Mediæval Military Architecture in England, Volume 1 (of 2)

By GEO. T. CLARK.
VOL. I.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.
. . . . . Time
Has moulder’d into beauty many a tower,
Which, when it frown’d with all its battlements,
Was only terrible. . . . . —Mason.
LONDON: WYMAN & SONS, 74–76, GREAT QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN’S-INN FIELDS, W.C.
1884.
TO E. A. FREEMAN, Esq. THE HISTORIAN OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST, THESE PAPERS, COLLECTED AND PUBLISHED AT HIS SUGGESTION, IN THEIR PRESENT FORM, ARE APPROPRIATELY INSCRIBED.
THE articles comprehended in the present volumes were written at very long intervals of time, some half a century ago, and printed in the Transactions of various Societies in different and distant counties. Many also appeared in the Builder newspaper. Each paper was intended to be complete in itself, and was written with no expectation that they would ever be collected and reprinted as one work. This I mention to account for, and I hope in some degree to excuse, the occasioned iteration of certain views concerning the connexion between the banks and earthworks, the moated mounds of the ninth century, and the buildings in masonry afterwards placed upon them,—which the Author was the first to set forth, and which are explained at length in the Introduction.
The latter and greater part of the work is occupied by minute, and, it is hoped, generally accurate accounts of most of the principal castles of England, and of one or two of a typical character in France and Scotland. The account of Caerphilly was drawn up in 1834. It was, I believe, the first attempt to treat, in a scientific and accurate manner, the plans and details of a great mediæval fortress.