CHAPTER VIIITHE DWELLING-HOUSE IN THE CASTLE

Thecastle needed, among its chief requirements, a dwelling-house which might be occupied by the owner and his household. Thus the stronghold of the lord of Ardres upon its mount was planned as a capacious dwelling, with a kitchen attached; and where, as in this case, the keep was the castle, it necessarily served the double purpose of fortress and residence. Enough has been said of the rectangular and cylindrical forms of tower-keep to show that the domestic and military elements were often combined in their arrangements. But the use of the tower-keep as the principal residence within the castle was a fashion of comparatively short duration. The example of its double use had been set in the great towers of London and Colchester, and in the rectangular towers of Norman and French castles. Of the towers of Henry II.’s reign, those which, like Castle Rising, are low in proportion to the area they cover, generally have the best provision for living purposes. Lofty towers, like Newcastle or Conisbrough, can never have been comfortable residences; and it is not surprising to find that at Newcastle, about half a century after the building of the tower, a more commodious dwelling-house was built within the castle area.224But we have seen already that in early castles, as at Oxford, a hall for the lord or his constable was generally, if not always, built within the bailey. The practical necessity of this is obvious in mount-and-bailey castles, where the tower on the mount, or the stone shell which took its place, was reserved for the main purpose of a final refuge in time of siege. No one who examines the sites of castles like Lincoln, Launceston, or Clare, with their formidable mounts, can fail to realise that the mount was an inconvenient place of residence, and that domestic buildings would be naturally provided in the annexed bailey. BishopBek’s thirteenth-century hall at Durham, built against the western curtain of the bailey, stands upon the substructure of a far earlier building. The domestic buildings in the bailey at Guildford appear to be of earlier date than the stone tower on the mount; while at Christchurch in Hampshire (123), the dwelling-house next the river and the tower on the mount appear to be almost contemporary.

Castles which, for reasons already explained, were surrounded from the beginning with a stone wall, and had at first no regular keep, contain even better examples of the existence of a separate hall. The eleventh-century hall at Richmond is almost perfect, although some additions, made nearly a century later to the upper part of the structure, have led to the mistaken attribution of a later date to the whole building.225At Ludlow, mingled with the fabric of the fourteenth-century hall, are clear indications of the earlier stone hall, built, as at Richmond, against the curtain on the least accessible side of the inner ward. The fabric of the great hall at Chepstow, much enriched and beautified in the thirteenth century, is contemporary with the foundation of the castle in the eleventh century. Part, at any rate, of the substructure of the hall at Newark belongs to the castle founded in the twelfth century by Bishop Alexander, although the whole building on that side of the enclosure, with the exception of an angle-tower, bears witness to reconstruction and repair at two later periods. At Porchester, again, the substructure of the hall contains a considerable amount of early Norman work, which may be attributed to the time of Henry I.

The situation and plan of the hall remained very much the same throughout the middle ages. What we find at Richmond, Ludlow, Chepstow, or Durham, we find also at Manorbier, Caerphilly, Harlech, and Carnarvon, at Warwick and at Naworth. The domestic buildings were placed against the curtain on one side or at an end of the inner ward, and preferably where a precipice or steep slope made the assault of the curtain on that side difficult or impossible. This position is well illustrated in the fortified thirteenth-century house of Aydon in Northumberland. Here there was, on the side of entrance, a large walled outer ward, or, as it was called in the north of England, a “barmkin.”226The house was built round two sides of a walled inner courtyard, the hall and main apartments standing on the brink of a deep ravine, where they were safe from approach or from the peril of siege-engines. The curtain was therefore pierced with window-openings of a fairly large size, which gave the house more light and comfort internally than would have been possible upon a more exposed face of the site. The hall at Warkworth (49) was built against a solid curtain upon the steepest side of the peninsula occupied by the castle, and, although there were no window-openings in the curtain at the level of the hall, it was pierced by a postern, through which the kitchen could be supplied, at the end nearest the tower. Castles on comparatively level sites show the same disposition. At Cardiff (191), the domestic buildings are on the west side of the enclosure, built against the curtain, and protected by the river, and bear the same relation in the plan to the main entrance and the shell-keep on the mount, as the hall at Warkworth bears to the gateway and the mount with its later strong house.227

Cardiff Castle; Plan

The plan of the hall and its adjacent buildings was, and continued to be, that of the ordinary dwelling-house. Theaulaof Harold at Bosham in Sussex is represented in the Bayeux tapestry (36) as a house with a basement, apparently vaulted, and an upper floor approached by an external staircase. No division of the upper floor is shown: it consists apparently of one large room. This plan, with the division of the hall by a cross-wall into a main and smaller chamber, is precisely what we find, at the end of the century after the Conquest, at the large town house in Bury St Edmunds known as Moyses hall, or at the manor-house of Boothby Pagnell in Lincolnshire. It is represented in manor-houses of the later Gothic period at the so-called “Goxhill priory” in Lincolnshire or at the house of the bishops of Lincoln at Liddington in Rutland. Its most familiar survival in non-military architecture is in the halls of several of the Oxford colleges, like Christ Church or New college. In the plan of the monastery, the frater or dining-hall followed the same lines of an upper room upon a vaulted substructure. Similarly, the hall of a castle was simply an ordinaryaulaplaced within an enclosure walled for military purposes. The hallat Christchurch is the exact counterpart of Harold’saulain the Bayeux tapestry. It is a rectangular building, probably of the third quarter of the twelfth century, with a basement, originally vaulted, and lighted by narrow loops. The first floor formed one large apartment, and was well lighted with double window openings, one of which, at the south end, received special architectural treatment. There was a fireplace in the east wall, on the side next the stream: the cylindrical chimney-shaft still remains. The entrance, near the south end of the west wall, was probably approached by an outer stair at right angles to the wall, and led into the lower end of the hall, opposite the daïs for the high table. The fireplace, set diagonally to the entrance, warmed the daïs and the body of the hall: the end near the doorway, corresponding to the “screens” of the ordinary hall, was probably left free for the coming and going of the servants. The basement was simply a cellar and storehouse. It had a doorway in the west wall, while in the east wall was a gateway communicating with the water. The elevation is nearly identical with that of the house at Boothby Pagnell; but at Boothby Pagnell a cross-wall divides both upper floor and basement into larger and smaller chambers; while at Christchurch there was at the south-east corner a rectangular garde-robe turret, built out into the stream, which kept the vents from both basement and upper floor continually flushed.228

The division of the first floor into a larger and smaller apartment corresponds to the division of the ordinary dwelling-house into hall or common-room of the house, and bower or withdrawing-room and sleeping apartment for the chief members of the family.229In the developed plan of the medieval private house, the small vaults below the bower became the cellar, and, as at Manorbier, a vice was provided by which wine could be brought directly from it to the high table. The bower or solar230itself was known in large houses as the great chamber, and access to it was obtainedthrough a door near one end of the cross-wall behind the daïs. There was, however, a variation upon this plan in which the hall and bower are on a different floor-level, and this appears at a fairly early date. In this case the hall occupied the whole height of the basement and first floor, and was entered from the ground-level of the bailey: the cellar, in this case, was on a level with the floor of the hall, and the solar was reached from the daïs by a stair. This plan became very common in the later Gothic period; and is well illustrated in manor-houses like Haddon and Compton Wyniates, and in the colleges of Cambridge, where the common-room or parlour took the place of the cellar, and the solar was occupied by the master’s lodging. But it is also found in castles and fortified houses, as at Berkeley and Stokesay. An indication of its employment at a date not long after the Norman conquest is found in the story of the insult offered to Robert of Normandy by William Rufus and Henry I. They came to visit him, about the year 1078, at the castle of L’Aigle, where he was staying, either in the constable’s house or some dwelling near the castle. William and Henry played dice “upon the solar,” and indulged in horseplay, which took the form of making a deafening noise, and pouring water on Robert and his followers, who were below. Robert lost his temper, and rushed into the dining-hall (cenaculum) to punish his brothers: the quarrel, stopped for the time being by their father, was the beginning of the long feud which ended for Robert in his confinement at Cardiff. The mention of the “solar” distinctly implies a room upon the upper floor, probably at some elevation above the hall.231

This alternative plan supplied more direct communication with the kitchen than was possible, where the hall was upon an upper floor; and in connection with it, a kitchen and its accompanying offices are very frequently found at the lower end, near the entry of the hall. This became, in manor-houses and in the colleges of Cambridge, the normal position of the kitchen, buttery, and pantry, divided from the body of the hall by the “screens.” Most of the cooking in the earlier castles must have been done either in temporary sheds or in the open air: the basement of the hall, which, in later manor-houses, was sometimes used as a kitchen, was not so used at an early period. The apartment in a corner of the cleverly planned first floor of thekeep at Castle Rising was probably a kitchen, and is a rare instance of a room set apart for this purpose before the end of the twelfth century. It must be remembered, however, that the domestic buildings of castles were very often, as at Ludlow, enlarged and entirely rebuilt, until they became, as at Cardiff and Warwick, splendid mansions; and details with regard to the original arrangement of the lesser apartments are thus hard to recover.

ludlow: interior of building west of great hall

At Warkworth (49), probably a little before 1200, a house of considerable extent, including more than one private apartment and a kitchen, was built against, and at the same time with the, west curtain.232Up to this time, the castle had been an ordinary mount-and-bailey stronghold with timber defences, and no earlier stonework remains. The new house was much beautified by additions made in the fifteenth century, but the plan was little altered. Its central part was the hall, parallel with the curtain which it joined. The entrance was in the side wall next the bailey, and led, as usual, into the lower end of the hall, which occupied the full height of the house, and thus formed the only internal means of communication between the lord’s and the servants’ quarters. An unusual feature of the hall, which cannot have been well lighted, was an eastern aisle, over which the sloping roof was probably continued. At the upper end, behind the daïs, the cellar was entered directly from the hall: a straight stair next the curtain gave access to a landing, from which a doorway gave access to the great chamber. The great chamber communicated with a polygonal angle tower, called by the curious name of “Cradyfargus,”233the first floor of which, next the great chamber, may have been the chamber of the master of the house, while the upper floor was probably used by the ladies. Nearly at right angles to the great chamber, against the south curtain, was a chapel, of which enough remains to show us that the ground-floor, entered from the bailey, was used by the servants and garrison: while the west end was divided into two stories, the upper one of which was entered from the private apartments, and was a gallery for the use of the lord and his family. It is difficult to speak positively of the arrangements of the kitchen, which stood against the west curtain at the other end of the hall. It may originally, like the kitchen at Berkeley, have had no direct communicationwith the hall: the passage and offices between, in their present state of ruin, are fifteenth-century additions or reconstructions. But all the elements of the larger English house are here. The chief alterations in the fifteenth century were the building of a porch and gateway-tower in front of the hall entrance, and the insertion of a lofty turret, with a vice and vaulted vestibule to the great chamber, to the north-eastern angle of the hall, where it blocks the last bay of the aisle.

An aisled hall, as at Warkworth, was a very exceptional feature. There are, however, a few existing examples of a hall with a nave and two aisles, the most famous of which is the thirteenth-century hall at Winchester. The midland castles of Leicester and Oakham also had aisled halls: that at Leicester was divided by arcades of timber, and still exists, although many of its original features, including the timber columns, have been removed or obscured. The hall at Oakham has been more fortunate. This castle, upon a flat site which had no strategic advantages, was really anaulaor manor-house, enclosed by a strong earthen bank, and was probably not surrounded by a wall until the thirteenth century. Within this enclosure Walkelin de Ferrers, towards the end of the twelfth century, built an aisled hall of four bays, the architectural details of which are of unusual beauty, and of great importance in the history of early Gothic art in England. The building runs east and west, the original entrance, from the ground-level of the bailey, being, as usual, in the last bay of a side-wall, in this case the easternmost bay of the south wall.234The daïs was at the west end; and two doors, which probably communicated with the kitchen and buttery, remain in the east wall. The aisles would doubtless be kept clear of tables, to facilitate the service from the kitchen.235At either end of the building, the arcades spring, not from responds, but from corbels. Semicircular responds would have interfered with the benches behind the high table, and with the free passage of the servants between the kitchen and the aisles.236The columns are slender cylinders of Clipsham stone: the capitals are tall, and carved with a great variety of stiff-stalk foliage, with which are mingled bands of nail-head and dog-tooth. The arches are rounded: dog-tooth is used in the hood-mouldings, whichrest upon figure-corbels. The classical character of the foliage, and the refined sculpture of the figures and heads in the corbels throughout the hall, have analogies in one or two other buildings of the district: they recall very closely the early Gothic work of the Burgundian province, and its English derivatives at Canterbury and Chichester. Nothing, however, is known of the masons employed; and the fabric has no documentary history. In the low side-walls are double window-openings, each with a sculptured tympanum beneath an enclosing arch: the pier dividing each of the windows is faced with a shaft, and the jambs are adorned with elaborate dog-tooth. These windows may be compared with those of the aisled hall of the episcopal palace at Lincoln, built about a quarter of a century later, where the arcades at both ends sprang from corbels. A close parallel to the arrangements of the hall at Oakham is provided by the contemporary hall, built by Bishop Pudsey at Auckland castle, near Durham. Here, again, the so-called castle was simply anaulawithout the strong earthworks which give Oakham a military character. The proportions of the Auckland hall are larger, and its architecture more simple, but with even more advanced Gothic characteristics. At the end of the thirteenth century, considerable alterations were made in the structure, and at the Restoration the hall was converted by Bishop Cosin into a chapel.237This involved the blocking up of the original entrance, the position of which exactly corresponded to that of Oakham. A new doorway was made in the west wall, and the bay which originally was set apart for the daïs was converted into an ante-chapel. In neither case do any other contemporary buildings remain: the mansion at Auckland, on the west side of the old hall, is a building of several periods, of which the earliest existing portion is not earlier than the reign of Henry VII.

DURHAM CASTLEHISTORICAL GROUND PLAN

Hugh Pudsey (1153-95), the prelate responsible for the hall at Auckland, did much to increase the splendour of the episcopal castle at Durham (199). Durham castle is an excellent example of a mount-and-bailey fortress on a strong triangular site, with precipitous natural defences on the north and west. The entrance was on the one accessible side, from the plateau on which the cathedral and monastery stood. At the apex of the site, on the right of the entrance, was the mount, with a shell-keep on its summit; while to the left, along the west side of the bailey, wasthe original hall. The eleventh-century chapel was on the north side of the bailey, nearly opposite the entrance. Pudsey’s chief work was the construction of a long building of three stories in connection with the north curtain. The eastern part of the basement was formed by the early chapel; the rest was probably devoted to store-rooms and cellars. On the first floor was a great hall, entered by a doorway (201) which may fairly be called the most magnificent example of late Norman Romanesque art in England. Above this, on the second floor, approached by a vice in the south-east corner, was another hall, known as the Constable’s hall, and to-day as the Norman gallery. The walls of this upper structure were lightened by their construction as a continuous arcade, the arches forming frames to window-openings, and the piers between them being faced with detached shafts in couples (203). The internal arrangements of this building are now much obscured by the partition of the lower hall into several large rooms; while the south part of the upper hall has been cut up by smaller partitions. Early in the sixteenth century a new chapel was built on the east side of the lower hall, and against the south wall of the basement and first floor was made a stone gallery of two stories. The outer stair to the lower hall was then taken away; but Bishop Pudsey’s doorway was left, and light was thrown upon it by a large mullioned window in the outer wall of the gallery.238

Durham Castle; Doorway

Meanwhile, about the end of the thirteenth century, Bishop Bek, who also improved upon Pudsey’s work at Auckland, raised against the west curtain, and upon the substructure of the early hall, the great banqueting-hall, which is now used as the dining-hall of University college. This hall, again, has inevitably been much altered, but its actual plan and arrangements are very fairly maintained to-day, and the long two-light windows with simple geometrical tracery in the side walls represent, with some restoration of stone-work, its original lighting. The entrance, up a flight of stairs and through a porch added by Bishop Cosin, is in the south end of the east wall, and leads into screens roofed by a gallery, on the south of which are the kitchen and servants’ offices. A doorway in the east wall led from the daïs to the bishop’s private rooms; but at this end the older arrangements were altered by the construction of Tunstall’s gallery in the sixteenth century, and, later, still, by the addition of Cosin’s splendid Renaissance staircase—alterations which provided covered access from Bek’s hall to Pudsey’s building at right angles to it. The buildings just described are some of the mostbeautiful and instructive remains of domestic architecture in England, and have no military characteristics. The strength of the castle, however, was not forgotten. No English castle, even when Bamburgh and Richmond are remembered, presents a more formidable defence than the curtain, pierced by a few spare openings and by the narrow western windows of Bek’s hall, which revets and crowns the cliff above the Wear; while, in the fourteenth century, Bishop Hatfield (1345-81) replaced the older keep by a new and probably more lofty polygonal shell.

At Durham the buildings of Pudsey and Bek alike stand upon basements, which were used as cellars and store-rooms; and the preference for first-floor halls in castles was doubtless due to the necessity of providing plenty of room for magazines, both for provisions and arms, within a confined space, and keeping the muster-ground in the centre of the bailey as clear as possible. At Newark (157), where the ground fell away towards the river, the hall was built on the slope, and was entered from the level of the bailey, the slope being utilised for the construction of a large vaulted basement, lighted by loops from the river side, and communicating with the water by a sloping passage and a gateway opening on a small quay. The use of every available space for storage is illustrated at Carew castle in Pembrokeshire, where the whole space beneath the lesser hall and its adjacent buildings is occupied by cellars, while the basement of the greater hall, on the opposite side of the courtyard, appears to have been used as stables. At Pembroke a large natural cavern below the hall and its adjacent buildings was turned to use as a lower store-house. A vice was constructed in the rock from a ground-floor chamber north of the hall, and the mouth of the cavern was closed by a wall, in which was a gateway, opening upon a path from the water-side.

DURHAM: arcading on south side of Constable’s hall

If Henry II. may be given the chief credit for the construction of rectangular keeps in castles, Henry III. was almost as active in building halls. The finest example of his work now remaining is at Winchester. At the Tower of London, at Scarborough, and at Newcastle, the name alone of his halls, rectangular buildings with high-pitched roofs, remains. But, in and after his reign, the hall and the adjacent domestic buildings became a fixed feature of the plan of the castle. In castles which, up to this time, may have possessed small and inconvenient halls, or possibly halls built merely of timber, new and more permanent domestic buildings were constructed. Thus, at Rockingham castle, the beautiful doorway of the thirteenth-century hall (205), with deeply undercut mouldings and jamb-shafts with foliated capitals, still forms the entrance to the house of the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries, the hall of which is probably of the exact dimensions of its medieval predecessor.239In castles which are the most perfect examples of fortification, such as Caerphilly or Conway, the hall forms an integral part of the plan, filling its natural place in the design; and of these, Caerphilly was completed about the end of the reign of Henry III. The enthusiasm of Henry for fine architecture, domestic as well as ecclesiastical, was imitated by many of his powerful subjects; and it is actually from this period that we may trace that prominence of the domestic element in our castles which was eventually cultivated at the expense of fortification.

Rockingham Castle; Doorway of hall

In the dwelling-houses, often of palatial size, which grew up within castles, and reached their perfect development in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the main apartments, in addition to the hall, were the great chamber, the kitchen with its offices, and the chapel. The normal plan, as already shown, was that of the first-floor hall, with the great chamber at one end, and the kitchenat the other. The plan of the chapel was not fixed, but, where it formed part of the block of buildings, it is usually found in connection with the great chamber end of the hall.

The main points of the hall may be briefly recapitulated. The entrance was invariably in the side wall next the bailey, at the end nearest the usual place for the kitchen. This end was screened off from the hall by curtains or by a wooden partition containing one or more doors. This shut out draught; while the passage thus formed was generally covered by its own ceiling, the space above forming a gallery, which was entered from a vice at a corner of the end wall. At the further end of the hall was the daïs with the high table, at right angles to which were placed the long tables in the body of the hall. The hall was covered by a high-pitched timber roof, the principals of which were borne by corbels in the side walls. In early examples, warmth was supplied by a large hearth in the middle of the floor, a little below the daïs, the smoke from which escaped through a louvre in the roof above; but it became customary to make a fireplace in one of the side walls.240Light was admitted through window-openings in the side wall next the ward; but, where the outer wall of the castle was secure from attack, as at Warwick or Ludlow, windows were made there also. These windows were usually of two lights, divided by a mullion, with simple tracery in the head. They also had a transom, below which they were closed by shutters, the upper part of the window alone being glazed. In the hall at Ludlow, the date of which is about 1300, there were three two-light windows next the ward, while the curtain was pierced by three single-light openings. The hearth stood in the body of the hall just below the daïs, and was carried by a pier in the cellar beneath. In the fifteenth century the middle window next the ward was blocked, and a fireplace inserted: the hearth was then removed. The hall formed the chief living-room of the house, and in it the majority of the lord’s retinue not only had their meals, but slept.

The great chamber, as time went on, became the nucleus of a number of private apartments. In the most simple examples, it is a rectangular apartment behind the daïs, communicating with it directly through a doorway on one side of the end wall. Where the hall occupied the ground floor, a vice, or, as at Warkworth, a straight stair, furnished an entrance to it. At Ludlow, where the kitchen was a detached building, and at Stokesay (207), there was a first-floor chamber at both ends ofthe hall. The domestic buildings at Ludlow are very symmetrically arranged, the hall, in the middle, being slightly recessed between two projecting blocks of building, each with a chamber on the first floor (195). Of these, that at the east end of the hall, behind the daïs, was evidently the more important; and, in the fifteenth century, it was on this side that an additional block of private apartments was built. From each floor of the great chamber block a large garde-robe tower was entered: this tower projects from the north curtain of the castle, and was added when the earlier hall was remodelled and the hall and its adjoining blocks assumed their present shape.

Stokesay

Manorbier Castle; Outer stair to Chapel

Manorbier castle contains an interesting example of the enlargement of domestic buildings, with a solar block at either end of the hall. The castle stands on rising ground in a deep valley, about half a mile from the sea. The inner ward or castle proper is surrounded by a curtain, with a gatehouse in the east wall. The dwelling-house is upon the west side of the ward, at the end opposite the main entrance, and consists of two distinct portions. The earlier consists of a first-floor hall and great chamber above cellars. There was a floor above the great chamber, probably forming a bower for the ladies of the household, thehall corresponding in height to these two upper stages. The present entrance to the hall is in the side wall at the end next the great chamber, and was probably made, with the outer stair against the wall, in the thirteenth century. The hall itself with its adjacent buildings appears to be originally of the later part of the twelfth century: the cellars below have semicircular barrel vaults. In the second half of the thirteenth century a new block of buildings was made at the opposite or south end of the hall. It was now probably that the new entrance was made. The position of the daïs seems to have been reversed, and a window in the south end-wall of the hall blocked by a fireplace. Behind this wall, and entered by a doorway in its west end, was the new great chamber, a long, narrow building, with its principal axis at right angles to that of the hall, and with a floor above. At each end of the south wall of this apartment is a passage. That at the west end passes along the line of the curtain to a garde-robe tower which projects at the south-west angle of the castle: the passage is still roofed with flat slabs on continuous corbelling, and is well lighted by loops in the curtain. The other passage, at the south-east corner of the great chamber, forms a lobby to a large chapel, which was built across the south-west angle of the ward, so that a small triangular yard was left between it andthe curtain. There is a separate outer stair to the chapel (208), placed, like the stair to the hall, at right angles to the wall. The whole group of buildings, with its two outer stairs, is unexcelled for picturesqueness in any castle.

The kitchen at Manorbier was placed, at any rate when the thirteenth-century alterations were undertaken (probably about 1260), at right angles to the hall and older great chamber, against the north curtain. Owing to the confinement of the space within the curtain, and the growing necessity of private accommodation, the position of the kitchen was not fixed so regularly in the castle as in the ordinary dwelling-house. At Berkeley (186), where the hall was built against the east curtain of the inner ward, the kitchen is a polygonal building, divided from the screens by a buttery, and occupying a more or less normal place in the plan. At Warkworth (49), as we have noticed, the kitchen is in its proper place, near the entrance end of the hall, but may have been at first a separate structure. The original position of the kitchen at Cardiff (191) seems to have conformed to this plan. The desirability of placing the kitchen within easy reach of the hall is obvious. At Kenilworth, where the magnificent hall, built towards the end of the fourteenth century, occupies the whole north side of the inner ward, and is on a first floor above a vaulted cellar, the private apartments formed a wing against the west curtain of the ward, while the kitchen was against the east curtain, and was within easy reach of the stair to the hall, and the passage below it which led into the cellar. The kitchen at Ludlow (106) was a separate building, opposite the entrance to the hall and the western solar block, and placed against the north outer wall of the small courtyard which covers the keep. In the two great Edwardian castles of Conway and Carnarvon, where the halls were large and the space limited, the kitchens were built against the curtain opposite the hall.241

The chapel was also a variable factor in the plan. It has already been remarked that, in some early castles, the chapel was a collegiate church, standing separately within the precincts of the castle, and sometimes, as at Hastings, filling up, with the houses of the dean and canons or their deputies, a very considerable part of the enclosure. Indeed, nearly all the ruins left within the curtain at Hastings are those of the large cruciform church and the buildings in connection with it. At Ludlow the Norman chapel was a detached building in the inner ward (106). This was the private chapel of the lord of the castle, and in thesixteenth century was joined by a gallery to the block of buildings at the east end of the hall: the nave was then divided into two floors, so that the first floor formed a private gallery or solar, while the household used the ground-floor. This method of division of the west end of the chapel into two floors is very usual: it was employed twice at Warkworth, both in the chapel attached to the domestic buildings already described, and in the chapel of the later tower-house on the mount. It may also be seen in the chapel at Berkeley, and in many manor-houses, as at Compton Wyniates. At Ludlow we have noticed that there was a second chapel for the garrison in the outer ward, built in the fourteenth century: with this the arrangement at the Tower of London may be compared, where the royal chapel of St John is in the White tower, but the garrison chapel of St Peter was built on the north side of the inner ward. The chapel at Kenilworth was against the south wall of the outer ward. There was a chapel on the south side of the inner ward at Alnwick. As a rule, however, only one chapel would be provided. The chapels found in tower-keeps have already been discussed: with the exception of Newcastle and Old Sarum, they were, as a rule, private chapels or mere oratories.

In later castles, two considerations determined the planning of the chapel. It was placed so that the altar should be as nearly as possible against the east wall, and so that there should be direct access from the private apartments to the gallery at the west end. These conditions are met both in the earlier and later chapels at Warkworth: they can be traced in the plan of Bodiam and other late medieval castles. At Berkeley (186) where the solar block was at right angles to the hall, against the south, or, more correctly, the south-west curtain, the chapel fills the angle between the buildings, and the entrance is masked by a vestibule from which a vice led to the private apartments. The altar is placed rather north of east, against the wall at the back of the hall daïs, and the gallery at the opposite end was entered from the great chamber. The main axis of the chapel is at an obtuse angle to that of the hall, and a vestry was made in the south-east corner, where the wall dividing it from the hall is thickest. In the plan of the great Welsh castles of the later part of the thirteenth century the chapel was usually in close connection with the domestic buildings. At Conway, where there is also a beautiful oratory, with a vaulted chancel, on the first floor of the north-east tower, the chapel was formed by screening off the eastern portion of the great hall. At Harlech the chapel was built against the north curtain, the solar blockprobably occupying the angle between chapel and hall. The chapel at Kidwelly was in the two upper stages of the south-east tower of the inner ward, and was in close communication with the hall and the apartments adjoining it. The position of the beautiful little chapel at Beaumaris is somewhat isolated, on the first floor of the tower in the middle of the east curtain of the inner ward. The only communication with the hall block on the north side of the court was through a long and narrow passage in the thickness of the curtain; and the chapel is too small to have served for the devotions of a large garrison. It was so arranged, however, that, if the entrance to the tower were left open, the service might be followed by worshippers in the bailey below. Ample room, however, was given to the congregation in most cases: the first-floor chapel at Manorbier is a chamber of considerable size. It has a pointed barrel-vault and stands above a cellar, which also has a pointed barrel-vault and contains a fireplace. The fashion of founding collegiate establishments in castles did not cease until the end of the middle ages. The chapel—the third within the castle—which was begun during the fifteenth century at Warkworth bears witness to an intention of this kind on the part of one of the earls of Northumberland; but the actual details of the proposed foundation are not known, and probably were never placed on paper.

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