The Early Norman Castles of the British Isles.

by Ella Sophia Armitage

Norwich ([Fig. 23]).—We find from Domesday Book that no less than 113 houses were destroyed for the site of this castle, a certain proof that the castle was new.[524] It is highly probable that it was outside the primitive defences of the town, at any rate in part. Norwich was built, partly on a peninsula formed by a double bend of the river Wensum, partly in a district lying south-west of this peninsula, and defended by a ridge of rising ground running in a north-easterly direction. The castle was placed on the edge of this ridge, and all the oldest part of the town, including the most ancient churches, lies to the east of it.[525] In the conjectural map of Norwich in 1100, given in Woodward’s History of Norwich Castle,[526] the street called Burg Street divides the Old Burg on the east from the New Burg on the west; this street runs along a ridge which traverses the neck of the peninsula from south-west to north-east, and on the northern end of this ridge the castle stands.[527] There can be little doubt that this street marks the line of the burh or enclosing bank by which the primitive town of Norwich was defended.[528] A clear proof of this lies in the fact that the castle of Norwich was anciently not in the jurisdiction of the city, but in that of the county; the citizens had no authority over the houses lying beyond the castle ditches until it was expressly granted to them by Edward III.[529] The mediæval walls of Norwich, vastly extending the borders of the city, were not built till Henry III.’s reign.[530]

Norwich.
(From Harrod’s “Gleanings among the Castles and Convents of Norfolk,” p. 133.)

Fig. 23.

The motte of Norwich Castle, according to recent investigations, is entirely artificial;[531] it was originally square, and had “a prodigious large and deep ditch around it.”[532] The fancy of the antiquary Wilkins that the motte was the centre of two concentric outworks[533] was completely disproved by Mr Harrod, who showed that the original castle was a motte with one of the ordinary half-moon baileys attached. Another ward, called the Castle Meadow, was probably added at a later date. The magnificent keep which now stands on the motte is undoubtedly a work of the 12th century.[534] The castle which Emma, wife of Earl Ralf Guader, defended against the Conqueror after the celebrated bride-ale of Norwich was almost certainly a wooden structure. As late as the year 1172 the bailey was still defended by a wooden stockade and wooden bretasches;[535] and even in 1225 the stockade had not been replaced by a stone wall.[536]

Norwich was a royal castle, and consequently always in the hands of the sheriff; it was never the property of the Bigods.[537] As the fable that extensive lands belonging to the monastery of Ely were held on the tenure of castle guard at Norwich before the Conquest is repeated by all the local historians,[538] it is worth while to note that the charters of Henry I. setting the convent free from this service, make no allusion to any such ancient date for it,[539] and that the tenure of castle guard is completely unknown to the Anglo-Saxon laws. The area of the inner bailey is 3¼ acres, and that of the outer, 4½ acres. The value of Norwich had greatly risen since the Conquest.[540]

Nottingham ([Fig. 22]).—This important castle is not mentioned in Domesday Book, but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that William I. built the castle at Nottingham in 1067, on his way to repress the first insurrection in Yorkshire. Ordericus, repeating this statement, adds that he committed it to the keeping of William Peverel.[541] The castle was placed on a lofty headland at some distance from the Danish borough, and between the two arose the Norman borough which is mentioned in Domesday Book as the novus burgus. The two upper wards of the present castle probably represent William’s plan. The upper ward forms a natural motte of rock, as it is 15 feet higher than the bailey attached to it, and has been separated from it by a ditch cut across the rocky headland, which can still be traced below the modern house which now stands on the motte. Such a site was not only treated as a motte, but was actually called by that name, as we read of the mota of Nottingham Castle in the Pipe Rolls of both John’s and Richard I.’s reigns.

Mr Clark published a bird’s-eye view of Nottingham Castle in his Mediæval Military Architecture, about which he only stated that it was taken from the Illustrated London News. It does not agree with the plan made by Simpson in 1617,[542] and is therefore not quite trustworthy; the position of the keep, for example, is quite different. The keep, which Hutchison in his Memoirs speaks of as “the strong tower called the Old Tower on the top of the rock,” seems clearly Norman, from the buttresses. It was placed (according to Simpson’s plan), on the north side of the small ward which formed the top of the motte, and was enclosed in a yet older shell wall which has now disappeared. The height of this motte is indicated in the bird’s-eye view by the ascending wall which leads up it from the bailey. It had its own ditch, as appears by several mentions in the accounts of “the drawbridge of the keep,” and “the bridge leading up to the dongeon.”[543] It is highly probable that this keep was built by King John, as in a Mise Roll of 1212 there is a payment entered “towards making the tower which the king commanded to be built on the motte of Nottingham.”[544] But the first masonry in the castle was probably the work of Henry II., who spent £1737, 9s. 5d. on the castle and houses, the gaol, the king’s chamber, the hall, and in raising the walls and enclosing the bailey.[545] The castle has been so devastated by the 17th century spoiler, that the work of Henry and John has been almost entirely swept away, but the one round tower which still remains as part of the defences of the inner bailey, looks as though it might be of the time of Henry II. This bailey is semicircular; the whole original castle covers only 1⅔ acres. A very much larger bailey was added afterwards, probably in John’s reign.[546] Probably this later bailey was at first enclosed with a bank and stockade, and this stockade may be the palitium of which there are notices in the records of Henry III. and Edward I.[547] The main gateway of this bailey, which still remains, is probably of Edward I. or Edward II.’s reign.[548]

The castle of Nottingham was the most important one in the Midlands, and William of Newburgh speaks of it as “so well defended by nature and art that it appears impregnable.”[549] The value of the town had risen from £18 to £30 at the time of the Survey.[550]