The Growth of the English House / A short history of its architectural development from 1100 to 1800

by J. Alfred Gotch

In this inquiry we need not trouble ourselves about Roman villas; they were exotic, and there is no reason to believe that they had any influence on English houses. Nor need we spend much time on the centuries which elapsed between the extinction of the Roman civilisation and the Norman Conquest. The country was widely populated during those years, but any one who has climbed the bleak downs whereon its inhabitants clustered, or scrambled up the vast earthworks which were the strongholds of its chieftains, may well wonder how the race survived. Some kind of shelter from the weather there must have been, probably in the shape of wooden buildings. But such primitive structures cannot be considered as architecture, and we will now concern ourselves only with buildings of a permanent nature on which a certain amount of trained skill has been bestowed, buildings, in fact, which convey definite information as to their arrangement, and may be classed, more or less, as works of art. Such buildings—at any rate so far as they are dwellings—are not to be found of a date prior to the Conquest, nor, with few exceptions, for more than half a century later.

The “castles” of the Conqueror were probably merely the huge earthworks which he found scattered throughout the land. Any new works which he caused to be made were probably of wood. It was not until the middle of the twelfth century that stone buildings superseded to any great extent these wooden structures; at least few existing remains can be dated earlier than then; and it is in the midst of the great ditches of these earthen “castles” that many of the stone keeps of that time were built, the encircling outer mounds being further strengthened by stone walls.

The few remains of the stone castles built during the reigns of the Conqueror and his sons do not provide us with any definite link between themselves and their predecessors of wood, although it is probable that they embodied in a permanent form the kind of accommodation previously provided in more perishable materials; the most important part of this accommodation being the hall. They certainly do not seem to have had any long ancestry on the other side of the Channel, for it is doubtful whether any building of this nature in Normandy can be dated prior to the Conquest. But although the exact causes which determined their shape are still to seek, it is clear that the fashion became established of erecting stone castles, wherein the keep was the principal building.

The keep was the domestic part of the castle; it contained the rooms used by the owner and his family. Surrounding it at some distance was the outer wall strengthened according to circumstances by projecting towers and entered through a fortified gatehouse. The extent and intricacy of the defences varied according to the importance of the castle; but these matters belong rather to military architecture than to domestic, and all that need be said is that those retainers who overflowed from the towers and other permanent buildings were housed in temporary wooden buildings within the courtyard.

Wooden buildings were indeed the ordinary dwellings of the time. There must have been many more people outside than inside the castles, even if we regard the castles which have survived as only a small part of those which actually existed. The ordinary manor houses, as well as the homes of the peasantry, were built of wood and have in consequence entirely disappeared. It is true that there are many wooden houses (or houses of wood and plaster) still to be found in all parts of England, but they are all of a much later date. It is doubtful if a single specimen of the twelfth century survives. It must also be remembered that not infrequently the inferior rooms of a stone house, such as the kitchen, were built of wood.

The keep, then, is the earliest form of English house built in permanent fashion. It was not, as some suppose, a prison or dungeon, or even the last refuge of a beleaguered garrison; it was the ordinary home of the family. In examining the ruins of a castle where the keep is the principal remnant, it is not necessary to postulate a vast array of other buildings, and to wonder what they were, and whither they have disappeared. It was probably the only considerable building, the remainder of the establishment consisting of a wall of enclosure and various minor buildings, mostly of wood.

What, then, was the accommodation in these keeps, these homes of our ancestors of the twelfth century, of the men who slew Thomas à Becket, of the barons who revolted against Henry II.?

1. Castle Rising, Norfolk. The Keep.

The keeps were massive rectangular structures several storeys in height, with walls of great thickness. Their size varied according to the requirements of the owner. Some were about 90 ft. square, others but 30 or 40 ft. They were not necessarily exactly square, but, as a rule, their sides were of nearly equal length. The White Tower of the Tower of London, begun by order of the Conqueror in the later years of the eleventh century, measures 118 by 107 ft. The keep of Rochester Castle, built about 1130, is 70 ft. square. Castle Hedingham in Essex, built about the same time, is 60 by 55 ft.; the keep of Dover Castle (about 1154) is 90 ft. square; Castle Rising (Fig. 1), probably a few years later in date, is 75 by 60 ft.; Kenilworth, dating from the third quarter of the century, is 87 by 54 ft.; while the Peak Castle in Derbyshire, erected about 1176, measures some 40 by 36 ft. These are all outside measurements, and as the walls were very thick, seldom less than 8 ft., and sometimes as much as 16 or 20 ft., the available space within them was much less than their total area. Nevertheless, after deducting the thickness of the walls, there remained in the largest such huge rooms as that in the Tower of London, 90 ft. long by 37 ft. wide; in the medium-sized, such as Hedingham, rooms 38 by 31 ft.; while in the smallest, such as the Peak Castle, the space was 22 by 19 ft., equal to the drawing-room of an ordinary house of the present day. But although the rooms were spacious, they were few in number, and badly lighted. As a rule there was but one room on each floor; some of the more important, however, such as Rochester and Castle Rising, had two large rooms on each floor and one or two smaller, but this was the exception rather than the rule. Occasionally a chapel was added; sometimes it occupied part of the floor space inside the walls; sometimes, as at Coningsburgh, it was contrived within the thickness of the wall itself, augmented by hollowing out one of the huge buttresses. But the chapel was always small—space was too valuable for it to be otherwise; and it was used not only for sacred purposes, but also not infrequently as a private room for the lord.