None of the towers in England and Wales mentioned in this chapter have the inner spur which has been noticed as characteristic of French towers. It appears, as has been said, at Goodrich and Chepstow. Other instances are a tower in the outer curtain at Denbigh, and the spur on the inward face of the great tower at Barnard Castle. Here the work is not earlier than the time of Edward II., and the tower is little more than a large mural tower added to a large shell-keep standing on a high rocky point. The spur here is a half pyramid, the apex of which dies away in the face of the tower. Of an octagonal tower we have one example at Odiham in Hampshire, which may be of the end of the twelfth century. This has the feature, anomalous for so early a date, of angle buttresses which project 4 feet, but are only 2 feet broad.
Berkeley Castle; Plan
Of donjons which were built in England during the reign of Henry III., the most interesting, by virtue of their plan, are those of York and Pontefract. The tower of York ([185]), raised upon the mount of the northern of the two castles, was built possibly about 1230, and assumed the quatrefoil shape which is found in France at Etampes. This keep, presumably because it is built on a mount, is usually called a “shell”; it was, however, a regular tower, and the entrance, in the angle between two of the leaves of the quatrefoil, is guarded by a rectangular fore-building, on the first floor of which was the chapel. As at Etampes, the quatrefoil plan is preserved internally, but the angles formed by the meeting of the four segments are chamfered off: there was no vaulting, as at Etampes, but the floors were of wood. A quatrefoil plan was also adopted at Pontefract, with some slight variation, owing to the irregular shape of the rocky mount. This keep is in a state of complete ruin, although some idea of its former shape may be gathered from a bird’s-eye view preserved among the records of the duchy of Lancaster.[221] We can see, from what is left, that it was not built upon the top of the mount; but that, on three sides, the mount was enclosed by walls of revetment,[222] which formed the base of the segments composing the quatrefoil. This process recalls the walling-in of the mount at Berkeley, where, however, the lower part of the mount was left, and the space between the slope and the wall filled in with earth. At Pontefract the slope of the mount must have been much reduced before the walls of revetment were added: the sandstone upon which the castle was built is soft, and would lend itself easily to such an operation.
The bird’s-eye view of Pontefract just mentioned cannot be regarded as absolutely trustworthy, but it gives us the relative position of the various towers of the castle. It shows us a curtain flanked by a formidable row of mural towers; the keep, a complicated erection of several segments, with bartizans[223] projecting from the battlements in the angles formed by the junction of the segments, is still the dominant feature of the castle; but our attention is equally claimed by the defences of the curtain and the domestic buildings which it encloses. And, in pursuing our subject, we must first trace the growth of domestic buildings within the castle area, and then turn to that strengthening of the curtain which led eventually to the disuse of the keep.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DWELLING-HOUSE IN THE CASTLE
The castle needed, among its chief requirements, a dwelling-house which might be occupied by the owner and his household. Thus the stronghold of the lord of Ardres upon its mount was planned as a capacious dwelling, with a kitchen attached; and where, as in this case, the keep was the castle, it necessarily served the double purpose of fortress and residence. Enough has been said of the rectangular and cylindrical forms of tower-keep to show that the domestic and military elements were often combined in their arrangements. But the use of the tower-keep as the principal residence within the castle was a fashion of comparatively short duration. The example of its double use had been set in the great towers of London and Colchester, and in the rectangular towers of Norman and French castles. Of the towers of Henry II.’s reign, those which, like Castle Rising, are low in proportion to the area they cover, generally have the best provision for living purposes. Lofty towers, like Newcastle or Conisbrough, can never have been comfortable residences; and it is not surprising to find that at Newcastle, about half a century after the building of the tower, a more commodious dwelling-house was built within the castle area.[224] But we have seen already that in early castles, as at Oxford, a hall for the lord or his constable was generally, if not always, built within the bailey. The practical necessity of this is obvious in mount-and-bailey castles, where the tower on the mount, or the stone shell which took its place, was reserved for the main purpose of a final refuge in time of siege. No one who examines the sites of castles like Lincoln, Launceston, or Clare, with their formidable mounts, can fail to realise that the mount was an inconvenient place of residence, and that domestic buildings would be naturally provided in the annexed bailey. Bishop Bek’s thirteenth-century hall at Durham, built against the western curtain of the bailey, stands upon the substructure of a far earlier building. The domestic buildings in the bailey at Guildford appear to be of earlier date than the stone tower on the mount; while at Christchurch in Hampshire ([123]), the dwelling-house next the river and the tower on the mount appear to be almost contemporary.
Castles which, for reasons already explained, were surrounded from the beginning with a stone wall, and had at first no regular keep, contain even better examples of the existence of a separate hall. The eleventh-century hall at Richmond is almost perfect, although some additions, made nearly a century later to the upper part of the structure, have led to the mistaken attribution of a later date to the whole building.[225] At Ludlow, mingled with the fabric of the fourteenth-century hall, are clear indications of the earlier stone hall, built, as at Richmond, against the curtain on the least accessible side of the inner ward. The fabric of the great hall at Chepstow, much enriched and beautified in the thirteenth century, is contemporary with the foundation of the castle in the eleventh century. Part, at any rate, of the substructure of the hall at Newark belongs to the castle founded in the twelfth century by Bishop Alexander, although the whole building on that side of the enclosure, with the exception of an angle-tower, bears witness to reconstruction and repair at two later periods. At Porchester, again, the substructure of the hall contains a considerable amount of early Norman work, which may be attributed to the time of Henry I.