibid._, pt. 2, m. 31).
[316] _Ibid._, 12 Edw. II., pt. 1, m. 7. No licence for crenellation
had previously been given. The licences, here and elsewhere, explain
that homicide and other crimes in the close by night made walling
desirable. The gates were to be closed from twilight to sunrise.
[317] Burghersh also had licence to crenellate his manor-houses of
Stow Park and Nettleham in Lincolnshire and Liddington in Rutland,
16th November 1336 (Pat. 10 Edw. III., pt. 2, m. 18). A comprehensive
licence was granted, 20th July 1377 (_Ibid._, 1 Rich. II., pt. 1, m.
26) to Ralph Erghum, bishop of Salisbury, to wall and crenellate the
city of Salisbury and his manor-houses at Salisbury, Bishop’s Woodford,
Potterne, Bishops Cannings, and Ramsbury in Wilts, Sherborne in Dorset,
Chardstock in Devon, Sonning in Berks, and his house in Fleet Street.
[318] There were four of these double gatehouses in the _enceinte_. The
fifth gatehouse, Pottergate, was single.
[319] Bishop Wyvill had a grant, 1st March 1331-2, of the stones of the
cathedral of Old Sarum and the old residential houses, for the repair
of the cathedral and enclosure of the precinct (Pat. 5 Edw. III., pt.
1, m. 27).
[320] Licence to crenellate Whalley, “the church and close,” was
granted 10th July 1348 (Pat. 22 Edw. III., pt. 2, m. 20).
[321] Pat. 6 Rich. II., pt. 1, m. 22: a further licence to crenellate
the abbey precinct bears date 1389, 6th May (Pat. 12 Rich. II., pt. 2,
m. 13).
[322] Pat. 3 Rich. II., pt. 2, m. 10.
[323] The beautiful rectangular gatehouse of Battle abbey is earlier
than Thornton. Licence to crenellate was granted 9th June 1339 (Pat. 12
Edw. III., pt. 2, m. 28).
[324] One of these towers remains: the other, with the adjacent
curtain, is gone.
[325] Pat. 19 Edw. I., m. 2.
[326] _Ibid._, 2 Edw. II., pt. 2, m. 19.
[327] Pat. 3 Edw. II., m. 18.
[328] 28th August 1315 (Pat. 9 Edw. II., pt. 1, m. 25).
[329] See a commission to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, to survey and
repair defects in Dover castle, 22nd May 1425 (Pat. 3 Hen. VI., pt. 2,
m. 17).
[330] It will be remembered that the gatehouse of the quasi-concentric
castle of Kidwelly, only a few miles distant from Llanstephan, is also
situated upon the outer line of defence.
[331] Bishop Bek enfeoffed Henry Percy of the manor and town, 19th
November 1309 (Pat. 3 Edw. II., m. 23).
[332] It has been already pointed out that this older house may have
simply taken the form of a series of buildings against the encircling
wall of a large shell-keep.
[333] John, Lord Neville, obtained licence from Bishop Hatfield of
Durham to crenellate Raby in 1378 (O. S. Scott, _Raby, its Castle and
its Lords_, 1906, P-47).
[334] At Middleham, where the plan of the fore-building is rather
exceptional, there was a passage through the eastern part of the
ground-floor of the forebuilding: this, however, was not the only way
from the northern to the southern half of the castle. The first floor
of the tower at Knaresborough, which formed a great guard-room, is
in a very ruinous state; but there are clear indications of the main
entrance near the north-east angle, and the inner entrance in the south
wall, at right angles to the outer, still remains. There is also a vice
in the south wall, by which the inner ward could be reached when the
gates were closed. This tower, of course, never contained the domestic
buildings of the castle; but the kitchen was in the basement, to which
there were three doors of entry from the inner ward. The approach to
each gateway from outside seems to have been a rising causeway built on
arches.
[335] The tower of Belsay measures 51½ by 47½ feet. The tower of
Knaresborough, which is of the same period, measures 62 by 54 feet;
while that of Gilling measures 79½ by 72½ feet.
[336] This is said to have been the medieval vicarage of the church,
which was appropriated to the cathedral priory of Carlisle. A
pele-tower forms part of the rectories of Elsdon and Rothbury and of
the vicarage of Embleton, Northumberland.
[337] The term “pele-yard” is applied to the base-court of the castle
of Prudhoe in Pat. 1 Rich. II., pt. 1, m. 1; where there is a licence
to Gilbert de Umfraville, earl of Angus, to apply a rent to the
augmentation of a chaplain’s stipend in the “chantry of St Mary in le
Peleyerde of Prodhowe.”
[338] Enlart (ii. 623-753) quotes 242 examples of French churches
which show remains of fortification. Most of the midland and southern
departments of France contain a few; but the thickest clusters occur
near the northern frontier (15 in the Aisne, 10 in the Ardennes
department), and on the coast of Languedoc and Roussillon, where
inroads of pirates were common (Pyrénées-Orientales 22; Hérault, 12).
Among the larger fortified churches were the cathedrals of Agde,
Béziers, Lodève, and Saint-Pons (Hérault), Elne (Pyrénées-Orientales),
Pamiers (Ariège), Viviers (Ardèche), and Saint-Claude (Jura),
and the abbey churches of Saint-Denis (Seine), Saint-Victor at
Marseilles (Bouches-du-Rhône), La Chaise-Dieu (Haute-Loire), Moissac
(Tarn-et-Garonne), and Tournus (Saône-et-Loire). The example of Ewenny
was followed in one or two churches of the same district, such as
Newton Nottage, and in the peninsula of Gower.
[339] At Llanfihangel-cwm-Du, near Crickhowell, there was a fireplace
upon the first floor of the tower until recently: the vent for the
smoke remains in one of the corner turrets of the tower.
[340] The constant pressure of Scottish invasion upon the northern
border is illustrated by the persistence of military architecture in
the counties of Northumberland and Cumberland. Thus, as late as 1399,
William Strickland undertook the building of Penrith castle “for
fortifying that town and the whole adjacent country” (Pat. 22 Rich.
II., pt. 2, m. 16; _cf._ pt. 3, m. 37).
[341] Bishop Burnell was building this house in 1284. He left the king
at Conway on 25th July, to look after the progress of the works (Pat.
12 Edw. I., m. 7).
[342] 4th July (Pat. 3 Rich. II., pt. 1, m. 43). A contract is still
preserved, of 14th September 1378.
[343] 26th April (Pat. 5 Rich. II., pt. 2, m. 21).
[344] The builder of Raby, John, Lord Neville (d. 1388), was also
responsible for the fortification of Sheriff Hutton.
[345] This date is given in the 43rd Report of the Deputy-Keeper of
the Public Records, p. 71. The licence, as the castle was within the
palatinate, was granted by Bishop Skirlaw.
[346] The licence to Thomas de Heton to “make a castle or fortalice” of
Chillingham bears date 27th January 1343-4 (Pat. 18 Edw. III., pt. 1,
m. 46). Some of the masonry in the angle-towers is, however, of a much
earlier date than this.
[347] The mount remains at the west end of the enclosure, but the
shell-keep on its summit has been removed.
[348] The gatehouse and barbican in the east curtain, as well as the
older portion of the dwelling-house, were the work of Thomas Beauchamp,
earl of Warwick (d. 1369): Cæsar’s tower and Guy’s tower were the work
of his son Thomas, who died in 1401.
[349] This-is the usual date given for the tower, which is entered from
the first floor of the great donjon, and from the lower floor of the
“lesser donjon” attached to one side of the keep. E. Lefèvre-Pontalis,
_Le Château de Coucy_, p. 82, departs from the usual date to assign the
tower to Philip Augustus, two centuries earlier. The details certainly
appear to be of a period much earlier than the fifteenth century.
[350] The turrets attached to some of the towers at Conway and Harlech
are at the side, not in the centre. Such raised turrets were useful
as look-out posts, and a watcher posted upon them could inform the
defenders on the rampart-walk below of movements which they might not
be able to follow for themselves.
[351] Pat. 9 Rich. II., pt. 1, m. 22.
[352] Pat. 9 Rich. II., pt. 2, m. 24.
[353] An interesting gatehouse, belonging to the later years of Edward
I., is that of Denbigh, which was probably built by Henry de Lacy,
the last earl of Lincoln (d. 1310). Here a noble archway, flanked by
two octagonal towers, gives access through a passage to an octagonal
central hall, beyond which is a smaller octagonal guard-room. The inner
gateway to the enclosure is set in a side of the octagon, obliquely to
the outer entrance. The plan is apparently unique. The upper portion of
the gatehouse is badly ruined, and the walls have been much stripped;
but there is a statue, probably of the founder, left above the entrance
archway, which is set in a niche and panel treated with a considerable
amount of ornamental detail.
[354] The barrel-vault of a basement chamber in one of the
curtain-towers retains the marks of the wattled centering on which it
was built. This is persistently asserted to be a mark of Roman origin.
As a matter of fact, no part of the present castle can be proved to be
earlier than the beginning of the twelfth century, when Roger of Poitou
may have moved the head of his honour here from Penwortham, south of
the Ribble. The castle, however, lies partly within, and partly outside
the limits of a Roman military station.
[355] This is the date proposed by Bates, _Border Holds_: C. H.
Hartshorne (_Archæol. Inst._, Newcastle, vol. ii.) proposed a later
date, _c._ 1435-40. Mr Bates’ date is more likely than the other: for
neither is there any direct evidence.
[356] New works were begun at Porchester in 1386, when Robert Bardolf,
the constable, was appointed to impress masons, carpenters, etc.,
and to take materials at the king’s expense (Pat. 8 Rich. II., pt.
2, m. 23). This probably applies to the building of the barbican,
but the hall may also have been remodelled at this period. There are
considerable remains of twelfth-century work in the substructure of the
hall, as already noted.
[357] The stone gatehouse of the Norman castle appears to be
incorporated in the fourteenth-century work, the outer archway, which
was covered by a barbican, being merely a facing added to earlier work.
The inner walls of the gatehouse were also lengthened, as part of the
fourteenth-century enlargement.
[358] John of Gaunt was duke of Lancaster 1362-99. The gatehouse of
Lancaster castle, known as John of Gaunt’s gateway, was not built until
after his death. See p. 327.
[359] This hall was probably built late in the thirteenth or early in
the fourteenth century.
[360] Charles also seems to have rebuilt the chapel on the south side
of the enclosure.
[361] See the drawing by Androuet du Cerceau and plans in W. H. Ward,
_French Châteaux and Gardens in the XVIth Century_, Plates III., IV.,
and p. 11.
[362] See p. 285 above.
[363] The three principal features of the strong tower at Stokesay
are (1) its isolation from the range of buildings adjoining it, its
only entrances being from the outside, in the basement and on the
first floor; (2) the division of its face towards the field into two
small half-octagons; (3) the stairs carried from floor to floor in
the thickness of the wall. The stair from the basement to the first
and second floors crosses the entrance-lobby on the first floor; but,
in order to reach the roof, the second-floor chamber has to be passed
through, and a new stair entered in the embrasure of a window. This was
planned partly, as at Richmond and Conisbrough, to give the defenders
complete control of the stair, and partly to keep the stair within the
wall of the tower which was least open to attack, and could therefore
be lightened most safely.
[364] This was done towards the end of the twelfth century. The licence
stated that the wall was to be without crenellations (_sine kernello_).
[365] The hall may be a little earlier than the fourteenth century: the
windows seem to indicate the period 1290-1310. The great chimney and
the heavy battlement were added when the porch to the hall was built.
[366] Such a position for a medieval stronghold was not unusual. Thus
Richmond castle is commanded by much higher hills on the north and
south-west. In medieval warfare, however, before fire-arms had received
any full development, an enemy would have gained little advantage
by occupying a commanding position at some distance from the place
attacked. In 1644, the Parliamentary force which besieged Wingfield
attempted to breach the walls from Pentrich common, on slightly higher
ground to the south-east. This was found impossible, and the cannon had
to be moved to a wood on the west side of the manor before any damage
was done.
[367] The additions at this end were possibly the work of John Talbot,
second earl of Shrewsbury (d. 1460), to whom Cromwell sold the manor
shortly before his death. The earl certainly did some building at
Wingfield: see the short, but carefully compiled _Guide to Wingfield
Manor_, by W. H. Edmunds, p. 11.
[368] This can clearly be seen from the small open courtyard on the
north-west side of the great chamber block. The kitchen block is there
seen to have been built up against the west wall of the great chamber
and its lower stage, without any bonding.
[369] At Conway, Porchester, etc., however, the large hall was probably
intended for the use of the garrison. The great hall at Wingfield was
essentially the hall of a dwelling-house, in which the inner court is
kept quite separate from the base-court, where possibly a common hall
was provided for the men-at-arms who might be lodged there.
[370] This tower, like that at Stokesay, can be entered only by an
outer door. This is at the foot of a turret containing a broad vice.
The doorway had no portcullis, but was commanded by a slit in the wall
from the stair, which ascends on the left of the entrance lobby.
[371] The gateways of the outer and inner courtyards each had double
doors. There was no provision for portcullises. Each gateway has a
small postern entrance on one side of the main archway. This would be
used after the great doors had been closed for the night.
[372] These have recently been removed, to the great detriment of this
noble tower.
[373] The high tower at Wingfield is not machicolated, and affords a
curious contrast in this respect to Tattershall.
[374] The late thirteenth-century hall at Little Wenham, near Hadleigh,
is an early example of a brick house in this district.
[375] Other Lincolnshire examples of brick-work are the gatehouse
of Thornton abbey (1382), already described, and the early
sixteenth-century manor-house on the Trent above Gainsborough, known as
Torksey castle.
[376] The ditch at Hurstmonceaux is now dry. That at Compton Wyniates
has been partly filled up. The moat of Kentwell, an Elizabethan house,
is still perfect.
[377] The upper stories of these towers only are semicircular. The two
lower stages are half octagons. The towers have circular upper turrets
like those at Warwick.
[378] The castle of Amberley was built about 1379 by Bishop Rede of
Chichester, and is therefore nearly contemporary with Bodiam. It is
rectangular in shape, with lofty curtains, and has a gatehouse flanked
by round towers.
[379] _Lett. and Pap. Hen. VIII._, vol. IV., nos. 2,655, 2,656.
[380] _Lett. and Pap. Hen. VIII._, vol. IV., no. 1,089.
[381] Calendared _ibid._, vol. III., no. 1,186.
[382] Pat. 19 Edw. III., pt. 1, m. 25.
INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLACES
_N.B.—Illustrations are denoted by numbers followed by the name of the
photographer, draughtsman, or source from which the picture is derived._
A
Acton Burnell (Salop), castle, 298, 317, 338
Adrianople, siege of, 73
Æthelflaed, lady of the Mercians, 26, 28, 29, 30, 32, 41, 101
Æthelwulf, king of Wessex, 28
Agde (Hérault), cathedral, 315
Aigues-Mortes (Gard), 77, A. Thompson; 242, 246, 250, 289
Aire river, 85
Aisne department, fortified churches in, 315
Alan of Brittany, earl of Richmond, 47, 94, 101, 104, 107
Albi (Tarn), fortified cathedral, 315
Alençon (Orne), castle, 289, A. Thompson
Alençonnais, the, 52
Alesia [Alise (Côte-d’Or)], siege of, 46, 59, 60, 61, 79
Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, 97, 99, 189
Alfred the Great, king, 26, 28, 64
Alne river, 86
Alnwick (Northumberland), castle, 115, G. T. Clark; 243, J. P. Gibson;
310, A. Thompson; 7, 42, 43, 86, 115, 116, 210, 235, 245, 247,
265, 309, 310, 327, 328
Amaury, count of Evreux, 165
Amberley (Sussex), castle, 360
Amboglanna (Cumberland), 15
Amboise (Indre-et-Loire), castle, 338
Amiens (Somme), 22
Ancaster (Lincoln), 355
Anderida (Sussex), 12, 22;
_see_ Pevensey
Andover (Hants), 22
Angers (Maine-et-Loire), 27, 88, 118
Angevins, war of William I. with, 52
Anglesey, isle of, 278
Angus, earl of, _see_ Umfraville
Anjou, count of, _see_ Fulk
Anker river, 101
Antioch (Syria), siege of, 71, 164, 241
Antwerp, 290
Ardennes department, fortified churches in, 315
Ardres (Pas-de-Calais), castle, 54, 55
Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône), 315
Arnold, son of Robert, 52
Arras (Pas-de-Calais), 290
Arundel (Sussex), castle, 37, 115, 190, 360
Ashbourne (Derby), 318
Astures, Roman auxiliaries, 19
Auckland (Durham), castle, 197, 198, 200, 338
Autun (Sâone-et-Loire), 15
Avignon (Vaucluse), palace of the popes, 304;
walls, 246, 250, 295
Avon river (Bristol), 2, 88;
(Warwick), 29
Axholme, isle of, 56
Aydon (Northumberland), castle or fortified house, 189, 190, 312, 338
B
Badbury (Dorset), 25
Bakewell (Derby), 29
Bamburgh (Northumberland), castle, 91, J. P. Gibson, W. Maitland;
25, 62, 66, 86, 90, 120, 132, 133, 134, 137, 150, 155, 202, 230,
233
Bardolf, Robert, 335
Barking (Middlesex), 38
Barlborough (Derby), hall, 318
Barnard Castle (Durham), castle, 87, G. T. Clark; 85, 86, 163, 185
Baroche, la (Orne), 52
Barwick-in-Elmet (Yorks, W.R.), castle, 56
Basing house (Hants), 360
Bath (Somerset), 24, 25
Bath and Wells, bishop of, _see_ Burnell
Battle (Sussex), gatehouse of abbey, 304
Battlesbury (Wilts), 25
Bayeux (Calvados), castle, 45
—— bishop of, _see_ Odo
Beauchamp, house of, 109
—— Thomas, earl of Warwick (d. 1369), 321
—— Thomas, earl of Warwick (d. 1401), 321
Beaugency (Loiret), castle, 116, A. Thompson; 117, 118, 120
Beaumaris (Anglesey), castle, 277, G. T. Clark; 236, 278, A. Thompson;
7, 211, 225, 236, 251, 261, 265, 266, 268, 275, 276-9, 280, 282,
284
Beauvais (Oise), 22, 27
Bebbanburh, 25;
_see_ Bamburgh
Bedale (Yorks, N. R.), church tower, 316
Bedburn river, 8
Bedford, 29, 30, 32;
castle, 30, 32;
John, duke of, 330
Bek, Antony, bishop of Durham, 188, 189, 198, 200, 202, 309
Bellême, house of, 51;
Robert of, 55, 67, 85
Belsay (Northumberland), castle, 313, J. P. Gibson; 236, 312
Belvoir (Leicester), castle, 85, 360
Berkeley (Gloucester), castle, 142, 186, A. Thompson; 42, 43, 142,
186, 193, 194, 209, 210
Berkhampstead (Herts), castle, 42, A. Thompson; 42, 119, 263
Berry, John, duke of, 338
Berry Pomeroy (Devon), castle, 229, 358
Berwick-on-Tweed, town walls, 290, 291
Beverley (Yorks, E. R.), 295
Béziers (Hérault), cathedral, 315
Bignor (Sussex), Roman villa, 12
Birdoswald (Cumberland), 15
Bishop Auckland (Durham), 8;
and _see_ Auckland
Bishops Cannings (Wilts), manor-house, 301
Bishop’s Castle (Salop), 2
Bishop’s Woodford (Wilts), manor-house, 301
Black mountains, 184
Blackbury castle (Devon), 7, A. H. Allcroft; 6
Blackfriars, _see_ London
Blackwater river, 22, 29
Blois (Loir-et-Cher), castle, 337
Blyth (Notts) castle, 85;
and _see_ Tickhill;
priory, 85
Bodiam (Sussex), castle, 323, E. A. and G. R. Reeve; 326, A. Thompson;
210, 322, 325, 326, 327, 330, 335, 360
Bokerley dyke, 24, 25
Bolton-in-Wensleydale (Yorks, N. R.), castle, 316, 317, 318, 330,
362, 367
Bolton-on-Swale (Yorks, N. R.), church tower, 316
Boothby Pagnell (Lincoln), manor-house, 190, 192
Borcovicus (Northumberland), 14, A. Thompson; 15, 18, A. Thompson
(after Bruce); 15, 17, 18, 19
Bosham (Sussex), 36, A. Thompson (after Bayeux tapestry); 190
Boston (Lincoln), Hussey tower at, 355
Bothal (Northumberland), castle, 245, 327
Bourbourg, Louis de, 54
Bourges (Cher), 22
Boves (Somme), siege of, 70, 76
Bowes (Yorks, N. R.), tower, 131, 132, 133, 142, 145, 312
Bowness (Cumberland), 10
Bracieux, Pierre de, 73
Bradwell-juxta-Mare (Essex), 22
Brancaster (Norfolk), 12
Brancepeth (Durham), castle, 86
Brandenburg (Prussia), 26
Branodunum (Norfolk), 12
Brecon beacons, 274
—— castle, 44, 56, 87, 362, 365, 367
Breteuil, William of, 55
Bréval (Seine-et-Oise), 55, 67
Bridgnorth (Salop), 29;
castle, 108, 109, 119, 133
Bridlington (Yorks, E. R.), gatehouse of priory, 301
Brionne (Eure), castle, 56
Bristol, castle, 88;
walls and gateways, 292, 295, 296
—— channel, 24, 308
Brittany, mount-and-bailey castles in, 45;
Alan of, _see_ Alan
Brixworth (Northants), church, 100
Bronllys (Brecknock), castle, 183, 184
Bruce, house of, 85
Brunanburh, battle of, 63
Brutus, Marcus, 62
Buckingham, 29, 30, 32
—— castle, 30, 32
—— duke of, _see_ Stafford
Builth (Brecknock), castle, 50, G. T. Clark; 50, 51
Burgh Castle (Suffolk), 12, 16, 22
Burghersh, Henry, bishop of Lincoln, 301
Burghwallis (Yorks, W. R.), 100
Burgundy, 59, 64, 198
Burnell, Robert, bishop of Bath and Wells, 298, 317
Bury ditches (Salop), 6, A. Thompson; 2, 6
Bury St Edmunds (Suffolk), 25;
Moyses hall, 190
Busli, Roger de, 85
C
Cadbury (Somerset), 25
Caen (Calvados), 118;
abbey churches, 93
Caer Caradoc (near Clun, Salop), 6
Caerlaverock (Dumfries), castle, 364, J. P. Gibson; 304, 307
Caerphilly (Glamorgan), castle, 270, 271, 272, A. Thompson; 7, 160,
189, 205, 236, 264, 265, 270-2, 274-5, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280,
282, 284, 287, 309, 334, 352
Cahors (Lot), walled town, 65;
Pont Valentré, 297, 355
Calder river, 85
Caldicot (Monmouth), castle, 182, 184
Calleva Atrebatum (Hants), 14;
and _see_ Silchester
Cambridge, castle, 39, 40, 41
—— colleges, 193
Camulodunum (Essex), 12;
and _see_ Colchester
Canterbury (Kent), 28, 198;
archbishops of, _see_ Robert of Jumièges, Sudbury
—— castle, 46, 120, 128
—— west gate, 296, 304
Carcassonne (Aude), town and castle, 78, 239, 242, A. Thompson; 264,
283, Viollet-le-Duc; 79, 82, 236, 242, 246, 250, 264, 284, 286, 289
Cardiff (Glamorgan), 274;
castle, 114, A. Thompson; 191, G. T. Clark; 115, 190, 193, 194, 209
Carew (Pembroke), castle, 248, 336, A. Thompson; 202, 239, 240, 247,
252, 269, 304, 330, 333, 337, 362
Carisbrooke (Isle of Wight), castle, 111, R. Keene; 115
Carlisle (Cumberland), castle, 87, 88, 120, 361, 362, 367
—— cathedral priory, 312
Carnarvon, castle, 245, 253, G. T. Clark; 258, A. Thompson; 259,
F. Bond; 88, 189, 209, 224, 242, 245, 246, 248, 252, 255, 257,
261, 262, 265, 266, 269, 270, 279, 282, 284, 291
—— town walls, 251, A. Thompson; 88, 251, 291, 292, 295, 296
Carrickfergus (Antrim), castle, 194
Castles camp (Durham), 8
Castleton (Yorks, N. R.), castle, 85
Castrum Harundel (Sussex), 37;
and _see_ Arundel
Caus castle (Salop), 362
Cawood (Yorks, W. R.), castle, 85, 338
Ceawlin, king of West Saxons, 25
Cedd, St, 22
Cérisy-la-Forêt (Calvados), abbey church, 100
Chaise-Dieu, la (Haute-Loire), abbey church, 315
Champlitte, Guillaume de, 73
Chardstock (Devon), manor-house, 301
Charles the Bald, king of Neustria, 27, 29, 32
—— the Fat, king of Neustria, 27, 64
—— the Simple, king of Neustria, 28
—— V., emperor, 290
—— Martel, 65
Chartres (Eure-et-Loir), 22
—— count of, _see_ Theobald
Château-Gaillard (Eure), 163, A. Thompson, after Enlart; 175, A.
Thompson; 66, 68, 70, 71, 73, 76, 77, 163, 172, 175, 176, 215,
216, 229, 257, 264
Château-sur-Epte (Eure), 165
Chauny (Aisne), 295
Chedworth (Gloucester), Roman villa, 12
Chepstow (Monmouth), 182; castle, 103, 249, 268, A. Thompson; 104,
A. Thompson (after _Official Guide_); 56, 88, 104, 107, 175, 185,
189, 223, 249, 250, 268, 269, 280, 282, 359
—— town and walls, 88, 251, 295
Chester, castle, 39
—— city and walls, 14, 22, 23, 24, 119
Chesters (Northumberland), 15;
and _see_ Cilurnum
Chichester (Sussex), 14, 22, 23, 198;
bishop of, _see_ Rede
Chilham (Kent), castle, 120