Military Architecture in England During the Middle Ages

by A. Hamilton Thompson

An aisled hall, as at Warkworth, was a very exceptional feature. There are, however, a few existing examples of a hall with a nave and two aisles, the most famous of which is the thirteenth-century hall at Winchester. The midland castles of Leicester and Oakham also had aisled halls: that at Leicester was divided by arcades of timber, and still exists, although many of its original features, including the timber columns, have been removed or obscured. The hall at Oakham has been more fortunate. This castle, upon a flat site which had no strategic advantages, was really an aula or manor-house, enclosed by a strong earthen bank, and was probably not surrounded by a wall until the thirteenth century. Within this enclosure Walkelin de Ferrers, towards the end of the twelfth century, built an aisled hall of four bays, the architectural details of which are of unusual beauty, and of great importance in the history of early Gothic art in England. The building runs east and west, the original entrance, from the ground-level of the bailey, being, as usual, in the last bay of a side-wall, in this case the easternmost bay of the south wall.[234] The daïs was at the west end; and two doors, which probably communicated with the kitchen and buttery, remain in the east wall. The aisles would doubtless be kept clear of tables, to facilitate the service from the kitchen.[235] At either end of the building, the arcades spring, not from responds, but from corbels. Semicircular responds would have interfered with the benches behind the high table, and with the free passage of the servants between the kitchen and the aisles.[236] The columns are slender cylinders of Clipsham stone: the capitals are tall, and carved with a great variety of stiff-stalk foliage, with which are mingled bands of nail-head and dog-tooth. The arches are rounded: dog-tooth is used in the hood-mouldings, which rest upon figure-corbels. The classical character of the foliage, and the refined sculpture of the figures and heads in the corbels throughout the hall, have analogies in one or two other buildings of the district: they recall very closely the early Gothic work of the Burgundian province, and its English derivatives at Canterbury and Chichester. Nothing, however, is known of the masons employed; and the fabric has no documentary history. In the low side-walls are double window-openings, each with a sculptured tympanum beneath an enclosing arch: the pier dividing each of the windows is faced with a shaft, and the jambs are adorned with elaborate dog-tooth. These windows may be compared with those of the aisled hall of the episcopal palace at Lincoln, built about a quarter of a century later, where the arcades at both ends sprang from corbels. A close parallel to the arrangements of the hall at Oakham is provided by the contemporary hall, built by Bishop Pudsey at Auckland castle, near Durham. Here, again, the so-called castle was simply an aula without the strong earthworks which give Oakham a military character. The proportions of the Auckland hall are larger, and its architecture more simple, but with even more advanced Gothic characteristics. At the end of the thirteenth century, considerable alterations were made in the structure, and at the Restoration the hall was converted by Bishop Cosin into a chapel.[237] This involved the blocking up of the original entrance, the position of which exactly corresponded to that of Oakham. A new doorway was made in the west wall, and the bay which originally was set apart for the daïs was converted into an ante-chapel. In neither case do any other contemporary buildings remain: the mansion at Auckland, on the west side of the old hall, is a building of several periods, of which the earliest existing portion is not earlier than the reign of Henry VII.

DURHAM CASTLE
HISTORICAL GROUND PLAN

Hugh Pudsey (1153-95), the prelate responsible for the hall at Auckland, did much to increase the splendour of the episcopal castle at Durham ([199]). Durham castle is an excellent example of a mount-and-bailey fortress on a strong triangular site, with precipitous natural defences on the north and west. The entrance was on the one accessible side, from the plateau on which the cathedral and monastery stood. At the apex of the site, on the right of the entrance, was the mount, with a shell-keep on its summit; while to the left, along the west side of the bailey, was the original hall. The eleventh-century chapel was on the north side of the bailey, nearly opposite the entrance. Pudsey’s chief work was the construction of a long building of three stories in connection with the north curtain. The eastern part of the basement was formed by the early chapel; the rest was probably devoted to store-rooms and cellars. On the first floor was a great hall, entered by a doorway ([201]) which may fairly be called the most magnificent example of late Norman Romanesque art in England. Above this, on the second floor, approached by a vice in the south-east corner, was another hall, known as the Constable’s hall, and to-day as the Norman gallery. The walls of this upper structure were lightened by their construction as a continuous arcade, the arches forming frames to window-openings, and the piers between them being faced with detached shafts in couples ([203]). The internal arrangements of this building are now much obscured by the partition of the lower hall into several large rooms; while the south part of the upper hall has been cut up by smaller partitions. Early in the sixteenth century a new chapel was built on the east side of the lower hall, and against the south wall of the basement and first floor was made a stone gallery of two stories. The outer stair to the lower hall was then taken away; but Bishop Pudsey’s doorway was left, and light was thrown upon it by a large mullioned window in the outer wall of the gallery.[238]

Durham Castle; Doorway

Meanwhile, about the end of the thirteenth century, Bishop Bek, who also improved upon Pudsey’s work at Auckland, raised against the west curtain, and upon the substructure of the early hall, the great banqueting-hall, which is now used as the dining-hall of University college. This hall, again, has inevitably been much altered, but its actual plan and arrangements are very fairly maintained to-day, and the long two-light windows with simple geometrical tracery in the side walls represent, with some restoration of stone-work, its original lighting. The entrance, up a flight of stairs and through a porch added by Bishop Cosin, is in the south end of the east wall, and leads into screens roofed by a gallery, on the south of which are the kitchen and servants’ offices. A doorway in the east wall led from the daïs to the bishop’s private rooms; but at this end the older arrangements were altered by the construction of Tunstall’s gallery in the sixteenth century, and, later, still, by the addition of Cosin’s splendid Renaissance staircase—alterations which provided covered access from Bek’s hall to Pudsey’s building at right angles to it. The buildings just described are some of the most beautiful and instructive remains of domestic architecture in England, and have no military characteristics. The strength of the castle, however, was not forgotten. No English castle, even when Bamburgh and Richmond are remembered, presents a more formidable defence than the curtain, pierced by a few spare openings and by the narrow western windows of Bek’s hall, which revets and crowns the cliff above the Wear; while, in the fourteenth century, Bishop Hatfield (1345-81) replaced the older keep by a new and probably more lofty polygonal shell.

At Durham the buildings of Pudsey and Bek alike stand upon basements, which were used as cellars and store-rooms; and the preference for first-floor halls in castles was doubtless due to the necessity of providing plenty of room for magazines, both for provisions and arms, within a confined space, and keeping the muster-ground in the centre of the bailey as clear as possible. At Newark ([157]), where the ground fell away towards the river, the hall was built on the slope, and was entered from the level of the bailey, the slope being utilised for the construction of a large vaulted basement, lighted by loops from the river side, and communicating with the water by a sloping passage and a gateway opening on a small quay. The use of every available space for storage is illustrated at Carew castle in Pembrokeshire, where the whole space beneath the lesser hall and its adjacent buildings is occupied by cellars, while the basement of the greater hall, on the opposite side of the courtyard, appears to have been used as stables. At Pembroke a large natural cavern below the hall and its adjacent buildings was turned to use as a lower store-house. A vice was constructed in the rock from a ground-floor chamber north of the hall, and the mouth of the cavern was closed by a wall, in which was a gateway, opening upon a path from the water-side.