Military Architecture in England During the Middle Ages

by A. Hamilton Thompson

The situation and plan of the hall remained very much the same throughout the middle ages. What we find at Richmond, Ludlow, Chepstow, or Durham, we find also at Manorbier, Caerphilly, Harlech, and Carnarvon, at Warwick and at Naworth. The domestic buildings were placed against the curtain on one side or at an end of the inner ward, and preferably where a precipice or steep slope made the assault of the curtain on that side difficult or impossible. This position is well illustrated in the fortified thirteenth-century house of Aydon in Northumberland. Here there was, on the side of entrance, a large walled outer ward, or, as it was called in the north of England, a “barmkin.”[226] The house was built round two sides of a walled inner courtyard, the hall and main apartments standing on the brink of a deep ravine, where they were safe from approach or from the peril of siege-engines. The curtain was therefore pierced with window-openings of a fairly large size, which gave the house more light and comfort internally than would have been possible upon a more exposed face of the site. The hall at Warkworth ([49]) was built against a solid curtain upon the steepest side of the peninsula occupied by the castle, and, although there were no window-openings in the curtain at the level of the hall, it was pierced by a postern, through which the kitchen could be supplied, at the end nearest the tower. Castles on comparatively level sites show the same disposition. At Cardiff ([191]), the domestic buildings are on the west side of the enclosure, built against the curtain, and protected by the river, and bear the same relation in the plan to the main entrance and the shell-keep on the mount, as the hall at Warkworth bears to the gateway and the mount with its later strong house.[227]

Cardiff Castle; Plan

The plan of the hall and its adjacent buildings was, and continued to be, that of the ordinary dwelling-house. The aula of Harold at Bosham in Sussex is represented in the Bayeux tapestry ([36]) as a house with a basement, apparently vaulted, and an upper floor approached by an external staircase. No division of the upper floor is shown: it consists apparently of one large room. This plan, with the division of the hall by a cross-wall into a main and smaller chamber, is precisely what we find, at the end of the century after the Conquest, at the large town house in Bury St Edmunds known as Moyses hall, or at the manor-house of Boothby Pagnell in Lincolnshire. It is represented in manor-houses of the later Gothic period at the so-called “Goxhill priory” in Lincolnshire or at the house of the bishops of Lincoln at Liddington in Rutland. Its most familiar survival in non-military architecture is in the halls of several of the Oxford colleges, like Christ Church or New college. In the plan of the monastery, the frater or dining-hall followed the same lines of an upper room upon a vaulted substructure. Similarly, the hall of a castle was simply an ordinary aula placed within an enclosure walled for military purposes. The hall at Christchurch is the exact counterpart of Harold’s aula in the Bayeux tapestry. It is a rectangular building, probably of the third quarter of the twelfth century, with a basement, originally vaulted, and lighted by narrow loops. The first floor formed one large apartment, and was well lighted with double window openings, one of which, at the south end, received special architectural treatment. There was a fireplace in the east wall, on the side next the stream: the cylindrical chimney-shaft still remains. The entrance, near the south end of the west wall, was probably approached by an outer stair at right angles to the wall, and led into the lower end of the hall, opposite the daïs for the high table. The fireplace, set diagonally to the entrance, warmed the daïs and the body of the hall: the end near the doorway, corresponding to the “screens” of the ordinary hall, was probably left free for the coming and going of the servants. The basement was simply a cellar and storehouse. It had a doorway in the west wall, while in the east wall was a gateway communicating with the water. The elevation is nearly identical with that of the house at Boothby Pagnell; but at Boothby Pagnell a cross-wall divides both upper floor and basement into larger and smaller chambers; while at Christchurch there was at the south-east corner a rectangular garde-robe turret, built out into the stream, which kept the vents from both basement and upper floor continually flushed.[228]

The division of the first floor into a larger and smaller apartment corresponds to the division of the ordinary dwelling-house into hall or common-room of the house, and bower or withdrawing-room and sleeping apartment for the chief members of the family.[229] In the developed plan of the medieval private house, the small vaults below the bower became the cellar, and, as at Manorbier, a vice was provided by which wine could be brought directly from it to the high table. The bower or solar[230] itself was known in large houses as the great chamber, and access to it was obtained through a door near one end of the cross-wall behind the daïs. There was, however, a variation upon this plan in which the hall and bower are on a different floor-level, and this appears at a fairly early date. In this case the hall occupied the whole height of the basement and first floor, and was entered from the ground-level of the bailey: the cellar, in this case, was on a level with the floor of the hall, and the solar was reached from the daïs by a stair. This plan became very common in the later Gothic period; and is well illustrated in manor-houses like Haddon and Compton Wyniates, and in the colleges of Cambridge, where the common-room or parlour took the place of the cellar, and the solar was occupied by the master’s lodging. But it is also found in castles and fortified houses, as at Berkeley and Stokesay. An indication of its employment at a date not long after the Norman conquest is found in the story of the insult offered to Robert of Normandy by William Rufus and Henry I. They came to visit him, about the year 1078, at the castle of L’Aigle, where he was staying, either in the constable’s house or some dwelling near the castle. William and Henry played dice “upon the solar,” and indulged in horseplay, which took the form of making a deafening noise, and pouring water on Robert and his followers, who were below. Robert lost his temper, and rushed into the dining-hall (cenaculum) to punish his brothers: the quarrel, stopped for the time being by their father, was the beginning of the long feud which ended for Robert in his confinement at Cardiff. The mention of the “solar” distinctly implies a room upon the upper floor, probably at some elevation above the hall.[231]

This alternative plan supplied more direct communication with the kitchen than was possible, where the hall was upon an upper floor; and in connection with it, a kitchen and its accompanying offices are very frequently found at the lower end, near the entry of the hall. This became, in manor-houses and in the colleges of Cambridge, the normal position of the kitchen, buttery, and pantry, divided from the body of the hall by the “screens.” Most of the cooking in the earlier castles must have been done either in temporary sheds or in the open air: the basement of the hall, which, in later manor-houses, was sometimes used as a kitchen, was not so used at an early period. The apartment in a corner of the cleverly planned first floor of the keep at Castle Rising was probably a kitchen, and is a rare instance of a room set apart for this purpose before the end of the twelfth century. It must be remembered, however, that the domestic buildings of castles were very often, as at Ludlow, enlarged and entirely rebuilt, until they became, as at Cardiff and Warwick, splendid mansions; and details with regard to the original arrangement of the lesser apartments are thus hard to recover.

ludlow: interior of building west of great hall

At Warkworth ([49]), probably a little before 1200, a house of considerable extent, including more than one private apartment and a kitchen, was built against, and at the same time with the, west curtain.[232] Up to this time, the castle had been an ordinary mount-and-bailey stronghold with timber defences, and no earlier stonework remains. The new house was much beautified by additions made in the fifteenth century, but the plan was little altered. Its central part was the hall, parallel with the curtain which it joined. The entrance was in the side wall next the bailey, and led, as usual, into the lower end of the hall, which occupied the full height of the house, and thus formed the only internal means of communication between the lord’s and the servants’ quarters. An unusual feature of the hall, which cannot have been well lighted, was an eastern aisle, over which the sloping roof was probably continued. At the upper end, behind the daïs, the cellar was entered directly from the hall: a straight stair next the curtain gave access to a landing, from which a doorway gave access to the great chamber. The great chamber communicated with a polygonal angle tower, called by the curious name of “Cradyfargus,”[233] the first floor of which, next the great chamber, may have been the chamber of the master of the house, while the upper floor was probably used by the ladies. Nearly at right angles to the great chamber, against the south curtain, was a chapel, of which enough remains to show us that the ground-floor, entered from the bailey, was used by the servants and garrison: while the west end was divided into two stories, the upper one of which was entered from the private apartments, and was a gallery for the use of the lord and his family. It is difficult to speak positively of the arrangements of the kitchen, which stood against the west curtain at the other end of the hall. It may originally, like the kitchen at Berkeley, have had no direct communication with the hall: the passage and offices between, in their present state of ruin, are fifteenth-century additions or reconstructions. But all the elements of the larger English house are here. The chief alterations in the fifteenth century were the building of a porch and gateway-tower in front of the hall entrance, and the insertion of a lofty turret, with a vice and vaulted vestibule to the great chamber, to the north-eastern angle of the hall, where it blocks the last bay of the aisle.