Military Architecture in England During the Middle Ages

by A. Hamilton Thompson

Hastings Castle: from Bayeux Tapestry

These two may not have been the only castles in England before the Conquest. The reference to Arundel in Domesday Book, for example, seems to imply an origin almost as early for the castle there.[40] Ordericus Vitalis speaks of Dover as though there were already a castle there, when William the Conqueror stormed the town after Hastings.[41] But Ordericus is our authority for the important and explicit statement that, in 1068, “the fortresses, which the Gauls call castella, had been very few in the provinces of England; and on this account the English, although warlike and daring, had nevertheless shown themselves too feeble to withstand their enemies.”[42] A statement of this kind at once disposes of the theory that the burhs of the Danish wars were castles; it could hardly be argued that such burhs were very few, or that the English had not taken advantage of them. As a matter of fact, when William came to England, his military policy consisted in the founding of castles, and many of these in places which had been and were burhs, where, if the burh and castle were one and the same thing, the foundation of a castle was quite unnecessary. Arcem condidit, castellum construxit, munitionem firmavit, are terms used over and over again to describe the making of these new strongholds. To William, the strength of a monarch lay in the castles which he controlled; in warfare the castle formed his natural base of operations. His first work on landing at Hastings was to throw up a castle ([38]). Harold, on the other hand, although, as the Bayeux tapestry shows us, he had seen something of castles and siege warfare in William’s company, trusted for his defence to the shield-wall of his men, and the protection of the banks and ditches of an old earthwork in advance of his position. In 1067, after his coronation, William stayed at Barking, close to the walls of London, while the city, the Lundenburh whose walls Alfred had restored, was being overawed by the construction of certain firmamenta—one of them, no doubt, the White Tower, the other probably Baynard’s castle, near the present Blackfriars.[43] Again, we find him at Winchester, building a strong fortress within the walls of the city—a castle within a burh.

William’s operations in 1068 and 1069 were of great military importance. In 1068 he quelled the resistance of Exeter. The city was still surrounded by its Roman walls, to which the inhabitants now added new battlements and towers. They manned the rampart walks and the projections of the wall,[44] which for eighteen days William endeavoured to undermine. When at last the keys of the city were surrendered to him, his first work was to choose within the walls a place where a castle might be raised; and, on departing, he left, as at Winchester, a constable in charge of the castle, the king’s lieutenant charged with the task of keeping the burh under. From Exeter a rebellion in the north called William to York. The insurgents, an irregular band of freebooters, had thrown up defences in remote places in woods and by the mouths of rivers; some were harboured in the larger towns, which they kept in a state of fortification. As William travelled northwards, he founded castles at Warwick and Nottingham. He constructed a fortress in the city of York, and on his way home founded castles at Lincoln, Huntingdon, and Cambridge. No sooner had he left York than the rebels again began to stir; a movement was made on behalf of the ætheling Edgar, and Danish aid was called in. William Malet, the governor of York castle, was hard pressed by the enemy. The Conqueror came to his relief, and, as a result of this visit, founded a second castle in York. Both castles, however, were of little use when the Danes came. The garrison of one or both rashly advanced to fight the invaders within the city itself, and were massacred. It is a significant fact that the castles were left open and deserted; neither the men of York nor the Danes had any use for them. When William came north again on his campaign of vengeance he repaired both the castles. Shortly after, on his expedition to Wales, he founded castles at Chester and Shrewsbury.[45]

Lincoln; Plan

What do we find to-day at these places where William founded his first English castles? At Hastings, on the cliff which divides the old town from the modern watering-place, there are important remains of a later stone castle within lines of earthwork which are, no doubt, William’s. The mount remains at the north-east corner of the enclosure: the later curtain wall has been carried up its side and over it. The present remains of the castle of Winchester are later than William’s day. At Exeter the gatehouse and much of the adjacent masonry of the castle are unquestionably of a very early “Norman” date. In London we have the White tower, probably much extended from William’s early plan, and not completed till his son’s reign. But the stone fortresses of London and Exeter were exceptional. When we come to his northern castles, we find that at Warwick, York, Lincoln, Huntingdon, Cambridge, and Shrewsbury, the plan of the castle consists of a bailey or enclosed space,[46] with a tall mount on the line of its outer defences, and on a side or at an angle of the enceinte remote from the main entrance. At Nottingham the plan of the early castle is not so easy to make out. But, in the other cases, although, at various dates during the middle ages, additions were made in stone, the nucleus of the plan is a collection of earthworks, which takes this form—a motte or mount with a bailey attached. At Lincoln there are two mounts. At York there are two castles, one on either side of the river, but each with its mount. On the mount of the castle north-east of the river is a later stone keep; the mount of the south-western castle has never carried stonework, and its bailey is now almost filled up with modern houses.

The presence of the double castle at York has been a great temptation to those who would identify the castle with the burh. The fortification of both banks of the river is, on the face of it, so like the system adopted by Edward the Elder, that the York castles have been often quoted as burhs of Edward the Elder’s date, and it has been concluded that similar earthworks must have existed at Nottingham, Stamford, and so on. This idea is quite untenable. Had William followed the example of Edward and Æthelflæd, he would simply have repaired or renewed the defences of the two divisions of the burh at York.[47] But what he had to provide against was the spirit of rebellion in the burh itself, as well as the possible use of the water-way by Danish pirates. Which castle he first founded at York we do not know. On the tongue of land which runs out between the Ouse and Foss, outside the burh, and between it and the river approach to the city, one castle rose. The other, a fortress known in later times as the Old Baile, was possibly from the beginning partly within the ramparts of the southern burh. Later, at any rate, the city wall was built across the foot of the outer side of its mount, and enclosed the bailey on two sides. Elsewhere, the distinction between William’s castles and the burhs within which they rose is very noticeable. At Lincoln the castle filled up an angle of the Roman city. At Cambridge, the mount rises on the highest point of a large enclosure—the original burh—surrounded by earthworks of early date. Further, if any documentary proof is needed of anything so self-evident as the distinct nature of the castle and the burh, Domesday is clear upon the point. Apart from the evidence which it gives us with respect to the borough or burh, it speaks in one place of the burgum circa castellum—the burh about the castle. The case in point is the castle of Tutbury in Staffordshire, a fine example of the mount-and-bailey stronghold.[48] One important feature here is that the castle, very large in area, and with a ditch of great depth on two sides, was apparently raised on the site of an early hill-fort or burh, and that the actual burh about the castle, the modern village of Tutbury, has grown up under its protection on the slope towards the Dove.

Berkhampstead

The castle, then, was a Norman importation into England. It was a stronghold with a definite plan, so that the word castel had no vague meaning to English ears. It is found in many cases in close proximity to a burh, or fortified dwelling of a community; but it was a royal stronghold, in charge of an individual, and its intention was at once to protect and to keep the burh in subjection. Or, again, it may occupy, as at Tutbury or Conisbrough, the whole site of an early burh; but in such cases the character of the burh is entirely changed by the presence of the castle, and the dwelling-place of the community is shifted to the outskirts of the enclosure. At York, Lincoln, and other places where a castle was constructed within part of a burh, Domesday tells us that the site was vastata in castellis—i.e., that houses were taken down to make room for the new earthworks.