Military Architecture in England During the Middle Ages

by A. Hamilton Thompson

There are, however, a few round towers which, although they have not their own curtain in the sense of Coucy, are yet within defences of a peculiar nature, and therefore stand in a class apart. The most remarkable of these is Launceston, where the tower stands upon the summit of a lofty artificial mount of early Norman origin, and is approached by a steep and well-defended stair, ascending the face of the mount to the main entrance. Round the outer edge of the mount remain the lower courses of a stone wall, concentric with the keep. Within this is another and higher circular wall, which was crowned by a rampart-walk, approached by a stair in the thickness of the wall, to the left of the entrance. Inside this enclosure is the tower itself, which now consists of a basement and a ruined upper floor. The narrow space between the tower and the encircling wall was evidently roofed over at the height of the first floor of the tower: holes for joists still remain.[219] This double circle of masonry recalls Flint, where, however, the intermediate passage was vaulted, and the outer circle was probably the whole height of the tower.[220] Flint does not possess the low outer wall which existed at Launceston. The nearest analogy to Launceston is at Provins (Seine-et-Marne), where the octagonal keep has its own outer curtain, and is composed of an outer octagon with cylindrical turrets at the angles, commanded by an inner octagon rising two stages higher. The upper stage at Provins is surrounded by a lofty crenellated wall, on which rests a conical roof.

Dolbadarn

Another case is the keep of Tretower in Breconshire, which stands on a slightly elevated site near the confluence of the Rhiangol with the Usk. Here the arrangement is very curious. The keep, a round tower with a basement and three upper stages, stands within the ruins of an approximately rectangular enclosure. This enclosure bears a close resemblance to the outer wall of a rectangular keep, but has two octagonal projections from the south face, one of which contains a vice, and the other a large fireplace. The tower itself seems to be somewhat earlier than the year 1200: the fireplaces on the first and second floors have architectural decoration recalling that of the fireplaces at Conisbrough, shafts with capitals carved with foliage of a very elementary kind. The solution which suggests itself is that a rectangular tower, of a somewhat original plan, was begun and raised to a certain height, and that the builders then changed their minds, built a circular tower within the unfinished keep, and left the outer walls to serve as a curtain for the new structure.

The keep at Tretower, in its ordinary features, may be compared with the tower of Bronllys, only a few miles distant, on the other side of the pass through the Black mountains, at the southern foot of which Tretower stands. This tower also seems to be a work of the end of the twelfth century, but its architectural details are much plainer: both seem originally to have been between 70 and 80 feet high, and each contained a basement and three floors. Each has a battering base, and above this the wall at Tretower batters slightly to the summit; the diameter of Tretower exceeds that of Bronllys throughout. The original entrance in each case was on the first floor, from which at Tretower a vice led to the top of the building. The basement at Tretower had its separate stair in the wall opposite the entrance. At Bronllys the basement has a pointed barrel vault, and was entered by a stone stair and ladder from a trap-door in one of the window recesses of the first floor. The stair from the first floor to the second opened from another window recess, and curved through the wall, as at Conisbrough; there was, as also at Conisbrough, a separate stair to the third floor. The wall of the basement at Bronllys has been broken through in two places, and in one of these a hollow in the wall has been disclosed, in which originally a great beam was inserted to give coherence to the masonry. The same feature is seen in the outer building at Tretower. This device was frequently employed in the construction of medieval walls, but its traces are not often so clearly seen.

Dolbadarn; Interior

One feature of the tower of Bronllys is that, like that of Caldicot, it stands upon an artificial mount, which occupies the ordinary position of such earthworks, at the head of the enclosure. The more roomy, but lower, tower at Hawarden, the upper floor of which is internally an octagon, almost surrounded by a mural passage, is built upon a lofty mount. At Skenfrith in Monmouthshire the tower, nearly equal to Bronllys in diameter, but not higher than Hawarden, stands upon a very low mount, and is placed in an isolated position, nearly in the centre of a trapezoidal enclosure. Here the lowness of the mount and the absence of indications of a normal earthwork plan suggest that it was raised to strengthen the foundations of the tower, and is not the mount of an earlier castle. The knoll, on the other hand, on which the round tower of Dolbadarn ([183]) stands, between the two lakes at the foot of the pass of Llanberis, is natural. The details of this tower are very plain, but it was probably built during the thirteenth century. There is no trace of any castle in connection with this small military outpost, which, like the not far-distant rectangular keep of Dolwyddelan, on the eastern slopes of Moel Siabod, bears some analogy to the “pele-towers” of the north of England, and may have been built by a Welsh chieftain upon an English model during the reign of Henry III.

York; Clifford’s Tower