CHAPTER VTHE BEGINNING OF THE STONE CASTLE

Map of principal castles in north-east England

In Domesday Book some fifty castles are mentioned by name or implication; and the number was largely increased during the next hundred years. In view, however, of the large number of temporary private strongholds which came into being during the twelfth century, it is difficult to estimate the number of permanent castles until, in the later part of the century, Henry II. regulated and restrained the efforts of private owners to guard their property with fortresses. The castles included in Domesday do not represent the whole number which existed at that period; and of such important castles as Colchester and Exeter, which we know to have been founded before 1086, there is no mention. To estimate the strategic plan which governed the foundation of castles at its full value, we must therefore turn for a moment to the later period at which the defence of England by a connected system of these strongholds had been more thoroughly achieved. Here also, it is not altogether easy, in view of the destruction of older castles by Henry II., and the foundation of new ones at a later epoch, to estimate the exact state of the castles of England at the end of the twelfth century.98But, taking one special district, we may at least gain an approximate notion of its lines of defence as they existed about the year 1200. This is the north-eastern district of England, containing the main strategic approach to Scotland, and crossed by the rivers which descend eastwards to the sea. This was the scene of the rebellion of the Mowbrays and the invasion of William the Lion in 1174, in consequence of which four important castles at least, those of Kinnard’s Ferry on the lower Trent, Thirsk and Northallerton in the vale of Mowbray, and Kirkby Malzeard, on the highlands above the right bank of the Ure, were demolished.99The chief castles of this district will be found to guard the line of the rivers. On the Trent were Nottingham, on the north bank, and the bishop of Lincoln’s castle of Newark,100on the south; while the greater part of the lower valley of the river was commanded at some distance by the strongly-placed castles of Belvoir and Lincoln. On the borders of Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, Tickhill101stood in advance of the Don, while the narrow passage of the Don, five miles west of Doncaster, was guarded by Conisbrough. These castles defended the approach from the high land on the west; the marshy country north and east of Doncaster, towards the Humber, although it often proved a refuge for freebooters, needed no permanent garrison. South of the Calder, opposite Wakefield, stood Sandal. To the east, below the junction of the Calder and the Aire, was Pontefract, in a position of great strength and importance.102There was no great castle on the Wharfe, although Harewood guarded the south bank of the river between Otley and Tadcaster, and at Tadcaster itself there was a castle, of which little is known; Cawood castle was simply a manor-house of the archbishops of York.103On the Ouse, almost in the centre of the shire, were the two castles of York, at the head of the tideway. Knaresborough was west of York, on the north bank of the Nidd. Each of the dales of the North Riding had its strong castle. In Wensleydale was Middleham, south of the Ure. Richmond, from its cliff at the mouth of Swaledale, commanded a vast tract of country, reaching to the Hambleton hills and the forest of Galtres, north of York. Barnard Castle stood in a strong position on the Durham bank of the Tees. The castles of the eastern part of the North Riding were Skelton and Castleton, both in Cleveland, and belonging to the house of Bruce. Helmsley stood at the entrance of Ryedale; Pickering and Malton were on the Derwent, and Scarborough guarded the coast. South of Scarborough, in the East Riding, the one castle of importance at this date was Skipsea, on the low coast-lineof Holderness, between Flamborough and Spurn heads. Returning to the border of Durham, and crossing the Tees, we find Brancepeth and Durham on the Wear. On the south bank of the Tyne was Prudhoe in Northumberland: north of the Tyne was the great fortress of Newcastle. Most of the castles and small strongholds of Northumberland were the growth of a later age. The principal castles at this period were Mitford on the Wansbeck, Warkworth on the Coquet, Alnwick on the Alne, Wark and Norham on the Tweed, and Bamburgh and Holy Island, castles on the seaboard. This list might be extended, but the most important fortresses east of the Pennine chain are included in it, and from it the strategic geography of this important district can be readily recognised. Of the thirty-four castles in this list, ten, including the gateway-tower at Newark, had rectangular tower-keeps, of which nine remain; Conisbrough and Barnard Castle (87) had cylindrical tower-keeps. Of the rest, in most cases, as at Sandal (86), the mounts remain, and in a few instances, as at Skipsea, there are remains of a shell-keep. The shell-keeps of Lincoln and Pickering are still excellent examples of their type. The masonry at York, Pontefract, and Knaresborough belongs to a later period; and inalmost all instances, where masonry remains, it bears trace of substantial later additions.

Sandal Castle; Plan

Barnard Castle; Plan

It will be noticed that castles which guarded passes through hilly districts were generally placed, like Middleham and Richmond, in comparatively open country at the foot of the pass. This was the case with Welsh castles like Brecon and Llandovery, or the tower of Dolbadarn, below the pass of Llanberis. The isolated position at the head of a pass was not easily victualled, nor was it so useful as the situation on more open ground, from which, as at Brecon or Middleham, a larger extent of mountain country could be commanded. Trecastle (44), at the top of the pass between Brecon and Llandovery, has already been mentioned as a site which was probably abandoned early: the tract which it commanded is limited compared with that within reach of Brecon, the point towards which all the valleys of the neighbourhood converge.

In places where a castle formed part of the defences of a walled town, it was usually placed upon the line of the wall, so that the wall formed for some distance part of its curtain. This can be well seen at Lincoln, where the castle occupied the south-west angle of the older Roman city. The castle of Ludlow is in the north-west angle of the town, the wall of which joined it on its north face and at its south-west corner. At Carlisle the castle filled up an angle of the town, the townwalls meeting its south curtain at either end. In such cases, the castle, while defending the town, was also protected from it by a ditch, across which a passage was furnished by a drawbridge. The castle of Bristol stood upon the isthmus, east of the town, between the streams of the Avon and Frome, and, in this strong position, was joined by the city wall at either extremity of its west side. In 1313, when the citizens were in rebellion, they cut off the castle from the city by building a new wall on that side.104In the case of Bristol, the building of the castle made some alterations in the town wall necessary, as time went on, but, from the beginning, the castle occupied its place in the regularenceinte. If, at York, the castles were at first built, as seems to be the case, outside the defences of the town, the circuit was soon extended to include the castle, at any rate, upon the right bank of the river. Although the castle of Southampton is almost entirely gone, the points of junction of its curtains with the west wall of the town are quite clear. Similarly, the position of castles such as Shrewsbury, Leicester, and Nottingham, or close to theenceinteof the town, can be traced, although little is left of the walls. In foreign walled towns like Angers or Laval, the castle formed, as in England, a portion of the outer defences. In later castles like Carnarvon and Conway, the same relation to the plan of the town was preserved. There are exceptions, of which the chief is the Tower of London, within the Roman, but outside the medieval city wall. Chepstow is also outside the town, between which and the castle is a deep ravine: but in this case the town was of a growth subsequent to the foundation of the castle. A distinction must be drawn between castles founded in connection with fortified towns, in which the castle formed part of a general scheme of defence, as at Bristol and Oxford, and castles under the protection of which towns, like Chepstow, grew up, and were subsequently fortified. A good example of this latter class is Newcastle, in which the relations of town and castle are exactly opposite to those at Chepstow. When the castle was founded by the Conqueror, the place, once garrisoned by the Romans, and for a time inhabited by a colony of English monks, was probably an inconsiderable village. The town which grew up on the site took its name from the castle, and was walled in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The walls, however, were brought down to the banks of the Tyne at some distance east and west of the castle, which was thus contained entirely within their circuit. At Norwich, a place of no great importance before the Conquest, the castle is also entirely within the line of the oldcity wall. One of the best examples of the connection between a walled town and a castle is at Launceston, where the borough of Dunheved grew up within a narrow area which was virtually the outer ward of the strong hill-fortress.

The establishment of a castle upon a permanent site was followed, sooner or later, by the building of stone fortifications. This work was often very gradual. We have seen that even a castle so important as that of York retained part of its timber stockade as late as 1324. This, however, was an exceptional case. The walls and towers of medieval castles show, as might be expected, a considerable variety of masonry; but the epoch at which their fortification in stone became general may be said to be the third quarter of the twelfth century. In 1155 Henry II. resumed castles and other royal property into his own hands, and ordered the destruction of the unlicensed castles which had risen during the civil wars of the previous reign.105This step was followed unquestionably by much activity in strengthening the defences of the castles which were left.

At the same time, there are many substantial remains of stone buildings in castles earlier than this era. Stone donjons or keeps were certainly exceptional in England before the reign of Henry II., although there are a few important examples of an earlier date. It cannot be disputed, however, that a certain number of castles were provided with a stone curtain-wall106and other stone buildings not long after the Conquest. Curtain-walls thus built would follow the line of the earthen bank surrounding the bailey, and take the place of the timber stockade. They were at first of the simplest form. An edict of the council of Lillebonne in 1080 laid down the rule, so far as the Norman duchy was concerned, for constructing the defences of private castles; and, although the details refer primarily to the ordinary timber structure, they also have a bearing on the construction of early curtains of stone. No ditch was to be deeper than the level from which earth could be thrown by the digger, without other help, to the soil above. The stockade was to follow a course of straight lines, and to be withoutpropugnaculaandalatoria—i.e., projecting towers and battlements, and rampart-walks or galleries.107

The earliest type of curtain-wall would be strictly in accordance with these rules—a strong wall of stone surrounding the bailey, and climbing the sides of the mount to join the defences of the donjon. We read of the destruction by Louis VI. of France of the stone fortification with which the house of the lord of Maule was surrounded;108and the edict already quoted applies to fortifications on level ground, and includes, not merely castles, but strong private houses, which might not necessarily follow the castle plan. The edict, however, proceeds to forbid altogether the construction by private persons of castles on rocks or islands. The reason of this is obvious. Such isolated strongholds might become, in the hands of private owners, a centre of rebellion against the suzerain. In 1083, Hubert of Maine held out successfully against the Conqueror in his rock castle of Ste-Suzanne (Mayenne) on the Erve, “inaccessible by reason of the rocks and the thickness of the surrounding vineyards.”109William II. in 1095 besieged Robert Mowbray in his castle on the well-nigh impregnable rock of Bamburgh, with considerably better fortune.110Such rocks formed, as it were, natural mounts which made the construction of the ordinary mount-and-bailey castle upon them unnecessary. The hardness of the soil, moreover, made the construction of earthworks difficult or impossible. The natural method of defence would be to raise a stone wall which enclosed the stronghold.

BAMBURGH CASTLE: great tower

BAMBURGH CASTLE

Richmond; great tower

Neither at Ste-Suzanne nor at Bamburgh (91) is there existing stonework earlier than the twelfth century. Of the castle of Saint-Céneri-le-Gérei (Orne), which we know to have been fortified with stone walls before the end of the eleventh century,111only indistinguishable masses of masonry remain to-day. On the other hand, there are a certain number of castles on rocky and isolated sites, the walls of which may be fairly attributed, in whole or part, to the later half of the eleventh century. The most important example is Richmond castle in Yorkshire (91), on a high promontory of rock above the Swale. The shape of the enclosure is triangular. The most conspicuous feature of thecastle is the splendid square tower or donjon, which was completed between 1170 and 1180, and stands on the north side of theenceinte, at the head of the approach from the town. The curtain, however, west of the donjon, contains “herring-bone” masonry,112and is of a rough construction which affords the greatest contrast to the regularly dressed and closely jointed masonry of the great tower. The tower, on three sides, forms an outward projection from the curtain, of great size and strength, and is a structure of one period from the ground upwards. But, on entering the castle, it is at once obvious that the lower part of the south wall of the tower is formed by part of the earlier curtain. In the middle of this section of the work is a wide doorway, with a round-headed arch of two unmoulded orders, which now forms an entrance into the basement of the tower. The capitals of the jamb-shafts of this archway are of an unmistakably eleventh century character, with volutes at the upper angles, and a row of acanthus leaves round the bell. This type of capital is seen in such buildings as the two abbey churches at Caen, the nave of Christchurchpriory, the west front of Lincoln minster, and other fabrics completed before 1100, and is a sure guide to the date of the work in which it occurs. It would appear, then, that the masonry of this archway and much of the curtain is the work of Alan of Brittany, earl of Richmond, who certainly founded the castle, and died in 1088.113The castle contains more work of his date, of which something will be said in the sequel.

Ludlow; Entrance to inner ward

When the great tower of Richmond was built, an entrancewas made on the first floor, from the rampart-walk of the curtain. It is quite clear that, up to this time, the archway just described had been the main entrance of the castle, and had probably been covered on the side next the town by a rectangular building, which formed the lower stage of a gateway-tower or gatehouse, lower than the present donjon. This is borne out by a comparison with the keep at Ludlow, where it is quite clear that an eleventh century gatehouse was converted at a later period into a keep, by walling up the outer entrance (94). A new entrance to the castle, as at Richmond, was made in the adjacent curtain, where it could be easily commanded by the tower. The date of the lowest stage of the donjon is revealed, as at Richmond, by the details of capitals and shafts, which in this case belong to an arcade in the east wall of the inner portion (95).114

Ludlow; Wall arcade in basement of great tower

Ludlow; Plan

The site of Ludlow (96), like that of Richmond, is a rocky peninsula, where a stone curtain, for which material existed on the spot, formed the obvious means of defence. There was no mount and no keep. Exeter, again, is an early example of a stone-walled castle upon a rocky site, where a gateway with a tower above formed the principal entrance. Such sites were protected naturally by the fall of the ground on the steeper sides; the side on which approach was possible was covered by a ditch cut in the rock. The ditch would be crossed by a drawbridge, let down from the inner edge, next the gateway. The gatehouse itself would be a building of two or more stages; at Ludlow the upper stage, as completed, was considerably loftier than thelower.115At Exeter there were probably three stages. A single upper stage remains at Tickhill. At Lewes and Porchester there is clear evidence of an upper chamber. The gatehouse at Porchester, as at Ludlow, was the entrance to an inner ward, divided by a ditch from the large outer ward,116which, at Porchester, represented the greater part of theenceinteof the Roman station, and contained the priory church and buildings. In these early gatehouses, the lower stage was closed at either end by a heavy wooden door, and was covered by a flat ceiling of timber. There was no arrangement for a portcullis. At Ludlow the lower stage appears to have been divided into an outer porch and inner hall by a cross wall, in which there must have been a door; but communication between these parts was also obtained by a narrow barrel-vaulted passage in the thickness of the east wall, which, opening from the outer division, turned at right angles to itself in the direction of the length of the wall, and, with another right-angled turn, opened into the inner hall (95). This passage was guarded by doors, which opened inwards at either end.117When the outer doorway of the gatehouse was blocked, the lower stage was covered in with a pointed barrel-vault.118

Porchester; Plan

As already indicated, the details of these gatehouses are very simple, and it is only where an attempt is made at ornament that their date can be fairly judged. Thus at Porchester, the entrance archway, masked by defensive work of a more advanced period, consists of an unmoulded ring ofvoussoirs, divided from the jambs by plain impost-blocks. The outer bailey or base-court of the castle, which is still surrounded by the Roman walls with their semicircular bastions, has two gatehouses. These occupy the sites of the west and east gates of the Romanenceinte, and the east or water-gate is in part Roman. The western gatehouse was rebuilt at a date contemporary with the enclosure of the castle proper within the north-west quarter of the Roman station, and was much altered at a later period. The archways of the Norman building remain, and show no attempt at ornament, the inner one alone having impost-blocks below the arches. The work at Porchester is usually attributed to the early part of the twelfth century, and the ashlar facing of the side walls of the inner gateway appears to be of that date. A similar severity of detail is seen in the parallel case of Lewes, where the original gatehouse was also covered in the fourteenth century by a barbican (98). The great gatehouse of three stages, at Newark castle (99), was the work of Alexander, bishop of Lincoln from 1123 to 1148, whose uncle,Roger, bishop of Salisbury (1107-39), appears to have built the gatehouse at Sherborne. The archways of the lower stage at Newark are of great width, and are as simple in detail as those at Porchester. The outer or northern wall of the tower is faced with finely-jointed ashlar, and the archway on this side has a hood-moulding, with billet ornament.119

Lewes; Barbican

The position of the gatehouse in relation to the curtain varies. At Richmond, Porchester, and Exeter the inner face of the gatehouse was flush with the curtain. At Ludlow, Newark, and Tickhill it was partly outside, but mostly inside the curtain. At Lewes the projection was wholly internal. Its measurements also vary. Porchester was 23 feet in length by 28 feet in breadth: Exeter and Lewes were about 30 feet, Tickhill about 36 feet square: Ludlow was 31 feet broad, but was some feet longer. The area of the gatehouse at Newark is larger than any, and the general proportions and elevationwere those of a rectangular donjon rather than a mere gateway-tower.120

Newark; Gatehouse

Stress has been laid on the occurrence of early stone fortifications on rocky and precipitous sites, where the ordinary earthworks were at once impracticable and unnecessary. It will be noted, however, that the gatehouses which have been described are not found wholly in such positions. Tickhill and Lewes were mount-and-bailey castles with strong earthworks. Porchester is on level ground, open to Portsmouth harbour on two sides, and defended by a ditch on the sides towards the land: the site was already walled, but the rectangular keep appears to stand upon the base of an earlier mount, which may have been thrown up so as to enclose the Roman tower at the north-west angle of the station. Newark (157) stands on a moderate height above the meeting of the Devon and an arm of the Trent, with a deep ditch on the north and east sides towards the town. There was no castle here before Alexander began to build in or about 1130; and his work from the beginning consisted of a rectangular enclosure without a mount, in which the gatehouse had something of the importance of a keep. The necessity of defending the entrance of the castle, whatever the nature of the site might be, led to the construction of stone gatehouses at an early date; and, at Tickhill or Lewes, the gate-towers were probably constructed at a time when the mounts and embankments of the bailey were still defended by timber.

Stone curtains which display “herring-bone” masonry may generally be assumed to be early in date. It has been customary to look upon “herring-bone” masonry as indicative of pre-Conquest work, and many buildings have been described as “Saxon” on the strength of this detail alone. On the other hand, it never occurs in direct association with details whichmay be regarded as definite criteria of pre-Conquest masonry; and the dimensions, apart from other features, of churches in which it is found in any quantity, usually afford suspicion of its post-Conquest origin.121Its use in castles, which, as has been shown, were a Norman importation into England, demolishes its claim to be regarded as a distinctive sign of Saxon work; and its employment in Normandy, especially in the donjon of Falaise, where almost the whole of the inner face of the walls shows “herring-bone” coursing, may be set against any theory which would attribute it to English masons after the Conquest.122It was used by Roman builders, and much of it may be seen in the towers of theenceinteat Porchester. Saxon builders, however, did not copy Roman methods of walling, and the surest criterion of Saxon work is the thin wall, wholly composed of dressed stone, or of rag-work without facings. Norman builders, coming from a country where the continuity of Roman influence was never broken, used the ordinary Roman method of a compound wall, in which a solid rubble core was faced with ashlar on one or both sides. It is only natural that in early stone castles, which were constructed as quickly as possible, the facing should be of a rough description, of coursed rubble or of “herring-bone” courses laid in thick beds of mortar. At a subsequent date, when masonry was added to already fortified sites, the work could be pursued in a more leisurely manner. The most striking example of “herring-bone” work in an English castle is in the cross-wall of the great tower at Colchester (101), which is unquestionably a building of the eleventh century. Here the work was evidently hurried on, with the object of securing the greatest amount of strength in the least possible time, and Roman tiles were re-used in large quantities as bonding courses for the rubble walls, and for the “herring-bone” coursing of thedividing wall. At Richmond, as has been noted, there is a certain amount of “herring-bone” work in the curtain. The castle was founded on an entirely new site by Alan of Brittany: earthworks were out of the question, and the date of the older masonry of the stone wall is beyond dispute.

Colchester; Cross-wall

A very remarkable example of “herring-bone” walling is the curtain-wall at Tamworth (48). The castle was founded by Robert Marmion after the Conquest on the low ground at the meeting of the Tame and Anker, the town, the fortifiedburhof Æthelflæd, being on higher ground to the north. Marmion’s fortress took the mount-and-bailey form. The bailey was a triangular platform of earth, raised artificially above the level of the river bank, with its apex towards the confluence of the streams. The mount was on its west side, and was divided from it by a ditch. The defences on the side next the town were of stone. Here the curtain-wall remains in very perfect condition, crossing the ditch and climbing the mount, with a sloping rampart-walk along the top. The inner face is composed entirely of “herring-bone” courses, alternating with one, two, and sometimes three, layers of thin horizontal stones. This appearance of more than one horizontal course is very unusual.123It is obvious that the site, being commanded by the town, would be materially strengthened by a stone wall on that side: on the south side, scarping and ditching would have been sufficient, and there is no trace of stone-work of an early period here. The original entrance was at the north-eastern angle of the enclosure, and probably took the form of a stone gatehouse.124Other instances of “herring-bone” work in curtain-walls that may be mentioned here are at Corfe, Hastings, and Lincoln. Corfe was built on an isolated hill, which was scarped and ditched, something after the manner of a “contour” fort of early days: the portion of the curtain in which “herring-bone” coursing is found follows the natural line of the edge of the hill. Hastings is a fortress on a steep promontory: the mount, on the east side of the enclosure, was defended by a deep ditch, and covered by a large outer bailey with formidable earthworks. The curtain, on the east and north sides of the inner ward, is chiefly of the thirteenth century; but part of the north curtain, forming the north wall of the castle chapel, is of “herring-bone” construction. Lincoln, as we have seen, was a large mount-and-bailey fortress, surrounded by earthworks, which, on the west side, enclosed portions of the wall of the Roman city. “Herring-bone” masonry is seen here and there in the west and north curtains, which have been raised on the top of the earthen banks.125

Chepstow; Hall

The battlemented parapet with which the curtain-wall of a castle is usually crowned, generally may be assigned, in its present state, to a later repair and heightening of the curtain. This is the case at Lincoln, where the parapet and upper part of the wall are of the thirteenth century. It has been seen that the edict of Lillebonne in 1080 forbade the defence of the curtain by flanking towers,126rampart-walks, and other aids to defensive warfare; and, as a matter of fact, the full development of the fortification of theenceintebelongs to a later period. At the same time, towers projecting beyond the line of the curtain are found in some of our early Norman castles of stone. The line of the early curtain at Richmond is unbroken by contemporary towers, and closely follows the edge of the rock on which it is built. But at Ludlow (96) where the inner ward is the original castle, founded probably by Roger de Lacy after 1085, the curtain is flanked by four original towers in addition to the gatehouse, which has been described. The shape of the ward is that of a triangle with convex sides, the base of which, on the side of the outer ward and the town, faces south and west. Some thirty feet to the east of the gatehouse, a tower, in the basement of which an oven was inserted at a later date, capped the south-west angle of the enclosure, projecting southwards as far as the edge of the ditch. The west curtain continued in a line with the west wall of this tower for some sixty feet, until it wasbroken by a small postern tower. At the apex of the triangle, projecting to the north-west, was another tower, the remaining tower being at the north-east angle, with its north wall in a line with the north curtain. All these towers are, roughly speaking, rectangular in shape, but the outer angles of the north-east and north-west towers are chamfered. The original openings were round-headed loops with wide inward splays. Although the curtain was thus supplied with several projections, more towers would be needed to flank it perfectly, and large portions of the wall, particularly on the north and east sides, were left without more protection than could be given by their own strength.Oxford castle is another instance of early walling, where the tall rampart tower which commanded the river and the castle mill still remains.127

Chepstow; Plan

LUDLOW CASTLE: inner bailey

Of the stone buildings which existed within the enclosures of early Norman castles, the traces which remain are comparatively few, and in most cases work of an altogether later period has taken their place. The great hall for the common life of the garrison, such as Robert d’Oily built in Oxford castle in 1074, would be indispensable. At Ludlow there can be little doubt that the original hall stood on the site occupied by the present hall, much of the east wall of which is apparently of the same date as the curtain. The two lower stages of the oblong keep at Chepstow are the hall (103), with the cellar below, founded by William, son of Osbern, before 1071. Although the upper stage was transformed in the thirteenth century by the insertion of traceried windows in the north wall, and of an arch between the daïs and the body of the hall, the walls are of eleventh century masonry, and the plain arcade which went round them is clearly visible on the north and west sides. In the south wall of the cellar are the loops which lighted it; these have lintel-heads with arch-shaped hollows cut in the soffits. The hall and cellar at Richmond, which occupy the south-east angle of the bailey, appear to be those built by Alan of Brittany before 1088. A few additions took place here at the end of the twelfth century,128but the windows in the north wall of the hall, which are of two lights, with edge-rolls in the jambs, are clearly of early date. When, for a time,the great stone tower became the fashionable form of keep, a great hall formed part of its internal arrangements; but this was the hall of the lord’s private dwelling, and was used by the garrison only in time of siege. Domestic buildings, including a great hall, may sometimes have been constructed of timber within the bailey, and at the end of the twelfth century were probably superseded by permanent buildings of stone, like the halls at Warkworth or at Oakham. As at Richmond, such halls would be placed against or close to the curtain, to leave the interior of the bailey as open as possible. In case of siege, freedom of movement within the area of the castle was essential, and the bailey formed the natural base of operations. The hall at Chepstow was on the highest and narrowest part of the rocky promontory on which the castle stands, at the head of the bailey; its south wall formed part of the curtain overhanging the great ditch between the castle and the town (106).129

Norman castle-builders were careful to provide chapels within their fortresses. In several cases, the chapel within the bailey appears to have been the first building of stone raised inside the enclosure. The small chapel at Richmond, in a tower of the east curtain, is almost beyond doubt that which was granted by Alan of Brittany to St Mary’s abbey at York about 1085. The details are very rude in character: there is a plain wall arcade, supported on shafts, the capitals of which have rough voluting and no abaci. The same type of capital is found in the wall arcading of the original gatehouse at Ludlow (95), and also, though with more finished ornament, in that of the circular nave of St Mary Magdalene’s chapel (108) within the same castle. Certain details in the chapel at Ludlow, especially the bands of chevron ornament round the arches, seem to indicate that the nave is later than the eleventh century. The arch which divided the nave from a rectangular chancel ending in a half octagon, is of advanced twelfth century date; and it is clear that the chancel must have been built or remodelled at a later date than the building of the nave. The aisled chapel at Durham castle, which now forms part of the basement of Bishop Pudsey’s building along the north side of the bailey, has groined vaults, cylindrical columns, and capitals with voluted crockets and square abaci, which may be safely ascribed to 1075 or a little later. The capitals may be compared with those of the original gateway arch at Richmond. The classical spirit which is so noticeable in them, and is derived directly from the contemporary work ofNormandy, is also apparent in the capitals of the crypt of the castle chapel at Oxford. Oxford castle was founded in 1071, Durham in 1072. At Hastings, the first of the Conqueror’s castles, there is, as has been said, much herring-bone work in the north wall of the chapel nave and in the vice or turret-stair of the central tower. Such definitely architectural detail as is left, however, belongs to a rebuilding of the later part of the twelfth century.

Ludlow; St Mary Magdalene’s Chapel

The importance of the castle chapel in Norman times, and indeed throughout the middle ages, deserves a note. Chapels were often richly endowed, and, as at Hastings, Bridgnorth,and Leicester, were sometimes founded as collegiate establishments, with a dean and canons. The collegiate church of St Mary at Warwick, founded by Roger of Newburgh, the second Norman earl, probably had its origin in a castle chapel, removed to a new and enlarged site within the town. The greatest of these collegiate chapels, although one of the youngest, was St George’s at Windsor, founded by Edward III. The chapels at Hastings, Bridgnorth, and Leicester were churches of some size and importance; and their chapters, like those of the secular cathedrals, usually consisted of royal clerks, generally non-resident, whose duties were served by vicars. As royal chapels, they were exempt from episcopal jurisdiction; and the term of “free chapel,” which was given to them, became applied in course of time to chapels founded in private castles and even upon manors.130In most cases a castle chapel was served by a single priest, either the incumbent or his vicar. The incumbent of the free chapel of St Michael in Shrewsbury castle, usually a royal clerk holding his grant from the king, and inducted by the sheriff as the king’s officer, held the church of St Julian in Shrewsbury as parcel of his cure.131Where the Norman castle and parish church stood side by side, as at Earls Barton or Higham Ferrers in Northamptonshire, the lord of the castle and his household would doubtless attend the church. But the foundation of a chapel within the castle was a common thing, even when the church, as at Ludlow or Warwick, was at no great distance; and in later years, when chantry foundations became usual, castle chapels increased in number. Thus at Ludlow, a second chapel, served by two chantry priests, was built within the outer bailey about 1328;132and a college of eight chantry priests was founded in 1308 by one of the Beauchamps in his castle of Elmley in Worcestershire.133

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