Military Architecture in England During the Middle Ages

by A. Hamilton Thompson

Harlech Castle; Gatehouse

Harlech; Inner side of gatehouse

The lake on the north side of the castle was divided into an inner and outer moat by a bank of earth which sprang from the platform of the outer gatehouse, and curved round the north side of the island. This bank ended at a second and smaller island, the sides of which were reveted by a stone wall, covering the west face of the stronghold. This horn-work or ravelin was connected by drawbridges across the outer and inner moats with the mainland and with the western gatehouses of the castle. It is evident that a fortress like this, in which every resource of the defenders’ art has been brought into action, gave a besieger very few opportunities. Every entry was guarded: if he once effected an entrance, defence after defence had to be forced, while the resources of the several lines of defence could all be used against him at once. Moreover, he had to be careful to cut all communications off from the rear entrance and posterns; and this was a difficult matter, where the defenders of the castle had so much freedom of movement and could assail him from so many different points. It is not surprising to learn that the impregnable fortress of Caerphilly is almost without a history. Constructed to defend the lower valley of the Rhymney and to cover the coast castles round Cardiff from an attack from the Welsh of the valleys which slope southwards from the Brecon Beacons, it endured no important siege;[286] and it was not until the civil war that its military capacity was really tested—and then only in an age which had outgrown the methods responsible for its scheme of defence.[287]

Of Edward I.’s castles in North Wales, Harlech ([273]) and Rhuddlan, with lofty inner curtains and cylindrical angle-towers, have much in common with each other and with Caerphilly. The general plan of Harlech is nearly identical with that of the island defences of Caerphilly. Its situation on a lofty rock, however, does not call for elaborate outer defences. The rock was isolated from the mainland by a dry ditch cut across the east face. A causeway and a drawbridge led to the gatehouse of the outer ward, which was flanked by bartizans. The wall of the outer ward, like that at Caerphilly, is low, and has no towers: three of its angles form bastions, while the other, at the least accessible point, is simply curved. The unusually lofty curtain of the inner ward, some 40 feet high, towers above the comparatively slight outer defences; while the centre of the east side is occupied by the great gatehouse ([274]), projecting far back into the inner ward. The entrance is flanked by two semi-cylindrical towers; and in the rear of the gatehouse are two round turrets, rising high above the roofs. Rhuddlan, which stands on the right bank of the Clwyd, had a fairly broad outer ward defended by a deep and wide ditch on the three faces on which the site is fairly level. The inner ward had two gatehouses, of equal size and importance, placed diagonally to each other at the north-east and south-west angles of the curtain. Each of these was flanked by two large drum towers; while each of the two remaining angles was capped by a single tower.

There were at Harlech a hall and other domestic buildings against the curtains; but the gatehouse was also a complete mansion in itself, with its own small chapel or oratory above the gateway. There was an outer stair to the bailey from the main hall of the gatehouse. Exactly the same arrangement occurs at Kidwelly, while the importance of the gatehouse as a dwelling reaches its climax in the hall of the northern gatehouse at Beaumaris.[288] The dual arrangement of a hall, kitchen, etc., for the garrison, and a private dwelling-house for the constable or the lord of the castle, has already been noticed at Conway, whilst its growth has been traced in connection with the castle of Durham.

Harlech presents two or three important points of interest. (1) The outer ward was not blocked at any point, as at Caerphilly, by projecting buildings, but was continuous: it was crossed, however, in at any rate one place, by a wall which barred an enemy’s progress. (2) Owing to the nature of the site, only one gatehouse was built. But a small doorway in the centre of the north wall of the inner ward opened directly opposite a postern, flanked by half-round bastions, in the outer curtain. From this point an extremely steep path, now hardly to be traced, followed the edge of the rock, rounded the north-west bastion of the outer ward, and passed close beneath the west curtain to the south-west angle of the rock. Here, doubling on itself, it descended through a gateway into a long passage between the slope of the rock and the outer wall, and ended at the water-gateway of the castle, at the foot of the great crag and near the present railway station. The wall which protected the outer face of this tortuous passage, formed an outer curtain to the castle, descending the rock from the south-west angle of the outer ward, continuing round the foot of the rock on its north side, and climbing it again to meet the north-east bastion.[289] (3) The rampart-walk had no machicolations and, as at Conway ([261]), was continued round the inner faces of the angle-towers on corbelling. This left the interior of the towers free, while their doorways and stairs gave them ready command of the rampart-walk. The walls are not only lofty, but very thick. The section of the jambs of the hall windows and the small north postern points to the fact that the lower part of the walls was thickened, probably as an afterthought, when their present height was determined upon. The upper part of the walls is homogeneous, and is evidently a heightening. (4) Although vices in the angle-towers communicated with the rampart-walk, freedom of action was given to the defenders of the towers by the provision of a separate stair for those told off to guard the intermediate ramparts. This stair is reached through the basement doorway of the south-east tower, and, branching off from the internal stair a few feet above the entrance, reaches a small external platform. Here a narrow outer stair, with a rear-wall, is carried up the face of the flat gorge of the tower, and, turning along the south curtain, at length reaches the rampart-walk. The planning of this stair, with its carefully covered ground-floor entrance, is very interesting and curious.