Military Architecture in England During the Middle Ages

by A. Hamilton Thompson

bodiam: north front and gatehouse

The most imposing of our later castles, which may be considered primarily as military buildings, is Bodiam in Sussex ([323]). On 21st October 1385, Sir Edward Dalyngrugge had licence to crenellate his manor of Bodiam “by the sea,” and “to make a castle thereof in defence of the adjacent country against the king’s enemies.”[351] The main object of this licence was evidently to provide against a French attack upon the ports of Rye and Winchelsea, at the mouth of the Rother: in the following March, Sir Edward was named first upon the commission appointed by letters patent to fortify and wall the town of Rye.[352] Bodiam stands upon the left bank of the Rother, some miles above Rye, and commands from its site, at some little height above the valley, a long stretch of marsh in the direction of the mouth of the river. The walls of the castle descend sheer into a lake, formed by the damming up of a stream. The castle is simply a rectangular enclosure surrounded by a lofty curtain. Each angle is capped by a cylindrical tower, and in the middle of each face is a rectangular tower: the great gatehouse, however, in the north face, has two rectangular towers, one on each side of the entrance. The tower in the centre of the opposite face is the lesser gatehouse of the castle. The plan bears a striking analogy to that of the castle of Villandraut (Gironde), built about 1250: Nunney in Somerset (1373) and Shirburn in Oxfordshire (1377) are coeval English examples. The interior is surrounded by domestic buildings. Against the south curtain were the hall and kitchen: the screens at the west end of the hall formed a passage to the lesser gateway. The wall dividing the screens from the kitchen still remains, with the three doorways which gave access to the kitchen, pantry, and buttery ([326]). The private apartments were returned along the east curtain, and at their north end was the chapel, which had the usual arrangement of a western gallery, entered from the chambers on the first floor of this range of building. Servants’ quarters and barracks occupied the west side of the enclosure. All the buildings were plentifully supplied with garde-robes in the towers; and the upper portion of the south-west tower was arranged as a pigeon-house.

In spite of the ample space given to the domestic buildings, the defensive nature of the works at Bodiam is very clearly apparent, not only in the strength of the walls, the height of which (40 feet) is equal to the height of the walls at Harlech, but in the provision made for the defence of the approaches. The main gateway was protected by a barbican, which occupied a small island in the lake, some 54 feet in front of the gatehouse. A causeway, which is in part, at any rate, original, connected the gateway with the barbican; but it is probable that this had a bridge at one or both ends. A bridge, spanning a gap of 6 feet, connected the outer end of the barbican with an octagonal island in the middle of the broad moat. The straight causeway by which this island is now reached from the mainland does not represent the original approach; but a longer and more tortuous approach was planned from a pier set against the west bank of the moat and joined, probably by a double drawbridge, to the octagonal island, which thus stood at a point where the road, commanded throughout by the curtain and its flanking towers, turned at a right angle towards the north gatehouse of the castle. The approach to the smaller or south gate has now disappeared; but two walls project into the moat on each side of the entrance, and against the south bank of the moat remains the pier on which the outer drawbridge dropped.

Bodiam Castle; Courtyard

The labour and pains which were taken to strengthen this castle are shown by the revetting of the earthwork, not only of the main island, but also of the lesser islands in the moat, and of portions of the causeways of approach. The isolation of the castle in the middle of a lake may have been suggested by the plan adopted, at a much earlier date, at Leeds in Kent. The great barbican of Leeds, however, divided by wet ditches into three separate parts, forms the approach to the main bridge across the moat. It is, in fact, the tête-du-pont of the castle, and does not occupy a separate island, as at Bodiam, between the mainland and the gateway.

The gatehouse of Bodiam is an imposing building, and the castle-builders, from the days of Edward I. onwards, paid an attention to their gatehouses almost equal to that which the late Norman builders had given to their tower-keeps.[353] To the same twenty-five years within which Bodiam was built and the two great towers at Warwick were completed, belongs the greatest of English gatehouses, that of the castle of Lancaster. It is known to have been built as late as about 1405; for the arms of Henry V. as prince of Wales appear on a shield above the gateway. It is therefore one of the latest military works in the castles of the duchy, and the last of the series of gatehouses which owed their origin to lords of the house of Lancaster, and includes the noble structures at Dunstanburgh, Tutbury, and the great tower between the wards at Knaresborough. The castle to which it was added was surrounded by a curtain, largely of twelfth-century date,[354] and contained a tower-keep and domestic buildings which appear to have been in the main of the thirteenth century. Situated at the head of a very steep hill, and flanked by two huge octagonal towers, this gatehouse is the perfection of the type which is seen, with more slender flanking towers, at Bothal and in the keep of Alnwick. The window openings towards the field are few and small: the battlements are boldly corbelled out, and machicolations of large size are left between them and the wall. In a corner of each of the flanking towers rises a turret, the interior of which apparently served as a magazine for ammunition. The interior of this gatehouse, although the space is ample, is fully in keeping with its sombre exterior. Each of the two upper floors contains three rooms, one in the central block of the gatehouse, the others in the towers at the sides. These rooms are large and lofty, and their original wooden ceilings still retain traces of colour; but they are gloomy and ill-lighted to the last degree. The apartments on the first floor communicate directly with one another, but those on the second floor are entered from an outer passage, which passes between them and the inner or west wall of the gatehouse. The guard-rooms on the ground-floor are approached in the usual way, by doorways near the inner entrance. The main stair is a vice in the south-west corner of building.

In the important additions made to the castle of Warkworth about 1400, the compromise attained between the requirements of defence and comfort is very striking. The plan of this castle, throughout its history, like the plan of Warwick, remained that of the original mount-and-bailey fortress. We have noticed already the addition of the stone curtain to the bailey, and the building of a large mansion against its western and southern faces. It is probable that a shell-keep was added to the mount, when the stone curtain was made; for the foundations of the present strong house on the mount are of masonry of an earlier and rougher character than the elaborately dressed stonework of the house itself. This house ([221]), which combines the features of keep and private residence in a most unusual way, appears to have been built by the first earl of Northumberland, who died in 1407.[355] The shape is that of a square with chamfered angles; but from the centre of each face projects a bold half-octagon, so that the ground-plan is a Greek cross with short arms and a large central block. The elevation consists of a basement and three floors. The basement contains tanks and a vault with a corbelled roof, which was certainly a prison, and bears a strong likeness to a similar vault in the inner gatehouse at Alnwick. There is no basement stair, communication with the vaults being through trap-doors in the floor above. On this floor are a number of dark vaulted store-rooms, one of which was the wine-cellar, and has its own stair to the daïs end of the hall on the floor above. The two upper floors are comparatively cheerful and well lighted: a shaft in the centre of the building gave light to the inner passage between the hall and kitchen. The main stair is in the south half-octagon, the chief doorway being in the west face of this projection, on the first floor. From the lobby on the second floor, at the head of the stair, two doorways open. That on the right leads into the hall, which occupies the south-east angle of the central block, and is of the full height of the two upper floors. That on the left leads to the servants’ quarters and the kitchens, which occupied the western part of the second floor, and communicated by separate doorways with the hall and chapel. The great kitchen filled the north-west angle of the central block, and, like the hall, was two stories in height. The north half-octagon and the north-east angle of the main block adjacent to it, were divided into two floors. The lower room in the half-octagon was probably the private room of the master of the house, communicating with the lower room in the main block, which was probably the common room of his immediate retinue. Similarly, upon the upper floor were a ladies’ bower and a separate room for the countess of Northumberland’s own use. Between the private apartments and the hall, occupying the centre of the east side of the main block and the half-octagon beyond, was the chapel. The chancel, in the half-octagon, was the height of both floors; but the western part of the chapel was in two floors, the upper forming a gallery, with a doorway from the ladies’ bower. From the south-east corner of this gallery, another doorway opened upon a narrow stone gallery, formed by the internal thickening of the lower part of the east wall of the hall: this may have served the purpose of a minstrels’ gallery, or may have been used by the ladies of the house, when they wished to watch the festivities below. The wall beneath this gallery is pierced by a long vestry or priest’s chamber, opening out of the south wall of the chapel, and built with a rising floor, in order to give head-way to the stair from the wine-cellar below. The ground-floor of the chapel also communicated with the hall and the men’s apartments. In addition to the rooms already mentioned, there were third-floor rooms in the south-west angle of the main block and in the western half-octagon, which communicated with the gallery of the chapel. The area covered is not large, but the ingenuity of the plan is remarkable; and the disposition of the various apartments must have required an amount of thought and skill, which no other medieval dwelling-house shows in so high a degree.

raglan castle