Memorials of Old Lincolnshire

by Unknown

TATTERSHALL CASTLE AND CHURCH

By the Editor

The ancient castles of this country, almost without exception, are full of interest to all sorts and conditions of men and women. The remote antiquity of the rude hill-top fortresses of Cornwall, Wiltshire, and Wales; the huge earthworks of Old Sarum; the story of a gallant defence like Newark; the close association with history of the Tower of London, and with the magic of romance like Conisboro’, Kenilworth, and Carlisle, find devotees for each. Often, too, castles are among the most picturesque objects of picturesque scenery, as Manor Bier, Dunolly, and Tantallon may testify; while to the archæologist they present a world of interest as their plans, their builders, and their history are discussed, occasionally with a wordy vigour which recalls the fights their walls have witnessed.

Few indeed of these attractions can be claimed for Tattershall. A huge square pile of perhaps the most admirable mediæval brickwork in the kingdom (its only real rival being Hurstmonceaux), it can scarcely be called picturesque; its military history is of the slightest, and its plan and general arrangements are fairly well known. Still, from the great architectural charm of its construction and the many and various noble families who have been concerned in its building and possession, no “Memorials of old Lincolnshire” would be complete without some notice of its history.

The word Tattershall is defined by Mr. Streatfield as meaning the house or hall of Teitr, a Scandinavian name, signifying blithe or gay, thus showing that before the Norman Conquest there probably was a Norse or Danish dwelling on this spot.

But in Domesday it only appears as Thorp (now Tattershall Thorpe, a hamlet half a mile away on the road to Kirkstead). This manor was given by William the Conqueror to one of his attendant knights called Eudo, son of Spirewic. His son, Hugh Fitz-Eudo, who was also called Le Breton, erected the neighbouring Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstead in 1139. A small fragment, part of the south transept apparently, alone is left, reminding one of the stately remains at Kirkstall and Roche, by its unadorned simplicity of style, which distinguished the early buildings of the Cistercian, itself a reformed branch of the Benedictine Order. The chapel (Capella extra portas, as it is termed), a few yards south of the abbey ruins, is described elsewhere in this volume, and is a most delightful and dainty specimen of Early English architecture. It contains the earliest wooden screen work (after that in the loft above the altar at Compton, Surrey) in the kingdom, and a Purbeck marble figure of an armed knight, which with its barrel helmet with perforations for the eyes, no breathing holes, the general character of the armour, and the foliage beneath the head, is dated somewhat between the years 1200 and 1225, and is most probably the effigy of Robert de Tatesale and Kirkstead (a grandson of Hugh le Breton) who died in 1212. In 1220 he obtained from King John, by present of a well-trained goshawk, a licence for a market on Fridays for Tattershall. The cross still exists, with arms of Tattershall and Cromwell on it. His son, also a Robert, obtained a licence from King Henry III. in 1230 to erect a castle of stone in Tattershall:—“Pro Roberto de Tatteshale—Rex concessit Roberto de Tatteshale quod libere et sine impedimento unam domum de petra et calce firmari faciat apud manerium de Tatteshal: et mandatum est vice comiti Linc. per literas clauses quod ipsam dictam domum firmare permittat sicut praedictum est. Teste ut supra.”—(Patent Roll, fifteenth year of the reign of King Henry III. m. 2.) Nine years afterwards he obtained the same King’s leave to embattle this house (“quod possit kernellare mansum suum.”—Patent Roll, 23 Henry III. m. 12). No remains of this castle are known to exist now; it seems doubtful whether some portions may not have endured into the early years of the last century, but this point will be more fully dealt with later on. If this were not so, then probably the first castle—as far as regards its masonry at least, for the mounds and moats are remnants of its original fortifications—was entirely swept away when the second castle was rising on its site in all its whilom magnificence. The third Robert de Tattershall married Mabel, eldest sister and co-heir of Hugh de Albini, fifth Earl of Sussex and Arundel, and his grandson, the fifth Robert, was summoned to Parliament in 1297 as the first Baron de Tateshale, and died in the following year. His son, the sixth Robert, died in 1303, and the seventh Robert in 1305, without any children. So that three aunts—Emma, who married Adam de Cailli, and died in 1306; Joan, who married Robert de Driby, and died in 1330; and Isabella, who married Sir John de Orreby, became co-heirs. Tattershall seems to have become part of the share of the second one, Joan. By her marriage with Robert de Driby she had four children—Simon (died in 1323), Robert, John, and Alice. The third son, Sir John de Kirketon (Kirton in Holland), apparently acquired and held, from certainly 1334 till his death in 1367, the castle and manor of Tattershall. And in Kirton there is still an entrance-gate which has on it the arms of Tattershall quartered with those of Cromwell, showing that this connection was kept up after his death. Owing to the deaths of her brothers without leaving any children the Tattershall property came through the family of Bernak by the marriage of Alice with Sir William de Bernak (who died in 1339), and she herself died in 1341. Their eldest son, Sir John de Bernak, had married Joan, sister and eldest co-heiress of Robert Marmion, second Baron of Winteringham. This is another link between Lincolnshire and this noble family besides Scrivelsby, which, with “Tamworth tower and town,” had been granted to Robert de Marmion, Lord of Fontenoy, by William the Conqueror, and the parish of Coningsby, only a mile away from Tattershall, was Marmion property also. Sir John de Bernak and his wife had two sons—John who died in youth, William who died in 1359—and a daughter, Maud or Matilda. Consequently the reversion of the Tattershall property came in 1367 to her and her husband, Sir Ralph Cromwell. As pointed out above, the property being in possession of Sir John de Kirketon till this year 1367, the Bernaks can never have actually possessed it, though, curiously enough, William, brother and heir of John, son of John Bernak, has the barony of Tateshale (put wrongfully in Norfolk) twice attributed to him in an inquisition post-mortem in 1360, the thirty-fourth year of King Edward III. The family of Cromwell seems to have been settled in the villages of Cromwell and Lambley in Nottinghamshire, a few miles north-east of Nottingham, from about the year 1166; but I know of no connection between this family and those of Thomas Cromwell, the “Malleus monachorum,” and of Oliver Cromwell, the Protector. The Cromwells had already, in the thirteenth century, been allied with the family of Marmion, as the fourth Ralph Cromwell married Mazera, second daughter and co-heiress of Philip de Marmion. The ninth Ralph Cromwell, knight (son of Sir Ralph Cromwell and Amicia de Beler, daughter and heiress of Roger de Beler, co. Leicester), who married Maud Bernak, was summoned to Parliament as Baron Cromwell in 1375 and 1398, in which year he died, his widow surviving till the year 1419. The second Ralph, Lord Cromwell of Tattershall, died in 1416. His son, also Ralph, was Lord Treasurer of England from 1433-1443, a peer of great wealth and influence, and the builder of the existing castle and church of Tattershall. Another building of his in stone (no doubt because it was easy to procure, as brick was at Tattershall) has been described and illustrated in a previous volume of this series, i.e. Wingfield Manor House, Derbyshire. He also held the appointment in 1435 (after the death of the Duke of Bedford, Regent of France, at Paris) of Master of the Mews, and Falconer to the King. He married Margaret, daughter of John, Baron Deincourt, and his wife Joan, daughter and heiress of Lord Grey de Rotherfield, also connected with the family of Marmion. Lord Cromwell died in 1455 (his wife having predeceased him in 1454), and left no family. They both were buried in Tattershall Church. Consequently, his two nieces, daughters of his sister Maud (who had married Sir Richard Stanhope of Rampton, Notts, and who had died in 1455), became his co-heiresses. Of these Maud married, first, the distinguished soldier, Robert, sixth Lord Willoughby d’Eresby, who died in 1452, having had no children by her; next, Sir Thomas Nevile, third son of Richard, first Earl of Salisbury, who was killed at the battle of Wakefield in 1460, also leaving no family; and thirdly, Sir Gervase Clifton, of Clifton, Notts, who was killed at Tewkesbury in 1471. Maud herself died in 1497 and was buried in Tattershall Church. Joan married Sir Humphrey Bouchier, third son of the first Earl of Essex, who was summoned to Parliament (jure uxoris) in 1461 as Baron Cromwell, and who was killed at the battle of Barnet in 1471. She married, secondly, Sir Robert Ratcliffe, and died in 1472, leaving no children. She also was buried in Tattershall Church.

According to the poet Skelton, King Edward IV. possessed Tattershall, as he makes him say—

“I made the Tower strong—I wist not why—

Knew not for whom, I purchased Tattersall;”

and his badge, the falcon and fetterlock, may be seen in the east window of the church.

The property, being forfeited to the Crown, was bestowed in 1487, by King Henry VII., on his mother Margaret, Countess of Richmond. King Henry VIII. granted it, in 1520, to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, upon his marriage with Mary, the King’s sister. In default of heirs, it again reverted to the King. In 1551 King Edward VI. granted the castle and manor to Edward Fines, Lord Clinton, who was created Earl of Lincoln in 1572. His great-grandson, Theophilus, fourth Earl, in 1649 petitioned Parliament for compensation for the damage done to Tattershall Castle during the civil war. Tradition has assigned the dismantling and unroofing of the castle to the time just after the battle of Winceby, near Horncastle, in 1643, and W. A. Nicholson[92] has recorded several inscriptions on its walls, of the years 1642, 1644, 1645, and 1648, showing that it probably was not in good keeping about that period. It continued in the possession of the male line of the Earls of Lincoln till the year 1692, when Bridget (only daughter and heiress of Hugh Boscawen by Margaret his wife, fifth daughter and eventually co-heiress of Theophilus Clinton, Earl of Lincoln) married Hugh Fortescue of Wear Gifford, North Devon (one of the most charming manor houses imaginable), an ancestor of the present noble proprietor, the Earl Fortescue.

We may now turn our attention to the past and present state of this once magnificent residence. It was built, as mentioned above, by Ralph, the third Baron Cromwell, of whom William of Worcester speaks as follows in his Itinerary: “The Lord Treasurer expended in building the principal and other towers of his Castle of Tattershall above four thousand marks; his household there consisted of above a hundred persons, and his suite when he rode to London commonly of one hundred and twenty horsemen, and his annual expenditure was about five thousand pounds.” The date of the castle’s erection can be told, within a very few years, by the heraldry which is its most prevalent ornament. There is the coat of arms of Tattershall (chequy or and gu., a chief erm.), which might be used by any lord of Tattershall since heraldry began; of Driby (arg. 3 cinquefoils gu., a canton gu.), which would date from the reign of King Henry III.; those of Bernak (erm. a fesse gu.) and of Cromwell (arg. a chief gu. over all a bend az.), from the reign of King Richard II. (the first shield in the fireplace on the ground floor, i.e. gu. 10 annulets or, has been supposed to be an early shield of the Cromwell family), but the shields of Cromwell and Tattershall impaling Deincourt (az. a fesse dancetté between 10 billets or) show that not until after Lord Cromwell’s marriage with Margaret Deincourt could the castle have been thus decorated, and, as there were no children of that marriage, there could be no such union of arms after their deaths. Also, the very frequent repetition of the Purse (with its double bags and the motto, “N’aj je le droit?”), the badge of office, marks the period of building as coinciding with that of Lord Cromwell’s tenure of the Lord Treasurership, i.e. from 1433 to 1443. It is an interesting thought for Lincolnshire folk that very probably a celebrated Lincolnshire man, William Patten of Wainfleet, Bishop of Winchester, was the architect of these “bricky towers”; the school at Wainfleet, also in brick, is another token of his architectural skill in this material, as his work at Winchester Cathedral and at Magdalen College, Oxford, testified in stone. He was a great architect, a personal friend of Lord Cromwell’s, and was one of his executors (another one being, curiously enough, Chief-Justice Sir John Fortescue, an ancestor of the present proprietor); the neighbouring church of Tattershall being unfinished at Lord Cromwell’s death, William of Wainfleet helped to complete it, having probably designed it also.

The plan of a mediæval castle was, generally speaking, as follows: There was an outer wall surrounded by a ditch, over which a drawbridge would give access to the main entrance. Then separated from the first by a second ditch would be the second (the inner) wall. Both walls would be strengthened by towers at suitable points. Within this inner ward, as the space inside the inner wall was termed, the chief living rooms—the barracks, so to speak—would stand. Finally, there would be the donjon or keep, the strongest of the castle buildings, frequently erected on a mound, and capable itself of withstanding for some time a hostile attack even though the rest of the castle was in the enemy’s hands.

Tattershall Castle was defended by an incomplete outer moat, which, starting from the north-east angle of the area, went along the north and west sides, and communicated with the river Bain; there is still some water in portions of this ditch. It probably was carried eastwards so as to enclose the church, but there is a noticeable dip in the ground on the eastern side of the castle area, which is probably the same moat defending that portion of the castle. From a plate of the castle published by Buck in 1727 (which is in the writer’s possession), much knowledge can be gathered of the arrangements and buildings of Tattershall at that date. The inner moat was complete, and the outer wall which surrounded it, for the most part of brick, is in fair condition; it was supplied with water from the outer moat by a culvert piercing the outer bank and wall about the middle of the north side, which is plainly visible, and around which the bank is faced with stone. This, according to Buck, was protected by a strong and tall tower over it. On the east side of the moat may be seen a blocked up arch, which was connected with the outer moat at that point, and ran eastwards beneath the church to that part of the moat. The main entrance to the castle was evidently a little north of this arch, much in the line of the present pathway, for Buck plants a large gateway with two towers and portcullis here, on the inner side of the inner moat. Just outside and to the eastwards is a brick building of two storeys, and of exactly similar work to that of the rest of the castle. This house, which was probably used for guard-rooms, had at the north-west angle a turret staircase, and the only door on the ground floor was originally on the southern end, opening on to a terrace wall which defended this part of the castle. The outer wall was about twelve feet high (judging from the mark where it joined the house), with arched recesses and loopholes, and over all a platform with a crenellated parapet. A brick turret was at the south end of it, and the ruins of this and the drain into the moat are still visible. On the south side of the inner moat can be seen some stone corbels in the brick-facing wall, which were evidently to support a drawbridge. On the west side of the outer wall is a large brick one-storeyed building (with little arched cupboards or recesses in the walls, as will be found elsewhere), probably a guard-room, and the ruins of a strong tower farther to the north and east, on the edge of the outer moat.

On the south of the inner court is a large piece of ground, elevated and surrounded by a stone wall, except on its eastern side; this was probably an adjunct of the original castle, and was used for tilting and other exercises. It was approached doubtless by the drawbridge already mentioned. Eastward it joins a still larger portion of ground on the south of the church—the castle garden or pleasaunce. This is walled in partially with brick, and has had two doorways in the south side. In the spandrils of one were the coats of arms of Cromwell and Tattershall quarterly, and that of Deincourt.

The inner ward now is nearly flat, and contains no buildings save the great tower or keep, having unfortunately been levelled about 1790. Besides the entrance-gate already mentioned, we find from Buck’s view that in 1727 there still existed the eastern portion of the chapel, showing an apse of which two perpendicular windows were visible, and a great part of the dining-hall, which had a fine bay window and five other windows. To the left of the keep, and in the left foreground, are some buildings which very possibly were the remains of the castle of King Henry III.’s date.

Next we come to the chief feature of the place, the so-called Castle, which in reality was only the representative of the keep of earlier days. The inner ward wall joined it at the north-east and south-east towers, where the marks are plainly visible; the north, west and south sides were defended by the outer moat. It is 87 feet long by 69 feet wide, and the parapet of its angle turrets is no less than 112 feet above the level of the ground at its base. It is almost entirely constructed of small red bricks, traditionally supposed to have been brought from Flanders, though there is no reason why they should not have been made in the county. The walls externally have patterns, chequers, and lozenges in blue-black bricks upon their surface, and the groining of brick in the upper rooms is most delicately moulded, and may well serve as a lesson to us, even in this twentieth century, in artistic workmanship. On this work still exists considerable traces of pink plaster with red lines, to imitate brickwork—a curious case of carrying coals to Newcastle! Local stone (Ancaster probably) is used for the windows (which retain most of their tracery and mullions, except those of the ground floor), the machicolations, the battlements (in one place cement has been used for repairs), and the very admirably executed chimney-pieces, which will receive special attention later on. There are brick relieving arches over all the windows, doorways, and fireplaces in the castle. The large windows, which are more evident on the west, the exposed side, than on that facing the inner ward, show that the great change in warfare was in progress—that “villainous saltpetre” was altering the type of fortification from a massive tall keep like Rochester or Conisboro’, or the Edwardian castles of Harlech or Conway, to low-walled earthworks, such as those which still surround Berwick, and which were erected in the “spacious times of great Elizabeth”; also, these windows show that the nobleman’s castle was changing into the nobleman’s palace or mansion, of which, again, the Elizabethan buildings, such as Longleat, Hatfield, and Haddon Hall, are the finest examples.

Tattershall Castle, from the South-West.

The basement storey contains a large central room, with a very flat arched ceiling, a room in each of the towers, except the south-eastern one (which contains the staircase), and a room in the thickness of the eastern wall, which has similar arched recesses in its north and south walls to those already described. There has been a well in the centre of this basement area. A staircase leads down to the central room from the outside of the east wall.

There seem to have been no less than forty-eight separate apartments, four of these being very large (about 38 feet long by 22 feet wide and 17 feet high), and occupying the centre of the building one over another.

That on the ground-floor may have been the common hall or hall of entrance; it is entered by a door in the east wall, and has four large windows, which have lost their tracery and mullions, two in the western side, and one at each end, and an exceedingly fine stone fireplace in the eastern wall. Its arch is of ogee shape, well moulded, much flattened, the ogee ending in a finial above the upper battlemented edge, which has small pilasters with capitals at each end. The heraldic decoration is as follows, reading from left to right:—Cromwell (ancient?), the treasurer’s purse, a lion rampant (for D’Albini), treasurer’s purse, Marmion, Bernak, treasurer’s purse, Cromwell and Tattershall impaling Deincourt, treasurer’s purse, Cromwell and Tattershall quarterly. In the lower line come treasurer’s purse, barry of ten (if Cailli, it should be barry of eight; it is sometimes assigned to Clifton, but it does not agree with the shield of Clifton of Buckenham[93] who married Elizabeth, sister of the second Baron Cromwell, or of Clifton of Clifton,[94] Maud Stanhope’s third husband), treasurer’s purse, Deincourt, Driby, treasurer’s purse, Grey of Rotherfield, and treasurer’s purse. In the middle, beneath the point of the ogee, is the shield of Cromwell, much defaced.

The room on the first floor might have been the hall of state or the audience chamber. Approach to it is gained by a newel staircase, the steps being stone, in the south-east turret, which begins a few feet above the level of the ground, and ends at the fourth storey, the ground-floor large room having had an entrance, now blocked up, from its south-east corner into this staircase. The hand rail, continuous and ingeniously moulded in stone, flush with the wall, is noticeable. A similar one, but slightly projecting, is in the staircase of the Alnwick Tower in the Bishop’s Palace, Lincoln; another in the staircase to the crypt in Grantham Church; and another, of much later date, in Kirby Hall.

The large room on this storey has three windows with excellent Perpendicular tracery, and the two western ones have the recess ribbed and vaulted; there is no window opening through to the north, as a chamber has been constructed in the thickness of the wall. The fireplace, which is in the east wall, has a well-moulded depressed arch, with amusing grotesques in the spandrils on either side and at the side of the circles, reminding one of the hard-working creations of Dicky Doyle on the cover of Punch. The pilasters and battlemented top are much the same as in the lower fireplace, but its chief ornament is a row of heraldic shields and badges in circles across its front. First comes the familiar purse, then Tattershall, St. George and the Dragon, Cromwell and Tattershall impaling Deincourt, Cromwell and Tattershall quarterly, on a shield couché, with two savage men as supporters, on an esquire’s helmet a cap of maintenance inflamed. Next comes a representation under an embattled arch of a lion being rent asunder by a man, a feat which was related of Hugh de Nevile, who served in the Crusades under King Richard I. It does not seem quite clear why this achievement of a Nevile should appear here, though, as we have seen, Maud Stanhope married a Nevile as her second husband. Then comes a lion rampant for D’Albini, and the treasurer’s purse. The spaces between the roundels above are occupied with shields of Bernak, Driby, Cromwell (one defaced), Cromwell, Tattershall, and Deincourt below, with the treasurer’s purse. About the end of the eighteenth century this fireplace was bricked up and opened at the back, to be used for the room in the eastern wall, where dwelt a pensioner, whose duty it was to be in readiness to light a cresset beacon-fire on the south-east tower in case of invasion.

The large room on the second floor was perhaps the state bedroom, and has three beautiful windows; a chamber in the thickness of the south wall preventing a similar window in that wall. The fireplace is of much the same general character as the last one, but has the spandrils filled with foliage, and the place of the roundels is taken by ten panels, ornamented with foliated tracery, making altogether an exceedingly delicate architectural composition. Alternating with the treasurer’s purse are the shields of Bernak, Deincourt, Driby, Cromwell, and Tattershall. In the thickness of the eastern wall of this floor is a beautifully vaulted gallery, 38 feet in length, vaulted in five compartments, with diagonal ribs of brickwork; on the connecting bosses are the shields of Driby, Tattershall, Deincourt, and Cromwell. It is lit by three fine mullioned and traceried windows.

The large room on the third floor has very similar windows to the others, and the fireplace also is very like that in the floor beneath; but the treasurer’s purse has invaded the spandrils, and the shields of Deincourt, Driby—one broken and defaced—Cromwell, and Bernak being separated by small treasurer’s purses, are enclosed in eleven dainty panels, with different tracery. On this floor in the eastern wall are two rooms even more richly vaulted than the gallery below, the spandrils being filled in with quatrefoils of moulded brickwork, enriched with the shields of Tattershall, Cromwell, Deincourt, and D’Albini (or Beler).

The floors of these great rooms were constructed of timber, and plastered; each floor resting on four great massive girders of oak, the upper one having a lead roof. Till a few years ago there were still four beams remaining in situ, but after the castle was struck by lightning, and one beam was thrown down, the others were taken down to avoid the chances of any accident. The lightning seems to have struck the north-east tower (which alone had kept its conical roof), and jumped across to the western wall, where it tore out the external footings of one window on each floor, till it reached the ground.

A very noticeable feature of Tattershall Castle is the covered gallery, well supplied with loopholes, which runs from turret to turret, partly projecting over the machicolations of the walls, having had above a parapeted and embattled platform. These galleries upon the machicolations are not uncommon in the châteaux of France. Visitors to the region of the Loire will remember good instances of this feature in Langeais, Azay-le-Rideau, and de L’Islette. A small staircase in the thickness of the wall of the south-eastern turret continues from the large circular staircase to the top of the turret. The turrets are battlemented, and have brick-arched machicolations. They were in Buck’s time apparently all roofed in with conical spirelets, terminating in fleurs-de-lys. All these roofs now are gone. In these turrets are fireplaces, for, no doubt, partly, the warder’s comfort, but also, possibly, for providing a prompt supply of boiling oil or lead “or something humorous” wherewith to discomfort the adversary beneath. And both in turrets and elsewhere in the buildings the necessary garde-robes may be found. The chimney stacks, on the east side particularly, must have added to the appearance of the tower, as they were originally considerably higher than they are now. Excepting the lightning stroke few modern events connected with the castle have been more interesting than the fall of a lad of nine years old, on June the 2nd, 1879, from the top wall of the keep to the floor inside, a distance of 76 feet. He came off with a dislocated hip and other bruises; but, like Joan of Arc’s 60 feet leap from Beaurevoir, “by some miracle broke no bone in (his) body.”

It might be mentioned that the fireplaces, which have been rather minutely described, are believed to have been carefully studied by Pugin when he was engaged in designing the internal decoration and fittings of the Houses of Parliament. About four miles north of Tattershall are the remains of another tower—Tower-le-Moor—of the same date, construction, and materials as Tattershall Castle. It was probably built by Lord Cromwell as a hunting-box, and was about 60 feet high. Only one angle of it exists now; considerably more is seen in Buck’s print of it in 1727.

Since this article was written, the property has been sold to Mr. Albert Ball, J.P., of Nottingham, who is, I believe, quite sensible of the great value to the nation of his new possession.