The Medieval English Landscape, 1000-1540 (37 page)

Attempts have been made to depict the overall distribution of castles in England as part of a co-ordinated system of national defence and it might be expected that royal castles, at least, would be built according to a master-plan. There was clearly a policy on the part of William the Conqueror to establish castles in each major town which was the focus of shire government – urgently so in the areas which rebelled against him early in his reign.
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Beyond this, however, the idea does not stand up to scrutiny except in highly specific contexts such as those identified in Cheshire and Cambridgeshire in the previous paragraph. For example, the string of castles near the border with Scotland, from Carlisle in the west to Newcastle in the east, were built by different people at different times – Norham by Ranulf Flambard Bishop of Durham from 1121, for example, Wark-on-Tweed by the prominent early twelfth-century northern baron Walter Espec, both a generation later than the royal castles at either end of the chain – and failed to prevent repeated Scottish incursions south of what was in any case a movable frontier. They were designed for local, rather than regionally co-ordinated, administration and defence and – significantly – when both Norham and Wark were successfully assaulted by the Scots in 1138, other garrisons did not come to their aid.
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Similarly, castles built at south coast ports, such as those at Dover
(Kent), Portchester (Hampshire) and Southampton, all royal initiatives, were intended to protect key access and departure points for traffic mostly with Normandy, but not as a chain of fortresses which would support one another in the event of invasion. Such a chain was eventually built at the very end of our period, between 1539 and 1543, with the construction of 18 artillery forts along the south coast from Pendennis (Cornwall) to Sandown (Kent) along with supporting minor works in the Thames estuary and elsewhere, the intention being to combat a perceived threat of papally inspired invasion from France and the Spanish Netherlands. However, although several of these forts, such as St Mawes (Cornwall) and Walmer (Kent), are popularly known as ‘castles’, they were neither individuals’ private residences nor administrative centres and are best regarded as garrison bases: key components in England’s first co-ordinated scheme for the defence of the realm, but not really castles. It is interesting that the design of these forts – all ‘burly, rounded, hollow, roofed bastions’ surrounding a ‘tall cylindrical keep’ – are open to criticism as militarily backward compared to angle-bastioned fortifications, already developed in Italy, from which the entire field beneath the walls could be commanded. It is possible that this conservatism was the result of personal involvement in the specifications by Henry VIII himself: that it was his preference for some of the traditional features of castles, such as battlements and portcullises – of marginal relevance in this context – which led to their incorporation into the structures.
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If so, it is a striking demonstration of the way in which, even in fortifications which were of the highest military importance, other considerations could enter into their design.

Most historians and archaeologists accept that castles, as defined here, were introduced to England by the Normans. At first sight, there might seem to be plenty of evidence against this. There are pre-Conquest castles (known partly from documentary evidence) in Herefordshire (at Richard’s Castle, Ewyas Harold, Hereford and possibly two other sites) and at Clavering (Essex): the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
in its coverage of the year 1051 lamented the ‘injuries and insults … upon the king’s men’ inflicted by the occupants of one of these Herefordshire castles.
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At Dover, the earliest earthworks have been held to date to 1064–65 because of chronicle references to the construction of a castle (
castrum, castellum
) here in connection with Harold Godwinson’s oath to support William Duke of Normandy’s claim to the English throne. A much earlier fortified home has been found by archaeologists at Goltho (Lincolnshire), where an earthen bank and ditch surrounding a hall has been
dated to the mid-ninth century. At Sulgrave (Northamptonshire) a stone hall with earthen rampart might also pre-date the Conquest. From a literary perspective, the Anglo-Saxon word
burh
frequently meant a communal fortification – a walled town or fort – but in some contexts could refer to a fortified dwelling such as those at Goltho and Sulgrave: sufficient indication that the concept of a well-defended homestead was a familiar one in the upper reaches of pre-Conquest society. But all this can be explained in a way which retains the idea that castles arrived in England with the Normans. The Herefordshire and Clavering examples appear to be the result of settlement by Norman favourites of Edward the Confessor, while the original earthworks at Dover are now seen as Iron Age defences adapted for communal refuge by the Anglo-Saxons, the choice of ‘castle’ words by the chroniclers to describe them being interpreted as loose usage. As for archaeological and literary evidence of domestic
burhs
, they cannot be ranked as ‘castles’ because there is no sign that they were ever intended as administrative centres for the government of the surrounding area.
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If this seems to be straining the evidence, and underplaying the elements of continuity from the fortified home of the Anglo-Saxon nobleman or thegn to that of the incoming Norman lord, the fact remains that the novelty of castles in England in the aftermath of the Conquest was recognized at the time. The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
saw the building of ‘castles far and wide throughout the land’, with accompanying distress which ‘went ever from bad to worse’ as one of the immediate and striking impacts of the Duke of Normandy’s victory; they were ‘a sore burden to the poor’, a phrase which implies the existence of ‘government over the surrounding area’ to set them apart from the fortified residences which had gone before. Orderic Vitalis (though writing in the first half of the twelfth century) attributed that success largely to the fact that for the English ‘castles … were scarcely known’ so ‘in spite of their courage and love of fighting’ they ‘could put up only a weak resistance to their enemies’: not a claim that castles were totally unknown before 1066, but certainly support for the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
in its assertion that they spread thereafter, out of all proportion to what had gone before.
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Given that debate centres on what does or does not fit modern scholars’ definitions of ‘castles’, there will continue to be arguments in favour of pre-Conquest structures which deserve the appellation. But the texts leave us in no doubt at all of a widespread change of perception following the Norman Conquest: the ‘age of the castle’ had arrived.

With due regard to uncertainties over definition, it is generally accepted that rather more than 1,000 castles were built in England and Wales between the mid-eleventh century and the end of the fifteenth. Of these, at least 500 were probably in existence by 1100, and although the building of new castles certainly continued thereafter, the number in active use at any time may not
have exceeded 600.
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So the ‘first century of English feudalism’
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after the Norman Conquest – especially its earlier phase – was the busiest of all castle-building eras, even if most of the structures of this period were of earth and timber and most of the sites were subsequently abandoned. It is this period, down to the early years of Henry II’s reign, which is the focus of this section of the chapter.

Most ‘Norman castles’ conformed to one of two main types: the motteand-bailey, where an earthen motte or mound was the principal defensible feature, albeit with an accompanying bailey or courtyard, and the ringwork, where a rampart and ditch surrounded and protected the occupants, without there being an obvious focal point. Castle Neroche (Somerset), where excavation has shown that what was originally a ringwork of the late 1060s became a motte-and-bailey around 1100 through the addition of a motte at one end, serves to warn us of the dangers of classification, but the distinction is helpful nonetheless. We can point, for example, to some evidence of regional fashion, since there seems to have been a preference for ringworks on either side of the Bristol Channel, possibly associated with the prominence in the area of the Conqueror’s half-brother Robert Count of Mortain and his followers. As for mottes, they appear to have been very rare in Normandy and non-existent in England before 1066. So their proliferation thereafter – coming to outnumber ringworks in England and Wales by over three to one – would only have reinforced the chroniclers’ impression that something important had been added to the landscape.
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These alternative approaches to early castle design introduce us to an enduring theme: the dichotomy between those which emphasized a single dominant feature – motte or great tower – and those which invested heavily in the surrounding enclosure, leaving interior buildings virtually unprotected if that enclosure was breached. This is a simple way of looking at castles, one which begs questions about the real purpose of the ‘dominant feature’ and is liable to break down altogether where designers ensured that both approaches were adopted, but it is worth keeping in mind during the survey which follows.

The distribution map of mottes shows a high concentration in the Welsh marches and above-average frequency in the midlands, as well as areas of density in south-west Wales and the eastern side of Ireland which are clearly linked to Norman colonization of these regions. As already suggested, many sites near the Welsh border were probably fortified by barons to whom estates were parcelled out in this frontier zone in the generation following the Conquest; some of those in the midlands, and elsewhere across the country, may have originated amid the prevailing insecurity of Stephen’s reign, especially during the 1140s. As for the size of mottes, no less than 49 have been shown to be 10 metres or more in height from the previous ground level, all of them associated with the king (among them Oxford,
Cambridge, Lincoln and York) or a major baron (such as Robert Count of Mortain’s Launceston in Cornwall or William of Warenne’s Lewes in Sussex). Most of these belonged to the ‘conquest and early settlement’ phase of Anglo-Norman history, before 1100. Conversely, over 450 examples have been found to be less than 5 metres high, including the one at Hastings which is shown under construction in the Bayeux Tapestry.
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Even small mottes, however, would have required the clearance of a substantial area around them, not only because their diameter was normally over twice that of their height, and because there was also the bailey to accommodate, but also because of the need to have some open space to prevent a concealed approach. In the countryside this would doubtless have involved a certain amount of tree-felling (so providing the timber for the castle buildings) and in urban areas the demolition of houses: as alluded to already, Domesday Book records this as having happened at Cambridge, Canterbury, Gloucester, Huntingdon, Lincoln, Norwich, Stamford, Shrewsbury, Wallingford, Warwick and York.
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It is often difficult to visualize the appearance of a castle which survives today only as earthworks (
Figure  32
) and archaeological excavation has revealed much which is not obvious in the landscape today. Most mottes seem to have had some form of timber tower on top – as lookout and refuge – but its construction could vary: the 3.7 metres-square tower at Abinger (Surrey) has been interpreted as resting on stilts inserted into the motte, while that at South Mimms (Hertfordshire) was built on the pre-existing ground surface, with the motte being piled up around its base. Double palisades have been found around the motte (as at Abinger) or bailey (as at Tamworth and also Hen Domen (Montgomeryshire), implying the existence of a walkway and fighting platform between them. A wooden bridge between motte and bailey – as depicted for this type of castle in the Bayeux Tapestry – is also in evidence at Hen Domen. Investigations of ringworks have also yielded interesting results. Excavations at Barnard Castle (County Durham) have shown the earliest complex on the site, built around 1095, to have been a ringwork with gatehouse, enclosing a timber hall 14 metres by 10.5 metres along with ancillary buildings (possibly stables). A small ringwork at Lydford had timber revetments abutting onto the inside of the rampart and this is thought to have been replicated on the outside as well, so as to form a ‘box-rampart’ in the manner of many Iron Age hillforts: the enclosing defences, in other words, did not have their present appearance of sloping linear embankments but presented themselves as substantial wooden barriers reinforced by earth. This was probably a widespread phenomenon.
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Figure 32: Fotheringhay Castle (Northamptonshire)
. The castle, which stood at a crossing of the River Nene at one end of the village, was gradually demolished during the seventeenth century, leaving the original motte-and-bailey earthworks. The parish church beyond was largely rebuilt in the fifteenth century for use by a college of priests.