Military Architecture in England During the Middle Ages

by A. Hamilton Thompson

Raby Castle, Durham
Ground Plan.

The strong tower, representing the survival of the keep, is found in another great northern castle of the fourteenth century, Raby, the castle of the Nevilles, where in other respects the domestic element is very prominent ([311]).[333] Raby, like Alnwick, is occupied to-day, but no such drastic changes as have converted the house on the mount at Alnwick into a comfortable modern residence were necessary here. There is an outer gatehouse slightly in advance of the north angle of the castle, which was surrounded by a moat and is nearly rectangular. The buildings are clustered round a main courtyard, the entrance to which is a gatehouse with a long vaulted passage behind it in the west block of buildings. At either end of the west front are two massive rectangular towers: Clifford’s tower, at the north end, is almost detached, and covers the north angle immediately opposite the gateway. The remaining tower, known as Bulmer’s tower, projects on five sides from the south angle of the building, and is the strong tower or keep of the castle. The kitchen, in the north block, is also contained within a strong tower, which does not project, however, from the rest of the buildings. But it was in the north of England that the keep survived most persistently. Middleham castle received much alteration at the hands of its Neville owners in the fourteenth century; but the twelfth-century keep was retained as the central feature of the enclosure. The rectangular keep of Knaresborough is entirely of the fourteenth century: it stood between an outer and inner ward, and its great peculiarity is that the only passage from one to the other was through the first floor of the keep.[334]

BELSAY CASTLE

The tradition of the rectangular tower, however, was systematically preserved in the buildings known as pele-towers. These formed the chief defensive structures of enclosures called “peles,” a word derived from the Latin pilum (a stake). The twelfth-century tower of Bowes, a large and important rectangular tower which guarded the pass over Stainmoor from the valley of the Eden to that of the Tees, is an early instance of the pele-tower; and probably a large palisaded enclosure or “barmkin” was attached to it. In the fourteenth century we find large pele-towers like those at Belsay ([313]) or Chipchase, or the great tower-house of East Gilling, the proportions of which recall the rectangular keeps of a century and a half earlier. Belsay, with its traceried two-light openings on the first floor, and large bartizans corbelled out at the angles of its battlements, is the most handsome building of its kind in the north of England. The ordinary pele-tower, however, is of a rather later date, and the large majority of Northumbrian examples are of the fifteenth, and now and then of the sixteenth century.[335] Halton tower, near Aydon castle, and the small tower in the corner of the churchyard at Corbridge,[336] are well-known examples; while one of the most imposing specimens is the oblong tower of the manor-house of the archbishops of York at Hexham. The normal elevation was of three stories. The ground-floor, in which was the doorway, was vaulted as a protection against fire; it may have been used as a stable, and certainly was used as a store-room. The door was of wood, but its outer face was protected by a heavy framework of iron. The first floor, reached by a mural stair, was the main living-room. The second floor was a sleeping-room; and the battlements at the top were generally machicolated. Garde-robes are usually found in these towers; but they can hardly be called comfortable residences, and had all the disadvantages of the twelfth-century tower-keep, without its roominess. They are found, not only in Northumberland, but throughout the northern counties and the south of Scotland, while, in the hill country of Derbyshire, the pele seems to have been a favourite form of stronghold. The twelfth-century tower of Peak castle is one of those examples which allies the pele-tower to the normal tower-keep; while Haddon hall gradually developed from an enclosure which was neither more nor less than a pele with a tower at one angle.[337]

In this connection a word should be said about the fortification of churches. Ewenny priory church in Glamorgan, with its crenellated central tower and transept, is our only important example of fortified religious buildings such as were common in the centre and south of France—the cathedral of Albi (Tarn), the churches of Royat (Puy-de-Dôme) or Les-Saintes-Maries-sur-la-Mer (Bouches-du-Rhône).[338] None of our abbeys is protected by a donjon, like that of Montmajour, near Arles. There are, however, a certain number of churches, in districts exposed to constant warfare, the architecture of which, if not exactly military, was yet possibly constructed with a view to defence. The massive structure of some twelfth-century towers, like Melsonby in north Yorkshire, is probably due to the idea that they could be converted into strongholds, in case of a raid from the Scottish border. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when Scotland was dreaded as a constant foe, the habit of giving additional security to the church towers in this district was common. Some otherwise simple church towers, as at Bolton-on-Swale and Danby Wiske in north Yorkshire, have their lowest stage vaulted, probably to minimise the danger of fire. The doorway to the tower-stair at Bedale was defended by a portcullis, and there are a fireplace and garde-robe upon the first floor. At Spennithorne, in the same neighbourhood, the battlements of the tower borrowed an ornament from military architecture, and are crowned with figures of “defenders.” In border districts it is not unusual to find the ground-floor of the tower roofed with a pointed barrel-vault, as at Whickham in county Durham, where the church stands on a high hill near the confluence of the Tyne and Derwent. This is a very general custom in South Wales, where the towers are usually massive and unbuttressed, and stand upon a battering plinth.[339] In Pembrokeshire a more slender type of tower prevails, which usually batters upwards through its whole height: the ground-floor is vaulted, and in many cases the whole church, or, at any rate, the nave, is ceiled with a barrel-vault. It does not follow that the object of this form of construction is defensive: lack of timber, and the consequent employment of local stone for rubble vaulting, is partly responsible for it. But in no part of the country are military and ecclesiastical forms of architecture so closely allied. The barrel-vaults of Monkton priory church and St Mary’s at Pembroke are similar to those of the chapel and its substructure which occupy the north-west corner of the inner ward of Pembroke castle: those of the church at Manorbier have their counterparts in the vaults of the castle chapel and the large room on its ground-floor.

If the pele-tower may be regarded as a direct survival of the rectangular keep in a simplified form, it is probable that the rectangular keep, with its angle turrets, also had a share in the origin of a type of castle or strong house, which became common, especially in the north of England, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.[340] The plan of this species of castle is a rectangle, which, in the largest examples, as at Bolton in Wensleydale, has an open courtyard in the centre; but its distinguishing feature is the provision of four towers, each at an angle of the structure. Such keeps as those of Colchester and Kenilworth, where the turrets are of considerable size and projection, suggest this plan; and some of the earliest examples, like Haughton on the north Tyne, the oldest parts of which are of the thirteenth century, have little to distinguish them from the ordinary rectangular keep. The angle-towers at Haughton are of no great prominence; but, in the early fourteenth-century castle of Langley, to the west of Hexham, they are a striking feature of the building, and one is entirely devoted to a series of garde-robes, arranged in three stories, with a common pit in the basement. A building with a somewhat similar plan to these northern castles is the manor-house or castle which Robert Burnell, bishop of Bath and Wells, and chancellor of England under Edward I., built at Acton Burnell, in Shropshire.[341] Here, however, the building is of a thoroughly domestic type, with large two-light window-openings of great beauty, which at once remove any suspicion as to its military character. The castle of the Scropes at Bolton and that of the Nevilles at Sheriff Hutton represent the highest development of this quadrangular plan. The licence to crenellate Bolton was granted in 1379:[342] the licence for Sheriff Hutton bears date 1382.[343] Both castles are large buildings with a central courtyard, and in both the military ideal was uppermost. Sheriff Hutton is now in a complete state of ruin, but Bolton is fairly perfect; and from its structure one important fact may be deduced. While the usual precautions for defence were carefully preserved, and the outer openings in the walls interfered little with the general solidity of structure, the domestic buildings round the courtyard formed part and parcel of the fabric itself. They were not merely built up against or within the curtain, but the curtain was actually their outer wall, and not simply their defensive covering. In fact, the manor-house in these cases was not a separate building within the enclosure of the castle; but the castle was also the manor-house. The same combination of military with domestic aims is noticeable in the contemporary castle of Raby (1378), of which the plan, already described, approximates irregularly to the type.[344] Castles akin to Bolton and Sheriff Hutton are Lumley, the licence for which was granted in 1392,[345] and Chillingham, the angle-towers of which are of a much earlier date than is usual in castles of this plan.[346] At Chillingham the medieval work is somewhat obscured by alterations made in the seventeenth century, but the original plan is retained. Survivals of the quadrangular plan may be traced in some of the great manor-houses of the early Renaissance period. It is not difficult to detect in the plan of Hardwick hall (1587), while the ground-plan of Wollaton hall (1580) is probably derived from a similar source. Smaller houses like Barlborough hall, near Sheffield, or Wootton lodge, near Ashbourne, have a kinship with it, although in these cases, and especially in the first, the elevation is more tower-like than is usual in medieval buildings of the type. It is needless to say that these Renaissance buildings are without any military character.

The traditional form of the rectangular keep was also responsible, no doubt, for the great tower-house which formed the principal feature, and is now the only portion left, of the castle of Tattershall in Lincolnshire. The discussion of this building belongs more properly to the last chapter of this book, for its general construction and architectural features are those of an age in which the military architecture of the middle ages was already little more than a survival. This age of transition begins in the last quarter of the fourteenth century; and, as already pointed out, castles like Bolton and Raby clearly show its influence. During the later half of the fourteenth and the fifteenth century, outside the north of England, it is rare to find a castle which actually deserves the name. The large private residence, with a certain amount of defensive precautions, became increasingly common; and, where alterations were made to existing castles, they were generally entirely in the direction of domestic comfort.