British Castles

by Charles Henry Ashdown

SECTION OF THE CITY DEFENCES OF VERULAMIUM (NEAR ST. ALBANS).

A common device in Roman castrametation was the berm or platform outside the surrounding wall, but immediately beneath it; in an attack upon the fortifications the assailants would be exposed to a plunging fire of missiles from the ramparts while descending the steep counterscarp of the ditch, to a raking discharge when ascending the slope of the scarp, and be entirely devoid of cover when crossing the berm, which was generally about 20 feet wide. Another advantage of the berm was that it placed the engines of the besiegers on the remote side of the ditch at a greater distance from the walls, and thereby lessened the effect of the missiles discharged from them. To still further modify the results of the latter upon the wall it was customary to bank up the earth upon the inner face to form a ramp, and this also lessened the effects of the rams of the besiegers. These features are shown in the foregoing diagrammatic section of the walls of Verulamium.

(b) The Saxon Period, c. 410-1066

Concerning the defensive works erected in the British Isles during the Saxon Period there is more indefiniteness prevailing at the time of writing than there is with regard to any period antecedent or consequent to it. This may be attributed to two causes, the first being the unsatisfactory use of the word burh in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, and the second the effects produced during the past half-century by writers wrongly attributing the remains of early Norman castellation to the period preceding it, following upon a misunderstanding of the word above mentioned. This has had the result of rendering the major portion of the works produced upon the subject of castellation during the latter half of the nineteenth century unreliable and obsolete so far as the Saxon and Roman periods are concerned, while at the same time producing a marked hesitancy among experts to definitely attribute any work to the first of the periods without systematic excavation of the site.

In O.E. the word burh in its nominative form signifies a fort or stronghold and is generally translated as "borough," while in its dative form byrig it is commonly used to indicate what its modern representative "bury" conveys. But Anglo-Saxon writers did not use the two words strictly, and thus hesitancy and confusion have been produced. It is now being generally accepted that the usual form of burh or borough was that of a rectangular enclosure surrounded by a rampart and an external ditch, the area being of any dimensions up to 20 or 30 acres or more. This arrangement is probably exemplified in the earthworks at Wallingford.

It is obvious that the inherent weakness in this very elementary system of defence lies in the inability to adequately man all the ramparts at once because of their great extent; the defenders probably relied upon the promptness with which they could meet a threatened attack at any particular point. The Anglo-Saxons at a very early period recognised the advisability of forming fortified positions in the island, and carried out the system so entirely that practically every isolated house, farm, or group of buildings was enclosed by its rampart and ditch. Even at the present day we become aware of this fact from the scores of "burys" and "boroughs" with which the surface of our land abounds. The burh was thus a comparatively slight affair when compared with earthworks which had preceded it.

But undoubtedly the great centres of defensive strength lay in those towns which the Romans had formerly fortified, and the inclusion of their masonry walls in the borough boundary immensely augmented their efficiency, as is exemplified at York, Lincoln, and Chester. Around villages and farmsteads the defences probably consisted of a ditch, a vallum surmounted by a turf wall, a palisading of thick stakes, or even a hedge. That the latter was a mode of defence in the earlier part of the Saxon Period is proved by an insertion in the Old English Chronicle under the year 547—where Ida of Northumbria is said to have built Bebban burh, i.e. Bamborough,—that it was first enclosed with a hedge, and subsequently with a stone wall. Illuminations in Saxon MSS. representing fortified towns invariably depict stone walls with battlements; but, again, it may be that these are Roman, and crenellated walls are extremely ancient, being represented upon the Nineveh marbles. In the illustration from the Caedmon MS. given here true battlements are depicted by the Saxon artist, while a similar attempt has also been made in Harl. MS. 603—a battlemented parapet being evidently intended.

BATTLEMENTED PARAPET SHOWN IN CAEDMON'S PARAPHRASE; MS. IN BODLEIAN LIBRARY.