Castle (6 page)

Hen Domen provides an interesting contrast with castles built by William the Conqueror at around the same time. Rather than being constructed in the middle of a town or city, Roger of Montgomery’s new castle was built in the open countryside. Despite its isolation, however, it was of crucial importance for Roger in controlling his earldom. He picked the site in order to command an ancient crossroads, and also to control the traffic across a major ford on the river Severn. Today, the castle is no less lonely than it was nine centuries ago. It squats between two formers’ fields, is overgrown by trees and bushes, and looks for all the world like nothing more than a woodland copse. But despite its apparent obscurity, Hen Domen has once again become very important. In fact, it is one of the most talked-about castle sites in Europe.

For a period of almost forty years, Hen Domen was the site of a massive archaeological dig. Every summer, from the early sixties to the late nineties, archaeologists gathered at the castle for weeks on end to try to uncover its secrets. With a total of over two years spent digging, this was the biggest and most sustained investigation of its kind ever undertaken. Thanks to the work done at Hen Domen, a great deal has been learned, not only about the nature of early castles, but about what life was like within their vanished wooden walls.

In itself, Hen Domen has good reason to be considered special. Although it is only a small-to medium-sized motte and bailey, the strength of the castle’s defences reflect both the high status of its builder and the dangerousness of its position on the border. As at the royal castle at Berkhamsted, built by either William or his brother Robert, we find multiple lines of defence. Three earthen ramparts ring the whole site, forming two deep ditches around the castle. Anyone approaching with hostile intent would have had to cross the first ditch, climb over a wooden fence with a fighting platform behind it, and then negotiate another, deeper ditch – all this before
they
reached the castle’s main walls, which stood twelve to fourteen feet high.

Of course, it is impossible to say exactly what stood above the ground by digging underneath it. Nevertheless, the excavations at Hen Domen permitted some reasonable estimates. They revealed two rows of post-holes, one set behind the other, which indicated that the walls must have been backed by a fighting platform, raised off the ground by the posts. In order to allow a man to pass underneath it, the platform must have been raised to a height of at least six or seven feet. Similarly, a man standing on top of the platform would need to be protected from attack, so we must assume that the wall rose at least another six or seven feet in front of him, bringing the total height of the wall up to the suggested height of twelve to fourteen feet.

This artist’s impression of Hen Domen, based on the archaeologists’ findings, shows how the castle might have appeared in the twelfth century
.

In a similar fashion, the archaeologists were able to estimate the size of bailey buildings at Hen Domen. Certain post-holes were
evidently
home to very large timbers, and from the scale of these foundations the overall shape of the buildings can be guessed. At the foot of the motte, for example, the archaeologists uncovered the remains of a very large building. In all probability, this was the castle’s great hall. Judging by the massive size of its foundation ditch, the hall stood two storeys high, providing space downstairs for storage, and a main first-floor room where Roger and his household would have sat and dined. Behind the hall the team discovered evidence of a flying bridge of exactly the kind depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry. Again, it was the size of this structure that was striking. The foundations (and also, remarkably, a surviving timber that was found preserved in the ditch) indicate that the bridge must have been twelve feet wide; large enough to ride a horse up, if necessary. Finally, on the top of the motte, the diggers uncovered evidence for a great tower – or rather, several great towers, for it seems that the buildings on the motte were replaced several times over the years. Again, the scale of the foundations suggest that the greatest of these towers was at least two storeys tall.

How were these buildings actually constructed? The trees, as you might expect, were felled using axes and dragged to the site by animals in order for construction to begin. The trunks, however, were not cut to shape using saws, but by the more efficient process of splitting. Starting with a large oak tree, wooden or metal wedges were driven into the trunk along its length, using a wooden mallet or hammer. Eventually a crack would open and, with a little encouragement from crowbars, the tree would split in half. After this, the process could be repeated several times – the half could be split into quarters, the quarters split into eighths, and so on. In fact, if you had a good-sized oak tree, it was possible to get over a thousand square feet of planking from a single trunk. Once you had produced enough timber in this manner, you could start building with them right away
–
provided your boss wasn’t too concerned about the rough quality of the finish. If, however, he demanded smoother surfaces on his castle walls, these could be produced by working the split wood with an axe, and then dressing it with a smaller, subtler tool called a T-axe.

Other materials besides timber went into constructing an early castle. The walls of buildings could be built or reinforced with clay, as well as the well-known ‘wattle and daub’. When it came to roofing, slate tiles may have been used in some cases, but no such slates were ever uncovered at Hen Domen. Thatched roofs may also have existed, but using thatch obviously meant that there was a much greater danger from fire. Bearing both these things in mind, the archaeologists assumed that the roofs at Hen Domen would also have been made of timber, built either from planking or by using shingles. There was nothing low-status about any of these materials – especially wood. Roger of Montgomery was a very powerful man, and wood was his material of choice. Likewise, the castles built by William the Conqueror and his brothers were constructed in almost every case from earth and timber. The diggers at Hen Domen were slightly disappointed that none of the buildings there seems to have been very ornate – no carved timbers were uncovered. Roger’s castle, it seems, was not a fancy example like the one at Bayeux on the Bayeux Tapestry, with its dragon’s head over the doorway. Nevertheless, the size and number of the buildings was in itself revealing. It gradually became clear to the archaeologists at Hen Domen that they were not uncovering a small huddle of shabby-looking structures, but a site that was thickly planted with buildings, built on a scale that matched the fabulous descriptions of the chroniclers.

The only genuine disappointment for the archaeologists at Hen Domen was the limited number of ‘small finds’ they uncovered, and the fact that none of these items suggested a truly aristocratic lifestyle. There were no brooches or jewellery to compare with the finds at Threave (see
Chapter Five
); the most exciting find was half a
wooden
bucket. Of course, we can make certain allowances for the lack of luxury items. This was a castle, not a town or a battlefield; people were not necessarily dropping and losing things all the time. They must have had rubbish pits in which to throw away their unwanted or broken items, but these were never found: despite digging for forty years, the archaeologists only had time to excavate half the bailey. Who knows what treasures – or rubbish – might be concealed in the other half? Hen Domen has by no means given up all its secrets.

But even with all these excuses, the inescapable conclusion was that life at Hen Domen was not exactly luxurious. It was not a place where Roger of Montgomery turned up with his precious things: certainly no gold or jewels, and probably not even much money – only one coin was found on the site. In its early days at least, it was a garrison castle, manned entirely by knights and soldiers, whose standard of living was basic, not to say Spartan. Only two of the bailey buildings showed signs of being heated by fires and, to judge from the animal bones that were found, the diet of the occupants was quite simple. They typically ate beef, mutton and pork, and from time to time they got to dine on deer – a slightly classier dish. All this food, however, could be sourced locally; there was no indication that fancier foodstuffs ever found their way to the castle.

But this would not have been unusual. In the eleventh century, knighthood was still a long way from the fine living and pageantry of the late Middle Ages (see
Chapter Four
). In Roger of Montgomery’s day, it was not such an exclusive club; knights were numbered in thousands, not hundreds, and the poorer ones were not much better off than peasants who had done well for themselves. The men whom Roger sent to Hen Domen to guard the fringes of his earldom no doubt cursed the cold and criticized the cooking. But their experience was probably little different from that shared by Norman knights all over England.

*

Hen Domen was just one of Roger of Montgomery’s castles in his new lordship of Shropshire. He built several others, including the one that used to stand in Shrewsbury itself. But the region he had been given to govern was too big for one man to manage. So, just as William the Conqueror relied on Roger, the earl likewise delegated lands and authority to his supporters, and they in turn built castles of their own. The mottes at Clun, Maesbury and Kinnerley were all built by such men. One of the earl’s most powerful followers, Roger Corbet, decided to follow his boss’s example in an even more direct fashion. Caus Castle commemorates the region known as the Pays de Caux in Normandy – another example of a Norman knight, a long way from home, choosing to commemorate the old country when he came to name his castle. The effect of all this building by Roger and his tenants was that Shropshire was soon thickly planted with new fortresses. Today there are eighty-five surviving castle earthworks in the county, and an additional thirty-six in the former county of Montgomeryshire. The vast majority of these were established in the early years after the Conquest by Roger and his allies. Between them, they transformed the region into the most thickly castellated area of England.

It was, however, only in terms of overall numbers that Shropshire was exceptional. The pattern of castle building in the border region was replicated all over the country, with the greater Norman lords establishing castles, and their minions soon following suit. There was little about this process that was systematic, and very little supervision between one layer of authority and the next. William the Conqueror, for example, personally directed the business of building castles in the major towns and cities of England, but he had little control over what went on in Roger of Montgomery’s earldom of Shropshire. Having decided on a policy of total conquest, he had to place a lot of power in the hands of others. This meant, of course, that the way these men exercised that power was largely up to them – the king had no way of monitoring and supervising their activities.
As
a means of establishing Norman control over the English, William’s decision was remarkably successful. After 1075, there were no more rebellions in England; the last one took place in East Anglia that year, and the Anglo-Saxon chronicler put its failure down to the fact that the castles in the region were too strong. However, at the same time, a policy of handing large amounts of power to individuals was a double-edged sword. The king knew that, left unchecked, a
laissez-faire
approach to conquest and castle-building might one day make matters worse. He had, after all, spent most of his youth fighting his enemies in Normandy to deprive them of their castles.

So it was that, twenty years after he had landed at Pevensey beach, William made another momentous decision. The king decided it was time to take stock of his accomplishment, to draw a line under the process of conquest, and to remind everyone – Norman and Anglo-Saxon alike – exactly who was in charge. At Christmas 1085, he launched a great inquiry – a survey of his kingdom so expansive in its scope and so intrusive in its nature that men compared it to the last reckoning of God. They called it Domesday.

After the Conquest itself, the Domesday Book is William’s most famous achievement. As one of the most important documents in English history, it has attracted a lot of controversy over the years. Was it really a one-off original, or had the Anglo-Saxons been carrying out similar surveys for years? More importantly, what was the Domesday Book actually for? It has been suggested several times that it was a tax inquiry, but the arguments never quite convince. The best explanation, to my mind, is that Domesday was created for two reasons. In the first place, it was intended to serve as a reference work for William’s ministers; in order to conduct the business of government effectively, they needed an accurate record of who owned what. Domesday, however, was intended to do much more than this. The point of the exercise was that it was a legally binding document, like a charter or title deed.
England
had seen twenty years of chaotic land acquisition, but the survey set a seal on this process. It was no longer going to be possible, in theory at least, to grab land from someone else and claim it was yours by right of conquest. The Domesday Book set everything in stone. like God’s last judgement, the book’s verdict was final.