thornton abbey: gatehouse and barbican
While the lower portions of the walls of the strong house at Warkworth are of great solidity and strength, the upper floors are lighted by large traceried window-openings, and the tall oblong windows of the hall, and those of the chancel of the chapel, convey no idea of the military purpose of the building. It is a curious fact that, in spite of the pains which were evidently expended upon this tower-house, the period of its employment as a residence seems to have been unusually short. The various lords of Warkworth were never satisfied with one residence for any length of time; and there is evidence that when John, duke of Bedford, was sent by his father, Henry IV., to pacify the north after Northumberland’s rebellion, he took up his quarters at Warkworth in the gatehouse. Later in the fifteenth century, the old mansion, already described, in the bailey, was restored and altered: a porch-tower was made at the north-east end of the hall, and a stair-turret intruded in the south-east angle. The dwelling-house, which had been built within the castle about 1200, was converted, in fact, into a stately mansion; and the house on the mount was practically abandoned. No better instance could be found of the gradual weakening of the military ideal in favour of domestic comfort. All the castles of the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are examples of this in some degree. At Warwick the domestic buildings are at least of equal importance with the defences. The dwelling-house at Ludlow gradually increased in size and splendour, while nothing was added to its military defences. Even the outer walls of Bolton, a strong and well-guarded castle, are pierced with windows which admit a considerable amount of light. Bodiam and Raglan ([331]), relying on the great breadth of their moats, have large outward window openings. In all these instances, however, the dwelling-house, even at Raglan, is still regarded as a house within a castle. In the planning of the tower house at Warkworth the military and domestic ideals were both present to the minds of the builders. Neither can be said to prevail: the building was equally useful as house and castle. The hall at Warkworth, on the other hand, when it was rebuilt, was treated with an architectural splendour quite apart from any idea of its position within the walls of a place of defence. Those walls had become obsolete, and the house was the one object present to the aims of the restorers. A step further was taken at Hurstmonceaux ([323]), where the great brick house has the semblance of a castle, but little of its reality. At Carew in Pembrokeshire, three stages in the development of the domestic ideal as applied to military architecture can be studied in close proximity. On the east side of the ward are the earlier domestic apartments, somewhat cramped and gloomy, with outer windows which, wherever they occur, as in the chapel ([248]) and adjacent rooms, admit daylight very faintly. On the west side is the great hall built in the fifteenth century by Rhys ap Thomas, with its imposing porch-tower and entrance stair, a large and amply lighted room. On the north are the additions made in the sixteenth century by Sir John Perrott. The eastern rooms are those of a house within a castle: the western hall is that of a house which, although military considerations have had no part in its planning, is still confined within an earlier curtain. On the north side, however, the curtain has been broken through, and a series of apartments has been built out beyond its limits, proclaiming, with their long mullioned windows piercing the walls from floor to roof, that the day of castles is over, and that the dwelling-house has the field to itself.
CHAPTER XII
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]).
Carew Castle; Entrance to great hall