The Early Norman Castles of the British Isles.

by Ella Sophia Armitage

Fig. 35.

Wallingford, Berkshire ([Fig. 35]).—There is good reason to suppose that in the vallum of the town of Wallingford we have an interesting relic of Saxon times. Wallingford is one of the boroughs enumerated in the Burghal Hidage; it was undoubtedly a fortified town at the time of the Conquest,[735] and is called a burgus in Domesday Book; but there appears to be no evidence to connect it with Roman times except the discovery of a number of Roman coins in the town and its neighbourhood. No Roman buildings or pavements have ever been found.[736] The Saxon borough was built on the model of a Roman chester: a square with rounded corners. The rampart of Wallingford, which still exists in great part, is entirely of earth, and must have been crowned with a wooden wall, such as was still existing at Portsmouth in Leland’s time.[737] The accounts of Wallingford in the great Survey are very full and important. “King Edward had eight virgates in the borough of Wallingford, and in these there were 276 haughs paying 11l. of rent. Eight have been destroyed for the castle.”[738] This Norman castle was placed in the N.E. corner of the borough. At present its precincts cover 30 acres,[739] but this includes garden grounds, and no doubt represents later enclosures. No ancient plan of the castle has been preserved, but from Leland’s description there appear to have been three wards in his time, each defended by banks and ditches. The inner ward, which was doubtless the original one, is rudely oblong in shape; it covers 4½ acres. Leland says, “All the goodly buildings, with the towers and dungeon, be within the third dyke.” The motte, which still exists, was on the south-eastern edge of this ward; that is, it was so placed as to overlook both the borough and the ford over the Thames.[740] It was ditched around, and is said to have had a stone keep on the top; but no foundations were found when it was recently excavated. It was found to rest on a foundation of solid masonry several feet thick, sloping upwards towards the outside, so that it must have stood in a kind of stone saucer.[741] The masonry which remains in the other parts of the castle is evidently none of it of the early Norman period, unless we accept a fragment of wall which contains courses of tiles. Numerous buildings were added in Henry III.’s reign; the walls and battlements were repaired, and the hurdicium, which had been blown down by a high wind, was renewed.[742] But the motte and the high banks show clearly that the first Norman castle was of wood.

The value of the royal borough of Wallingford had considerably risen since the Conquest.[743]

Warwick ([Fig. 36]).—Here again we have a castle built on land which the Conqueror obtained from a Saxon convent, a positive proof that there was no castle there previously. Only a small number of houses was destroyed for the castle,[744] and this points to the probability, which is supported by some other evidence, that the castle was built outside the town. Warwick, of course, was one of the boroughs fortified by Ethelfleda, and it was doubtless erected to protect the Roman road from Bath to Lincoln, the Foss Way, against the Danes. Domesday Book, after mentioning that the king’s barons have 112 houses in the borough, and the abbot of Coventry 36, goes on to say that these houses belong to the lands which the barons hold outside the city, and are rated there.[745] This is one of the passages from which Professor Maitland has concluded that the boroughs planted by Ethelfleda and her brother were organised on a system of military defence, whereby the magnates in the country were bound to keep houses in the towns.[746] Ordericus, after the well-known passage in which he states that the lack of castles in England was one great cause of its easy conquest by the Normans, says: “The king therefore founded a castle at Warwick, and gave it in custody to Henry, son of Roger de Beaumont.”[747] Putting these various facts together, we may fairly assert that the motte which still forms part of the castle of Warwick was the work of the Conqueror, and not, as Mr Freeman believed, “a monument of the wisdom and energy of the mighty daughter of Alfred,”[748] whose energy was very much better employed in the protection of her people. Dugdale, who also put the motte down to Ethelfleda, was only copying Rous, a very imaginative writer of the 15th century.

The motte of Warwick is mentioned several times in the Pipe Rolls of Henry II.; it then carried wooden structures on its top.[749] In Leland’s time there were still standing on this motte the ruins of a keep, which he calls by its Norman name of the Dungeon. A fragment of a polygonal shell wall still remains.[750] But there is not a scrap of masonry of Norman date about the castle. The motte, and the earthen bank which still runs along one side of the court, show that the first castle was a wooden one. The bailey is oblong in shape, the motte being outside it; its area is about 2½ acres.

The value of Warwick had doubled since the Conquest.

Warwick.

Wigmore, Hereford.