Castles of a later type were Stafford, and Maxstoke ([364]) in Warwickshire. Stafford castle at this time consisted of a single block of lodgings with two towers at either end and another in the middle of the south front. The hall was in the centre of the block, with the kitchen, larder, buttery, and pantry beneath it: at one end of the hall was the great chamber with a cellar below, and at the other was a “surveying chamber,” or service-room, to which dishes would be brought from the kitchen. Each of the five towers contained three rooms, in each of which was a fireplace. The towers were machicolated, “the enbatelling being trussed forth upon corbelles.” Outside the house were the chapel, gatehouse, and another kitchen; but this front court was apparently without defensive walls. Maxstoke, originally a castle of the Clintons, which was built and fortified in or after 1345,[382] had been largely repaired by the duchess Anne, the builder of the hall at Kimbolton. There was a base-court with a gatehouse, stables, and barns, which were walled with stone and covered with slate. Round the castle, “a right proper thing after the old building,” was a moat. The house, with a tower at each corner, was built round a quadrangle, and in the side next the bridge over the moat was a gatehouse tower, with a vaulted entry. The hall, the chapel, the great chamber, and the lodgings generally were in good condition, although they were not entirely finished and much glazing was still necessary. The provision of fireplaces is specially mentioned, as well as a point in the planning of the house—the convenient access to the chapel, or, rather, to its gallery or galleries, from the various first-floor rooms at “the over end” of the hall and great chamber.
The moated manor-house of Writtle in Essex can hardly be counted among castles: it was a timber building round a cloistered quadrangle. There was no hall, but “a goodly and large parlour instead.” Thornbury castle in Gloucestershire, however, which was in great part of the duke’s own building, was one of those houses in which some semblance of military architecture was kept. There was no moat, but a base-court and an inner ward. The buildings of the base-court itself had been set out, but were in a very incomplete state, and little had been finished beyond the foundations of the north and west sides. The entrance to the inner ward was in the west face of the quadrangle; but of the west and north blocks only the lower story had been completed. This was of ashlar, while in the base-court ashlar had been used only for the window openings, doorways, and quoins. The hall and kitchen offices formed the east block, “all of the old building, and of a homely fashion”; but the south block, of the newer work, was “fully finished with curious works and stately lodgings,” and from it a gallery of timber cased with stone, with an upper and lower passage, crossed the south garden to the parish church and the duke’s chapel therein. A magnificent feature of this house, which became more and more characteristic of the palaces of noblemen of the age, were the great parks to the east of the castle, and the gardens on its east and south side. Between the east garden and the New park was the orchard, “in which are many alleys to walk in openly,” and round about the orchard were other alleys on a good height, with “roosting places,” covered with white thorn and hazel.
Thornbury castle had reached this degree of unfinished splendour only a few years before the survey was made. The gateway of the outer ward still bears an inscription with the date 1511, while at the base of the moulded brick chimneys of the south block is the date 1514. Remains may still be seen of most of the buildings mentioned in these surveys. Thornbury and Maxstoke are still occupied, and of Thornbury in particular the details of the survey still hold good. The great value of these descriptions is the fact that they tell us something, on the eve of the Renaissance period, of the state of a series of fortresses which represented almost every type of an architecture that had grown up under the influence of conditions rapidly becoming obsolete. At Tonbridge we see the mount-and-bailey fortress of early Norman times, built to meet needs which were purely military, and strengthened with a stone keep and walls and towers of stone as those needs became more pressing. At Carlisle we have the fortress with its compact inner ward and great tower, approached through the spacious base-court which served the needs of the garrison and might shelter flocks and herds in time of war. No castle of the most perfect type, planned in the golden age of military architecture, is represented. At Brecon, however, we can study the growing importance of the domestic buildings of the castle. At Sheriff Hutton we have the quadrangular castle of the fourteenth century with its angle-towers, and its walled base-court serving the purposes of a farm-yard. Stafford castle, the plan of which has been imitated in the modern house on the site, is a fortified residence built in a single block, to which some of the strong houses of the north of England are analogous. The moated house of Maxstoke preserves the quadrangular plan, and has its provisions for defence; but its domestic character was the first aim of its builders, and its walls and towers are without the formidable height and strength of Sheriff Hutton and Bolton. Here and at Thornbury the base-court was still retained; but at Thornbury the energy of the builders was concentrated in the beautiful mansion, and the idea of the defensive stronghold had almost departed. The day of the castle and the walled town was over, and, in the face of methods of attack of which the builders of Norman castles had never dreamed, military engineers were beginning to move along new lines to which architectural considerations were no longer a matter of great importance. An architecture which, developed from earthwork in the beginning, reproduced in stone, at its height, the disposition of the concentric earthworks of primeval times, gave place in its turn to a science in which the employment of earthwork and the natural resources of a defensive position played an increasingly prominent part.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Plan in Allcroft, Earthwork of England, 1908, p. 647. The same feature is well seen in the fine camp of Bury Ditches ([6]) in Shropshire, between Clun and Bishops Castle.
[2] The defences of Old Sarum are now in process of excavation, and the plan of the medieval castle, in the centre of the early camp, has been recovered. See Proceedings Soc. Antiquaries, 2nd series, vol. xxiii., pp. 190-200 and 501-18.
[3] It is well seen at Bury ditches ([6]), where the diagonal entrance is also a feature of the south-west side of the camp, and on the west side of Caer Caradoc, between Clun and Knighton.
[4] The effect of similar conditions on the construction of early Norman castles will be noticed in a later chapter.