THE KEEP DESCRIBED.
The great keep at Castle Hedingham is a fine specimen of the work of
the twelfth century. Its exact date has not been ascertained, but
its arrangement and its architectural detail point to the same date
as Rochester Castle (about 1130), and good authorities go so far as
to suggest that the same designer was employed on both. It has all
the characteristics of an early keep; a vast, plain mass of masonry,
slightly broken by the long vertical lines of shallow buttresses and
angle turrets, and pierced at each floor with small windows--smallest
near the ground where most accessible (Fig. 2). The entrance, as at
Peak Castle, and all early keeps, is some feet above the ground, and
in this case is approached by a flight of steps; it leads into the
first floor, below which at the ground level, or thereabouts, is the
cellar or store-room, approached only from the room above it. The plan
is quite simple (Fig. 3), consisting of a large room (38 by 31 ft.) on
each floor, enclosed by thick walls which are honeycombed with mural
chambers and recesses. Some of these chambers are _garde-robes_,
others were no doubt used as sleeping places by the family and
principal guests. Over the entrance floor were two others; first the
hall, a room with two tiers of windows, the upper of which gave on to
a gallery or triforium which made the circuit of the building in the
thickness of the wall: above the hall another room very similar to that
on the entrance floor.
Then came the roof, round which was a rampart walk protected by the
battlements, and leading to the four angle turrets which rose above
the general mass of the building. Access to these various floors was
given by a commodious circular staircase more than 11 ft. in diameter.
There were thus four main rooms; the basement, the entrance floor,
the hall of two storeys, and the room over it. All these, except the
basement, were warmed by a large fireplace, and lighted--if lighted it
can be called--by eight small windows. The hall had in addition eight
two-light windows in the triforium. There is no room which can be
identified as the kitchen; there is no indication that the windows were
glazed.
[Illustration: 2. Castle Hedingham, Essex. The Keep (_cir._ 1130).
The head of the entrance door is visible on the left: the opening on
the right is modern.]
[Illustration: 3. Castle Hedingham, Essex.
Plans of the Keep.
1. Ground Floor, or Basement.
2. First, or Entrance Floor.
3. The Great Hall.
4. Upper part of Hall, with Gallery.
5. Room over Hall.]
[Illustration: 4. Castle Hedingham, Essex.
A window of the gallery in the hall.]
Against the means of attack which were then available this place was
impregnable, but the safety thus assured must have been both gloomy
and draughty. In its way, however, it was a lordly residence; the main
rooms were spacious, the smaller rooms were considerable in number, the
staircase was of ample width. The gallery must have afforded a certain
amount of quasi-privacy to those who were not privileged to occupy the
mural chambers. The architectural detail of the doorways, windows,
arches, and fireplaces is good (Figs. 4, 5, 6). Across the middle of
the entrance floor and of the hall is thrown a fine bold semicircular
arch, of nearly 30 ft. span, to carry the floor of the room over (see
section, Fig. 5); the whole treatment is simple, sturdy, and splendid,
as befitted the chief stronghold of the race for whom it was built,
the De Veres, Earls of Oxford.
[Illustration: 5. Castle Hedingham, Essex.
Section of the Keep.]
[Illustration: 6. Castle Hedingham, Essex.
A Fireplace. Showing the short flue leading to a vertical vent in the
face of the wall.]
The fireplaces had not a flue such as we understand it, that is a long
shaft running up the whole height of the building and crowned by a
chimney; instead of this they had a short funnel contrived in the wall,
and leading almost directly to small vertical openings in the face of
the wall, cleverly concealed in the angle of a buttress (Fig. 6). The
fireplaces, moreover, were mere recesses in the wall surmounted by
round arches; there was no attempt at a projecting hood or any such
ornamental feature as we are accustomed to think of as a chimney-piece.
These things were to come later. They were, however, of generous size,
as indeed they might well be, for it must be remembered that the
windows were not glazed, and although they were too small to make the
place cheerful, they were quite large enough to make it cold, and as
each side of the room had an outside wall, the wind, from whatever
quarter it blew, would find its way in. It is true that there were
wooden shutters to the windows, which could be shut at night, but in
spite of this there was every inducement to maintain a large fire; the
volume of the flame may have overcome the disadvantage of the short
flue, but the smoke must have had difficulty in escaping through the
small vents, and doubtless much of it eventually found its way out
through the open windows.
The sleeping accommodation was very meagre. The lord, and perhaps some
of his family, had separate retiring places; they could not be called
rooms, for they were only such chambers as could be contrived in the
thickness of the walls; and in point of size, although not at all in
point of luxury, were comparable to a sleeping compartment on a modern
_train de luxe_. The household, men and women, old and young,
slept in the great hall, a custom which conduced neither to comfort
nor the observance of the proprieties. In the same room the whole
establishment had its meals. During the greater part of the day the
men, at any rate, were occupied with outdoor pursuits.
The Peak Castle, at Castleton in Derbyshire (Fig. 10, p. 19), is an
extremely interesting example of an early dwelling. Its situation may
be described as highly romantic, although that adjective of course
expresses a sentiment which is of comparatively modern origin. Up to
about the middle of the eighteenth century, travellers regarded such
desolate places as Old Sarum, or ruins so difficult of access as the
Peak Castle, with feelings approaching to horror. It was only towards
the end of that century, or in the early years of the nineteenth,
that the romantic aspect was appreciated. It is tolerably certain that
romance had no part in the selection of this site for a dwelling, but
rather the assurance of security which it offered. An extremely steep
spur of the rocky hill which forms one side of a precipitous dale--one
of the dales for which Derbyshire is famous--is deeply bitten into
by a gorge which almost severs it from its parent ridge (Fig. 7). An
irregular triangle of rocky ground is thus formed rising steeply from
its longest side up to the opposite angle, and bounded on one side
by the precipitous slope of the dale, and on the other by the sheer
descent of the gorge. No site could be better protected by nature. The
side next the gorge is absolutely inaccessible. The side next the dale
offers interesting hazards to good climbers. The remaining side is a
grass slope steeper than most modern roofs, and traversed by a zigzag
path up which the breathless visitor toils painfully. The town lies at
the foot of the slope; the castle, of no great extent, is placed at
its summit. The keep is built in the extreme angle, where the gorge
desists from finally biting its way through the side of the dale and
leaves a narrow rugged strip of rock to connect the almost detached
triangle from its parent hillside. A stone flung from one side of the
keep would fall sheer down the gorge; flung from the opposite side
would drop some 40 or 50 ft. on to the steep slope of the dale, and
thence descend with huge and rapid bounds to the bottom.
[Illustration: 7. Peak Castle, Derbyshire.
Plan of the Site.]
The summit of the triangle was enclosed by a wall running from the
gorge to the dale, thus forming a good-sized courtyard. It was of
course on the slope, and to make it rather more level, the lower part
was raised, partly it would seem on vaulted chambers, partly by filling
up earth against the wall. These chambers have never been explored, but
workmen who have repaired the wall bear testimony to their existence,
and if the description they give of some of the articles found in them
has been rightly interpreted, it would seem that the Romans had made
use of them. This is still a matter for conjecture, and so is the exact
arrangement of such buildings as were adjacent to the wall.
There were apparently two entrances to the courtyard. The chief of
these was adjacent to the dale, and from the remains of the arch stones
would appear to have been some 5 or 6 ft. wide. Here is said to have
been the porter’s rooms, and if this were the main entrance, custom
would place the porter there. At the other end of the wall, against
the gorge, are the remains of what has been called the sally-port; but
the work has been so much defaced as to render its purpose obscure.
Between these two features there is a rectangular buttressed projection
which may have contained rooms, while overlooking the gorge is a recess
in the wall which seems to have been a window. It is said--but the
statement has not been properly verified--that there are remains of
the foundations of a structure which carried a drawbridge across the
narrow upper end of the gorge; and it is almost certain that an ancient
track leads along the hill on the further side of the gorge in the
direction of the castle. All these points are of interest, and are
worthy of further investigation; but that part of the ruins which most
readily repays a visit is the keep. This has been described as merely
a prison or a watch-tower; but from the carefully selected position of
the castle, from what is known of its history, from the fact that the
little town of Castleton clusters at its foot, and from a comparison
with other castles, it would seem that the tower is the small keep of a
small castle, and was its most secure dwelling-place. References in the
great Roll of the Pipe show that a considerable number of soldiers were
accommodated here; it is also recorded that in 1157 Malcolm of Scotland
made his personal submission to Henry II. here, and that that king was
again here in 1163, when the castle must have had even more restricted
accommodation.
[Illustration: 8. The Peak Castle, Derbyshire (1176.)
Plans of the Keep.]
[Illustration: 9. The Peak Castle, Derbyshire]
The keep itself, which was built in 1176, is very similar in
arrangement to the peel-towers of the Scottish border and to the
towers which elsewhere formed the nucleus of many fortified houses. It
probably represents the first step in domestic planning, and may be
regarded as one of the earliest ancestors of the great houses of later
centuries.
It consisted of two main floors (Figs. 8, 9); beneath the lower
was perhaps a store-room, although this is not certain. The debris
with which the lower part of the building is filled has not been
investigated; excavation might determine whether there ever was a
cellar, and also whether there was any internal communication with
a natural cave or passage which undoubtedly passes through the rock
beneath it, and from which a tortuous and difficult descent can be
made to the great Peak Cavern which is approached along the gorge so
frequently mentioned. Above the upper chamber was the roof, originally
of steep pitch (see section, Fig. 9), but which may have been raised
and flattened so as at once to form a third chamber and to give more
convenience for the purposes of watching and defence.
At its best, at any rate, the keep can only have contained four rooms,
and it is quite possible that it only had two. The upper and better
of these was that into which the entrance door opened (at D, Fig. 8),
a door some 6 or 8 ft. from the ground, and doubtless approached by
a wood ladder. Near this door a circular staircase of about 5 ft. in
diameter led up to the roof and down to the lower room (Fig. 9), which
was dimly lighted by two small windows, but otherwise was devoid of any
feature whatever. The floors were of wood. The upper room, about 22 by
19 ft. in size, was also lighted by two small windows; in one wall was
a _garde-robe_ (G) with a shoot corbelled out from the wall; in another
was a small mural chamber (M) occupying one corner of the building and
lighted by a very small window on two of its sides. So far, this keep
is just like many others, although on a small scale; but here there is
no sign of a fireplace or flue. Some means of warming the place, and,
on occasion, of cooking, there must have been; and the probability is
that a fire was contrived on the floor, and that the smoke was carried
away by a flue of wood and plaster. It would not have been beyond the
ingenuity of the time to provide a hearth to carry the fire.
[Illustration: 10. The Peak Castle, Derbyshire (1176).
South-west Face.]
The exterior of the keep has suffered so much that hardly any detail is
left, nearly all the facing stone having disappeared. The most perfect
side is that towards the gorge, difficult of access (Fig. 10). From it,
however, we learn that the building consisted of a plain mass of ashlar
work broken at the angles and the middle of each side by a shallow
projecting pier. Each corner of the building has a small circular
shaft with cap and base of the ordinary Norman type. The window
openings must have been narrow, as was usually the case, and probably
of very simple detail, matching that of the doorway and the shoot of
the _garde-robe_. At the parapet level there were probably four
turrets rising from the angle buttresses, but all traces of them have
gone. Indeed all that can be gathered of the external appearance is
that it was of the usual severe type and that the detail was of the
simplest.
While castles and their keeps were still in full occupation, but
towards the later years of their existence, there were built a number
of fortified manor houses of stone. It is quite probable that these
buildings embodied in permanent materials a type of plan that had long
prevailed in a less durable form. The keep was contrived so as to be as
economical of space as possible; the rooms were piled one on the top
of the other. But where defensive precautions were not so imperative,
and space was not so valuable, the rooms were placed alongside of each
other on the ground. The manor house, therefore, followed a type of
plan somewhat different from that of the keep, but in both cases the
hall was the principal apartment; it was the sleeping, eating, and
living room of the household. As years went by the keep type of plan
fell into disuse; its singular lack of comfort may easily account for
this. The manor house type, on the contrary, survived, and it is this
type which has been developed, through century after century, into
the house of modern times. It is, however, curious to find a few late
survivals of the keep, some of them built long after the necessity for
castles had disappeared; others, owing to their geographical position,
being the natural expression of the wants of the district. Among the
former is Tattershall Castle in Lincolnshire, built by Lord Treasurer
Cromwell in the fifteenth century, the same who built the great manor
house of South Wingfield in Derbyshire. Both of these houses will be
more fully mentioned in their chronological order. Among the latter are
many of the peel-towers of Northumberland, which continued to be built
with the ancient restricted arrangements until the accession of James
I. Cocklaw Tower, near Hexham, is a fairly late example (Figs. 11,
12); it was built in the sixteenth century and contained hardly more
accommodation than the Peak Castle. At the ground level was a cellar
entered from the outside by a doorway protected by machicolations.
Above the cellar was the hall, entered by an external door several
feet above the ground, and above this was another room of the same
size. Each of these rooms had a fireplace, and a few small windows,
unglazed. A small chamber also led from each of them; that on the
principal floor retains traces of painted decoration. In its floor is
a square hole which afforded the only access to a blind chamber or
vault beneath, which may have been a dungeon or may have been merely a
_garde-robe_ pit. A circular staircase led from the cellar to the
upper floors and thence to the battlements. The fact that so small and
uncomfortable a house was built at a time when further south there were
already large and commodious mansions, is an eloquent commentary on
the disturbed state of the Border. This is further illustrated by the
fact that almost immediately after the two kingdoms were united under
one sovereign, many of the old peels were enlarged by the addition of a
Jacobean wing of considerably greater capacity than the original house.
Chipchase Castle is one of the most striking instances, as the new work
took the form of a fair-sized manor house to which the peel became a
mere antiquated adjunct. Other instances, some of rather later date,
are to be seen at Belsay Castle, Halton Castle, and Bitchfield Tower.
[Illustration: 11. Cocklaw Tower, Northumberland (16th cent.).
Plan of Principal Floor.
D, Door, several feet above the level of the ground;
H, Hole in floor; F P, Fireplace.]
[Illustration: 12. Cocklaw Tower, Northumberland (16th cent.).]
Another notable example of the survival of the keep is that at
Warkworth Castle in the same county (Fig. 45, p. 82). This is of
peculiar interest inasmuch as it was built about the year 1440, and
exhibits a great amount of skill in packing into a small compass the
various rooms which, by that period, had become necessary to the
comfort of the more wealthy. But in spite of the ingenious planning,
this keep was deserted within thirty years of its erection in favour
of a new hall built on the ground floor with contiguous kitchens in
the usual fashion. These places are mentioned here before taking leave
of the keep, to show how its influence survived long after it had been
generally abandoned.