warwick: Guy’s tower
Warwick Castle; Cæsar’s tower
There are, however, a few striking exceptions which belong to the later part of the fourteenth century. The two polygonal towers, Guy’s tower ([319]) and Cæsar’s tower ([321]), which cover the angles of the eastern curtain at Warwick and flank the gatehouse with its barbican, are cases in point. Few castles show features of the military architecture of all periods to such advantage. The plan is that of an early Norman mount-and-bailey castle, which has in course of time been surrounded with a stone curtain;[347] while a magnificent residence, in the main a building of the fourteenth century, has grown up on the south side of the bailey next the river.[348] The most commanding military features, however, are the towers just mentioned, 128 and 147 feet high respectively. The whole character of these towers is French rather than English. Their great height may be contrasted with that of the contemporary rectangular towers at Raby, the loftiest of which is only 81 feet high, and depends for its defence almost entirely upon the thickness of its walls. The nearest parallel to the Warwick towers, on the other hand, is such a building as the fifteenth-century Tour Talbot at Falaise, a lofty cylindrical tower built at an angle of the donjon, as is generally stated, during the English occupation of northern France.[349] The chief characteristics of the towers at Warwick are the bold corbelling out of their parapets, with a row of machicolations, and the provision of a central turret, rising some distance above the level of the rampart-walk—a feature common in France, but most unusual in England.[350] The vaulting of both towers throughout is also a French feature; and in every respect they bear traces of an influence which, beginning in the cylindrical donjons of Philip Augustus’ castles and of Coucy, survived to a late date in France, and may have affected English military work in that country, but had little result in England itself. While, throughout the fifteenth century, the French castle maintained its character as a stronghold, and even kept that character when Renaissance influence was strong in that country, the military character of the English castle steadily diminished. The wars of the Roses were a succession of battles in open field, in which castles and walled towns played very little part. And while the military character of Warwick continued to be emphasised during the period of transition, the neighbouring castle of Kenilworth, in common with most English castles, was transformed, during the same period, from a stronghold into a palace.
hurstmonceaux: gatehouse
