alnwick: barbican
alnwick: gatehouse of keep
Shutter closing opening in wall or parapet
The rampart-walk between the towers occupied, as from the earliest times, the top of the wall, and was defended by battlements upon the outer, and sometimes by a low rear-wall on the inner side.[260] The chief access to it was by stairs in the towers, but sometimes, as at Alnwick, there was a stair from the interior of the castle, built at right angles to the wall ([241]). In the shell-keep on the mount at Tamworth, there is a small stair which ascends in the thickness of the wall. The principal alterations which took place with regard to the rampart-walk were concerned with the treatment of the parapet. The division of the parapet into merlons or solid pieces by embrasures has been explained already, and it has been seen that, in the first instance, the embrasures are pierced at rather long intervals. The tendency grows, however, to multiply embrasures and narrow down the merlons between them, on the theory that the archer, discharging his arrow through the embrasure, can shelter himself and re-string his bow behind the merlon. The merlon, however, in works designed with a purpose mainly military, is usually broader than the embrasure, and is itself pierced with a small arrow-loop, splayed internally. This may be seen in the town-walls of Aigues-Mortes ([77]) and Carcassonne ([78]), where the merlons are of great breadth, and in such triumphs of fortification as the castles of Carnarvon ([246]) and Conway.[261] The merlons, however, were not always provided with loops, even in the Edwardian period. The barbican at Alnwick ([243]), a work of the early fourteenth century, is battlemented with plain merlons and embrasures. In this case, there are two further points which deserve notice. The embrasures at Alnwick were defended by wooden shutters, which hung from trunnions working in grooves in the adjacent merlons. The shutters could be lifted out at pleasure, and the embrasure left free: the device may be noticed in some other instances.[262] Also, upon the merlons at Alnwick stand stone figures of warriors, sometimes called “defenders,” and supposed to be designed to strike terror into the enemy. The present figures at Alnwick are comparatively modern; but the fashion was not uncommon and was purely ornamental. Similar figures are seen on the gatehouse of the neighbouring castle of Bothal, and upon the gatehouses of York: among the figures on the merlons at Carnarvon was an eagle, which gave its name to the famous Eagle tower. An enemy who could be daunted by the illusion of a rather diminutive archer or slinger balancing himself on a narrow coping, must have had very little experience of warfare. The merlons were treated very plainly in many French examples, as at Avignon, Aigues-Mortes, and Carcassonne ([242]), where they are flat-topped and unmoulded, while the embrasures have flat sills. In England they were generally finished off by a gabled coping, as at Carnarvon, where the top of each is moulded with a half-roll to the field ([246]).[263] The sill of the embrasure has also an inner chamfer. It may be noted that the freedom with which machicolations were employed in the parapets of French castles and town-walls was unusual in England. Machicolated parapets were, as a rule, confined to the fronts of gateways, until the later part of the fourteenth century, when they began, as at Lancaster and Warwick, to show themselves in the towers of the gateway and curtain. They are very sparingly used in the Welsh castles, which are our noblest examples of military architecture; and an enceinte, like the city wall of Avignon, in which the whole parapet is machicolated and built out on long corbels of considerable projection, is unknown in England.
Carnarvon Castle; Crenellated parapet
What has just been said of the parapets of walls applies naturally to the parapets of towers. Towers on the curtain had, as we have seen, a double use. They flanked the wall, so that each pair could rake with their shot the entire face of the enceinte contained between them. They also commanded the rampart-walk, so that an enemy who scaled the wall was still exposed to their fire and confined to a limited area. A distinction, however, must be drawn between the closed and open types of tower, as they may be called. The ordinary rampart tower was of two or three stages, divided into a basement and upper guard-room or rooms. The basement was sometimes vaulted, as in the northern tower at Pevensey ([247]) or towers at Alnwick. Fireplaces and garde-robe chambers are often found in the upper rooms,[264] the garde-robes being often placed at the junction of the tower with the curtain, and corbelled out over the outer wall.[265] At Carew, where there was no keep, but the castle formed a rectangular enclosure with drum-towers at the angles, all the towers were provided with garde-robe chambers, which, with the passages leading to them, are roofed by lozenge-shaped slabs, corbelled out one above another. In the south-east tower, the first-floor chamber has a pointed barrel-vault, and is entered by an outer stair from the ward. In the east wall are two garde-robe chambers, entered by elbow-shaped passages. Each had a door opening inwards, and was lighted by a separate loop. The chambers were so planned that the seats were placed on opposite sides of a partition wall, with a common vent.