CHAPTER XIMILITARY ARCHITECTURE IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES: FORTIFIED TOWNS AND CASTLES

Thestrengthening of the curtain of the castle was perfected in the concentric plan, in which also was established, for the time being, the superiority of defence to attack. But the very fact that the castle had reached a point at which further development in the existing condition of things was impossible, was fatal to its continued existence as a stronghold. A castle like Caerphilly did not put an end to local warfare: it merely warned an enemy off a forbidden track. Its own safety was secured, because its almost impregnable defences made any attempt at a siege ridiculous. Other circumstances, however, combined to render the castle obsolete. The rise of towns and the growth of a wealthy mercantile class hastened the decline of feudalism. The feudal baron was no longer the representative of an all-important class, and his fortress was of minor importance compared with the walled boroughs which were symbolical of the real strength of the country. But, in addition to this social transition, there took place a change in warfare which had a far-reaching influence upon castle and walled town alike. Fire-arms came into general use in the early part of the fourteenth century.298Missiles, for which hitherto the only available machines had been those involving discharge by torsion, tension, or counterpoise, could now be delivered by the new method of detonation. This produced an artillery which could be worked with greater economy of labour, and discharged the missiles themselves with greater force. Not merely can a ball of stone or iron be projected with greater impetus than can be given by the older methods; butthe direction which it takes is more nearly horizontal than that given to it by the mangonel and kindred machines. It is true that, at first, the power of cannon remained relatively weak; but their gradual improvement made the old systems of defence useless. Lofty walls, which could resist the catapults of the past, were easily dismantled by cannon-shot (288). Harlech, with its lofty curtains and angle-towers, was an ideal stronghold, as long as explosives were not employed for attack and defence. But, when cannon are directed against such defences (273), and the surface of the walls is pounded with shot, the height of the fortifications becomes a danger; and, in order to plant the cannon of the defence on the walls, those walls have to be as solid as possible to avoid the constant vibration arising from the discharge, and as low as possible to increase their stability and to place the enemy within range. The change is obvious, if we contrast the lofty and comparatively slender towers of Carcassonne or Aigues-Mortes with the massive drum towers of the French castles or walled towns of the fifteenth century, like those of the castle of Alençon (289) or of the town of Saint-Malo (290). Later still, the flanking of the walls of towns and castles shows a transition from the round tower to the bastion; and we find massive projections like the Tour Gabriel at Mont-Saint-Michel (291), which rise little, if at all, above the level of the adjacent wall. The ultimate outcome of this transition is the bastion pure and simple, flanking the low and solid earthenbank with its reveting wall, as at Saint-Paul-du-Var, or, later, at our own Berwick-on-Tweed.299A step further brings us to the scientific fortification of the seventeenth century, to Lille and Arras, and those magnificent fortresses which the progress of the nineteenth century has already made of historical, rather than practical, interest.300

Gatehouse, Barbican, and Curtain wall of Town battered by cannon-shot

Alençon

Saint-Malo; Grande porte

Mont-St-Michel; Tour Gabriel

With these modern developments we have no concern in this book; and in these two concluding chapters we can trace merely the later history, from a defensive point of view, of that type of fortification whose advance we have hitherto pursued, and of the gradual amalgamation of the medieval castle with the medieval dwelling-house. The old distinction between the castle and theburhstill asserted itself. During the greater part of the middle ages, from the Norman conquest to the fourteenth century, thecastle, the stronghold of the individual lord, was the highest type of fortification, and the town, as at Berwick in the reign of Edward I., or at Conway or Carnarvon, was, when walled, little more than an appendage or outer ward to the castle. With the introduction of fire-arms, the town began once more to take its place in the van of the defence. Warfare, from the time of the wars of Edward III. in France, and even earlier, ceased to be an affair of sieges of castles. Battles were fought more and more in the open field, and the reduction of the fortified town, not of strongholds of individuals, became the chief object of campaigns. The castle, relegated to a secondary place, developed more and more on the lines of the dwelling-house; and, finally, as the castle disappeared, the town with its citadel became all-important as the object of attack and the base of operations. In brief, the steps in the history of fortification after the Conquest are these. The timber defences of the Saxonburhbecame of secondary importance to the timber defences of the Norman castle. These were subordinated to the keep, the symbol of the dominion of the feudal lord. Thekeep reached its climax in the stone tower. At this point the revulsion began. The strengthening of the stone curtain made the keep obsolete; and, finally, the perfection of the curtain of the castle once attained, military science applied itself to the strengthening of the wall of the town, until, aided by social changes and scientific improvements, the castle itself became altogether unnecessary.

newcastle: town wall

southampton: town wall

The principles of defence of the walled town are those of the castle; and hitherto we have drawn illustrations from both with little discrimination. In both cases the same methods of attack are provided against by the use of the same means. But it must be remembered that the area of the town is larger than that of the castle, and that while, in the castle, the bailey is the common muster-ground from which every part of the curtain can be easily reached, there can be no such open space enclosed by the walls of a large inhabited town or city. Thus, while the market-place, in or near the centre of the town, would serve as a general rallying-ground,301it was necessary also to keep a clear space at the foot of the inner side of the walls, so that free communication between every part might be preserved. From the continuous lane which was thus formed between the wall and the houses of the town, and was crossed at intervals by the main thoroughfares leading to the gates, access was gained to the rear of the flanking towers, and to the stairs by which, from time to time, the rampart-walk was reached. Most towns which have been walled retain traces of this arrangement. At Southampton thepomerium,302as this clear space is called in medieval documents, survives on the east side of the town in the lane still known as “Back of the Walls.” At Carnarvon it is nearly entire, except on the west side of the town. At Newcastle (293) it remains in a very perfect state on the north-west side of the enclosure, where the walls and their intermediate turrets are also fairly perfect; and it can be traced in a paved lane on the west side, where the walls are gone.303Nearly the whole extent of the inner city walls of Bristol, of which little remains, can be easilytraced by the survival of thepomeriumin a series of curved lanes. The line of the east wall of Northampton can be recovered in the same way; and although, as at York, modern encroachments have in many places removed thepomerium, it usually survived to mark the site of town walls, even long after those walls had been destroyed.

Conway; Porth Isaf

During the epoch at which fortification reached its highest point, the wall of a town was systematically flanked by towers, which, as we have seen at Conway and Avignon, were left open upon the side next the town. Gates were made in the wall, where main roads approached the place. Thus the gates of Coucy were three, admitting the roads from Laon, Soissons, and Chauny. At Conway (256) there were three gates; but of these one communicated merely with a quay, while another gave access to the castle mill: the third or north-western gate alone was the direct entrance to the promontory on which the town and castle were built. At Chepstow, where the town also formed acul-de-sac, there was only one main gateway, at the north-west end of the town. The main gateway of Carnarvon was on the east side of the town; while, opposite to it, in the west wall, was a smaller gateway opening, like the Porth Isaf304(295) at Conway, upon the quay. Not all towns, however, occupied positions like Chepstow, Conway, and Carnarvon, where water takes so large a share in the defence. Great centres of commerce like London and York, towards which a number of roads converged, had many gates, not counting the posterns in their walls. Four of the gates of York remain, Micklegate bar on the south-west, through which the road from Tadcaster entered the city, Walmgate bar on the south-east, admitting the road from Beverleyand Hull, Monk bar on the east, through which passed the road from Scarborough, Bootham bar on the north, which was the entrance from the direction of Thirsk and Easingwold. The gatehouses are all rectangular structures, the plan and lower portions of which are of the twelfth century, and recall the stone gatehouses of early castles: the upper stages, however, are of the fourteenth century, and have tall bartizans at the outer angles. The great Bargate at Southampton, through which the road from the north entered the circuit of the walls, is similarly a rectangular Norman gatehouse, enlarged and supplied with flanking towers in the fourteenth century: the outer face was further strengthened, within a century of these additions, by a half-octagonal projection, the battlements of which were machicolated. There was another gate on the east side of Southampton, which now has disappeared. In the west wall the rectangular water-gate and a postern remain; while, on the quay at the south-eastern angle of the walls, there is another gate, covered by a long spur-work which projects from the wall at this point and crossed the town-ditch. For smaller gatehouses like the western gatehouses of Carnarvon and Southampton, the old rectangular form was sufficient; but the principal entries of towns needed effective flanking. As a rule, town gatehouses of the Edwardian period and the fourteenth century generally were flanked by round towers at the outer angles, like those at Conway (295), Winchelsea, or the West gate at Canterbury. In the fifteenth century, the warlike character of the defences of English towns was considerably lessened. The Stonebow or southern gatehouse at Lincoln, a long rectangular building with slender angle turrets of no great projection, had no special provisions for defence beyond the gates by which it was closed. Here and there, when the need of military defence ceased to exist, churches were built upon the walls and gateways of towns. Thus above the St John’s gate of Bristol, on the south side of the city, rise the tower and spire which were common to the churches of St John the Baptist and St Lawrence; while churches were built close to or immediately above the east and west gates of Warwick.

Monmouth; Gatehouse on Monnow bridge

Where one of the main approaches to a town crossed a river, the defence of the passage was of course necessary. In the case of the St John’s gate of Bristol, already mentioned, the course of the narrow river Frome, on which it opened, was defended by an additional wall on the other side of the stream; and in this wall, covering St John’s gate, was the strongly fortified Frome gate. The case of York, where the river nearly bisects the walled enclosure, is most unusual. In other instances, the town wasconfined to one side of the stream, and the approach from the river was protected by a barbican, which could take the form either of an outer defence to the gateway itself, or of atête-du-ponton the opposite side of the stream, or of a fortified passage across the bridge. Of barbicans in general much has been said already; and we have seen at York and Tenby something of town barbicans, while in the Porte de Laon at Coucy, we have had an instance of a barbican acting as atête-du-ponton the further side of a town ditch. The arrangement of the south-western approach to Kenilworth castle is a good instance of the combination, in castle fortification, oftête-du-pont, fortified causeway, and gatehouse with barbican. Fortified bridges were not uncommon in the middle ages, but those which remain are few. The finest example of all is the fourteenth-century Pont Valentré at Cahors (Lot), a noble bridge of six lofty pointed arches, divided by piers which are supplied with the usual triangular spurs or cut-waters. At each end of the bridge is a massive rectangular gateway tower, battlemented, with pyramidal roofs, and machicolated galleries below the battlements; while in the middle of the passage is a third tower, the ground-floor of which was gated and portcullised. The brick bridge, called the Pont des Consuls, at Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne), was somewhat similarly defended. Examples from other countries are the thirteenth-century covered bridge at Tournai, the bridge of Alcantarà at Toledo, and the bridge of Prague,which was defended about the middle of the fourteenth century with a tall rectangular gate-tower at one end, and a gateway, flanked by towers of unequal size, at the other. In England two small examples of fortified bridges remain. Upon the bridge at Monmouth (297) is a gatehouse with a machicolated battlement and a gateway which was closed by a portcullis: this stood well in advance of the Bridge gate of the town, which was at a little distance from the stream. At Warkworth, on the side of the bridge next the town, is a plain rectangular gatehouse, the arch and ground-floor of which remain intact. The triangular patch of land, south of the Coquet, on which Warkworth is built, was well defended on two sides by the river, and on the third side by the castle, and the gatehouse at the bridge was its only stone fortification.

wells: gatehouse of bishop’s palace

The progress of the art of defence under Edward I. was accompanied by the enclosure within defensive walls of areas and houses not originally intended for military purposes. Disputes between the cathedral priory and the citizens of Norwich led to the enclosure of the monastery within a fortified precinct:305the royal licence for the construction of the water-gate bears date 27th July 1276.306On 8th May 1285, the dean and chapter of Lincoln obtained their first licence for the enclosure of their precinct with a wall 12 feet high;307and ten days later a similar licence was issued to the dean and chapter of York.308On 10th June the dean and chapter of St Paul’s,309and on 1st January following the dean and chapter of Exeter,310had letters patent to the same effect. Bishop Burnell had licence to wall and crenellate the churchyard and close of Wells, 15th March 1285-6,311while he was busy building his strong house at Acton Burnell. Licence to crenellate the priory of Tynemouth, on its exposed site, was granted 5th September 1295.312Bishop Walter Langton had licence to wall the close of Lichfield, 18th April 1299.313Licence to the abbot and convent of Peterborough to crenellate the gate of the abbey and two chambers lying between the gate and the church was granted 18th July 1309.314At Lincoln, where a large portion of the close walls may still be seen, there was some delay in building. Two licences, confirmingthe letters patent of 1285, were granted by Edward II. in one year.315On 6th December 1318, the licence was again renewed: the wall might be raised to a greater height than 12 feet, and might be crenellated and provided with crenellated turrets.316Further, on 28th September 1329, Bishop Burghersh received letters patent, permitting him, in the most liberal terms, to “repair, raise, crenellate, and turrellate” the walls of the bishop’s palace.317Thus, in the reign of Edward III., there were no less than three fortified enclosures within the circuit of the walls of Lincoln—the castle, the close round the cathedral, and the bishop’s palace. To-day, as we stand in the open space at the head of the Steep Hill, to our left is the gatehouse of the castle; while to our right is the Exchequer gate, the inner gatehouse of the close. This is a lofty oblong building of three stages, with a large central archway, and a smaller archway on each side for pedestrians. On the west or outer side the face is plain, but on the eastern side it is broken by two half-octagon turrets, containing vices. There was also an outer gatehouse, some yards to the west.318The south-eastern gatehouse of the close, known as Pottergate, still remains, a rectangular building with an upper stage. At Wells, Salisbury,319and Norwich, theenceinteof the close may still easily be traced; while at Wells, close by the gatehouse of the close, is the outer gatehouse of the bishop’s palace. The palace itself retains its wet moat, and is still approached by its drawbridge and through a formidable inner gatehouse, which is flanked by two half-octagon towers (300).

Thornton Abbey; Gatehouse

Thornton Abbey; Plan of gatehouse

Of gatehouses of abbeys and priories, many still remain, some of which, like those at Bridlington, Tewkesbury, andWhalley,320are of great size, and were capable of offering defence, if necessary. But by far the most important of monastic gatehouses is that at Thornton abbey in Lincolnshire, a magnificent building of brick with stone dressings (302). The licence to the abbot and convent to “build and crenellate a new house over and beside their abbey gate” bears date 6th August 1382.321The gatehouse is an oblong of three lofty stages with half-octagon turrets at the angles. The single archway on the ground-floor is approached through a narrow barbican, set obliquely to the building (331). On each side of the entrance is a bold half-octagon buttress. The inner face of the entrance is flanked by half-octagon turrets, in the southern of which is the vice which gives access to the upper floors. There are no straight side-passages as in the Exchequer gate at Lincoln, where the porters’ lodges are between the main and lateral entrances; but at Thornton an archway was built in the south wall of the central passage, and a diagonal side entrance constructed, with a wide inner archway. The outer entrance (303) was protected by a portcullis,and the lodges and turrets on either side had loops to the field. On the first floor of the gatehouse is a spacious room, which communicates by mural passages with the first floor of the angle-turrets and with galleries in the adjacent walls. These are all provided with loops, so that the approach to the monastery was effectually commanded. This gatehouse is nearly contemporary with the West gate of the city of Canterbury, which was begun by Archbishop Sudbury about 1379;322but the Canterbury gateway takes the orthodox form of a central passage recessed between two round towers, which are bold projections from a rectangular plan, and its architecture cannot compare with the moulded archways, elaborate ribbed vaulting, and canopied niches of Thornton.323

stokesay: hall

stokesay castlefrom south-west

Fortified closes, abbeys, and bishop’s palaces bring us back to the castle, in the history of which is the epitome of the art of defence. The concentric plan displayed the resources of the defenders in their most scientific form, but the concentric plan, as we have seen, is not very common, and its systematic use in English architecture was practically confined to a single period. The site, as at Kidwelly, did not always allow of the full extension of the outer ward, so as completely to encircle the inner. As a rule, we find that the English castle of the fourteenth century consists, like Richmond and Ludlow in their earliest form, or like Carew or Manorbier, of a single bailey without a keep. This enclosure is flanked by towers at adequate intervals, and is entered through an imposing gatehouse between two drum towers. No English castle of this type can compare with the fourteenth-century castle of Saint-André at Villeneuve d’Avignon (307), which kept watch upon the castle of the popes on the opposite bank of the Rhône, or with the Breton castles of Fougères (250) and Vitré. The castle of Caerlaverock (364), near Dumfries, not the famous castle besieged by Edward I., but a castle founded in 1333 on a new site, is a good instance of a simple plan, in which a single ward is surrounded by a flanked curtain. The castle stands on low and marshy ground near the Solway firth. An island, surrounded by a broad wet ditch, which, in the rear of the castle, assumes the proportions of a small lake, is enclosed by three sections of curtain forming an equilateral triangle. A drum tower, low and of rather slender proportions, covered each angle of the base;324while at the apex was a lofty gatehouse, flanked by drum towers, and approached by a drawbridge. The interior of the castle is somewhat confined, and the older domestic buildings were much enlarged in the sixteenth century by a mansion, somewhat in the style of the French Renaissance, which was built against the curtain to the left hand of the entrance. The old hall occupied the base of the triangle, while the kitchen offices were against the right-hand curtain.

Villeneuve d’Avignon

Licences to crenellate mansions are common in the Patent rolls of the Edwards and Richard II. In this way, many private dwelling-houses reached the rank of castles, while still retaining strongly marked features of their domestic object. The fortified house of Stokesay (306) in Shropshire, which Lawrence of Ludlow had licence to crenellate, 19th October 1290,325is a case in point, where the moated manor-house, with its strong tower, well deserves the name of castle. At the same time, many of the houses for which licences of crenellation were granted were never more than manor-houses to which were added fortifications of a limited kind. This was the case with Henry Percy’s houses of Spofforth, Leconfield, and Petworth, the licence for which bears date 14th October 1308.326Markenfield hall in Yorkshire, for which alicence was granted 28th February 1309-10,327is still one of our most valuable examples of domestic, as distinct from military, architecture. Such fortifications as these houses had or still have were not designed to stand a siege, but to ensure privacy and keep off casual marauders. Even in the sixteenth century, dwelling-houses like Compton Wyniates in Warwickshire or Tolleshunt Major in Essex were surrounded by a moat or simply by a wall.

Against these minor fortifications, however, we must put the cases in which the process of crenellation definitely meant conversion into a castle. Dunstanburgh, which Thomas of Lancaster had licence to crenellate in 1315,328is a military stronghold of the most pronounced type. Its exposed position upon the Northumbrian coast was one reason of its strength: coast castles needed strong defences, and we find that, during the period of the wars with France and later, the fortification of castles like Dover was a constant method of precaution against invasion.329Dunstanburgh has much in common with the ordinary strong dwelling-houses of Northumberland. Its base-court is a very large enclosure, occupying most of the area of the promontory on which the castle is situated; while the actual castle consists of a small and gloomy bailey. A wall, flanked at each end by a rectangular tower, shut off the enclosed space from the mainland. In the wall between the two towers rose the great gatehouse, which, standing in the front of attack, gave access to the smaller ward, and contained upon its upper floors the chief domestic apartments. Strongly defended as this gatehouse was, with two drum towers of great size flanking the entrance, the immediate access which it gave to the heart of the castle was evidently a source of danger. At a later date, the entrance was walled up, and a new gateway made in the curtain at a point near by. The gatehouse thus was practically turned into a keep, and the process which had taken place at Richmond towards the end of the twelfth century was virtually repeated, with this exception, that the actual fabric of the gatehouse remained, and was not superseded by a new form of strong tower. Precisely the same thing happened at Llanstephan in Carmarthenshire. This castle, one of the most imposing of Welsh strongholds, stands on a steep and almost isolated hill, where the Towy enters the Bristol Channel. It is divided by a cross-wall into a large outer ward and an inner ward whichoccupies the top of the sloping summit of the hill. The chief buildings were in the outer ward, and the finest of them was the great gatehouse, situated at the head of the landward slope of the hill, and concealed from the river by the convex curve of the curtain and by a large tower at the eastern angle of the enclosure. This gatehouse is of trapezoidal form: the gateway and its drum towers front the field, but the building spreads inwards, and has two much smaller round towers at its inner angles. It was undesirable, however, that the gatehouse, which, from the military and domestic point of view alike, was the principal building in the castle, should be the point on which the besiegers could concentrate all their force. Consequently, the gateway was blocked not long after it was built, and a new entrance was made beside it in the curtain. The way into the higher ward at Llanstephan was closed by a small rectangular gatehouse, built near one end of the dividing curtain.

Thus at Dunstanburgh and Llanstephan, castles in which the system of defence was not founded upon the concentric plan, but relied upon the strength of an adequately flanked curtain, gatehouses which are worthy of Caerphilly and Harlech, and stand upon the outer line of defence,330reverted to the condition of keeps. The possible use of a keep as an ultimate refuge never ceased altogether to have weight with castle-builders. The Percys, after their purchase of Alnwick early in the fourteenth century,331although there was ample room for a large mansion in one or other of the wards, built their dwelling as a cluster of walls and towers round a courtyard on the mount between the two wards. Some part of the substructure, the gatehouse with its octagonal flanking towers, and the curious triple-arched recess at the head of the well (310), are the most that remains to us of the early fourteenth-century mansion; but with these is incorporated twelfth-century work, which shows that the Percys built their house upon the lines of an older house upon the mount.332Thus the dwelling-house at Alnwick is in reality a keep of unusual form, a large building with flanking towers built upon a mount which has been considerably levelled to allow of more room for the house and its internal courtyard (115).

Alnwick Castle; Well-head

Raby Castle, DurhamGround Plan.

The strong tower, representing the survival of the keep, is found in another great northern castle of the fourteenth century, Raby, the castle of the Nevilles, where in other respects the domestic element is very prominent (311).333Raby, like Alnwick, is occupied to-day, but no such drastic changes as have converted the house on the mount at Alnwick into a comfortable modern residence were necessary here. There is an outer gatehouse slightly in advance of the north angle of the castle, which was surrounded by a moat and is nearly rectangular. The buildings are clustered round a main courtyard, the entrance to which is a gatehouse with a long vaulted passage behind it in the west block of buildings. At either end of the west front are two massive rectangular towers: Clifford’s tower, at the north end, is almost detached, and covers the north angle immediately opposite the gateway. The remaining tower, known as Bulmer’s tower, projects on five sides from the south angle of the building, and is the strong tower or keep of the castle. The kitchen, in the north block, is also contained within a strong tower, which does not project, however, from the rest of the buildings. But it was in the north of England that the keep survived most persistently. Middleham castle received much alteration at the hands of its Neville owners in the fourteenth century; but the twelfth-century keep was retained as the central feature of the enclosure. The rectangular keep of Knaresborough is entirely of the fourteenth century: it stood between an outer and innerward, and its great peculiarity is that the only passage from one to the other was through the first floor of the keep.334

BELSAY CASTLE

The tradition of the rectangular tower, however, was systematically preserved in the buildings known as pele-towers. These formed the chief defensive structures of enclosures called “peles,” a word derived from the Latinpilum(a stake). The twelfth-century tower of Bowes, a large and important rectangular tower which guarded the pass over Stainmoor from the valley of the Eden to that of the Tees, is an early instance of the pele-tower; and probably a large palisaded enclosure or “barmkin” was attached to it. In the fourteenth century we find large pele-towers like those at Belsay (313) or Chipchase, or the great tower-house of East Gilling, the proportions of which recall the rectangular keeps of a century and a half earlier. Belsay, with its traceried two-light openings on the first floor, and large bartizans corbelled out at the angles of its battlements, is the most handsome building of its kind in the north of England. The ordinary pele-tower, however, is of a rather later date, and the large majority of Northumbrian examples are of the fifteenth, and now and then of the sixteenth century.335Halton tower, near Aydon castle, and the small tower in the corner of the churchyard at Corbridge,336are well-known examples; while one of the most imposing specimens is the oblong tower of the manor-house of the archbishops of York at Hexham. The normal elevation was of three stories. The ground-floor, in which was the doorway, was vaulted as a protection against fire; it may have been used as a stable, and certainly was used as a store-room. The door was of wood, but its outer face wasprotected by a heavy framework of iron. The first floor, reached by a mural stair, was the main living-room. The second floor was a sleeping-room; and the battlements at the top were generally machicolated. Garde-robes are usually found in these towers; but they can hardly be called comfortable residences, and had all the disadvantages of the twelfth-century tower-keep, without its roominess. They are found, not only in Northumberland, but throughout the northern counties and the south of Scotland, while, in the hill country of Derbyshire, the pele seems to have been a favourite form of stronghold. The twelfth-century tower of Peak castle is one of those examples which allies the pele-tower to the normal tower-keep; while Haddon hall gradually developed from an enclosure which was neither more nor less than a pele with a tower at one angle.337

In this connection a word should be said about the fortification of churches. Ewenny priory church in Glamorgan, with its crenellated central tower and transept, is our only important example of fortified religious buildings such as were common in the centre and south of France—the cathedral of Albi (Tarn), the churches of Royat (Puy-de-Dôme) or Les-Saintes-Maries-sur-la-Mer (Bouches-du-Rhône).338None of our abbeys is protected by a donjon, like that of Montmajour, near Arles. There are, however, a certain number of churches, in districts exposed to constant warfare, the architecture of which, if not exactly military, was yet possibly constructed with a view to defence. The massive structure of some twelfth-century towers, like Melsonby in north Yorkshire, is probably due to the idea that they could be converted into strongholds, in case of a raid from the Scottish border. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when Scotland was dreaded as a constant foe, thehabit of giving additional security to the church towers in this district was common. Some otherwise simple church towers, as at Bolton-on-Swale and Danby Wiske in north Yorkshire, have their lowest stage vaulted, probably to minimise the danger of fire. The doorway to the tower-stair at Bedale was defended by a portcullis, and there are a fireplace and garde-robe upon the first floor. At Spennithorne, in the same neighbourhood, the battlements of the tower borrowed an ornament from military architecture, and are crowned with figures of “defenders.” In border districts it is not unusual to find the ground-floor of the tower roofed with a pointed barrel-vault, as at Whickham in county Durham, where the church stands on a high hill near the confluence of the Tyne and Derwent. This is a very general custom in South Wales, where the towers are usually massive and unbuttressed, and stand upon a battering plinth.339In Pembrokeshire a more slender type of tower prevails, which usually batters upwards through its whole height: the ground-floor is vaulted, and in many cases the whole church, or, at any rate, the nave, is ceiled with a barrel-vault. It does not follow that the object of this form of construction is defensive: lack of timber, and the consequent employment of local stone for rubble vaulting, is partly responsible for it. But in no part of the country are military and ecclesiastical forms of architecture so closely allied. The barrel-vaults of Monkton priory church and St Mary’s at Pembroke are similar to those of the chapel and its substructure which occupy the north-west corner of the inner ward of Pembroke castle: those of the church at Manorbier have their counterparts in the vaults of the castle chapel and the large room on its ground-floor.

If the pele-tower may be regarded as a direct survival of the rectangular keep in a simplified form, it is probable that the rectangular keep, with its angle turrets, also had a share in the origin of a type of castle or strong house, which became common, especially in the north of England, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.340The plan of this species of castle is a rectangle, which, in the largest examples, as at Bolton in Wensleydale, has an open courtyard in the centre; but itsdistinguishing feature is the provision of four towers, each at an angle of the structure. Such keeps as those of Colchester and Kenilworth, where the turrets are of considerable size and projection, suggest this plan; and some of the earliest examples, like Haughton on the north Tyne, the oldest parts of which are of the thirteenth century, have little to distinguish them from the ordinary rectangular keep. The angle-towers at Haughton are of no great prominence; but, in the early fourteenth-century castle of Langley, to the west of Hexham, they are a striking feature of the building, and one is entirely devoted to a series of garde-robes, arranged in three stories, with a common pit in the basement. A building with a somewhat similar plan to these northern castles is the manor-house or castle which Robert Burnell, bishop of Bath and Wells, and chancellor of England under Edward I., built at Acton Burnell, in Shropshire.341Here, however, the building is of a thoroughly domestic type, with large two-light window-openings of great beauty, which at once remove any suspicion as to its military character. The castle of the Scropes at Bolton and that of the Nevilles at Sheriff Hutton represent the highest development of this quadrangular plan. The licence to crenellate Bolton was granted in 1379:342the licence for Sheriff Hutton bears date 1382.343Both castles are large buildings with a central courtyard, and in both the military ideal was uppermost. Sheriff Hutton is now in a complete state of ruin, but Bolton is fairly perfect; and from its structure one important fact may be deduced. While the usual precautions for defence were carefully preserved, and the outer openings in the walls interfered little with the general solidity of structure, the domestic buildings round the courtyard formed part and parcel of the fabric itself. They were not merely built up against or within the curtain, but the curtain was actually their outer wall, and not simply their defensive covering. In fact, the manor-house in these cases was not a separate building within the enclosure of the castle; but the castle was also the manor-house. The same combination of military with domestic aims is noticeable in the contemporary castle of Raby (1378), of which the plan, already described, approximates irregularly to the type.344Castles akin to Bolton and Sheriff Huttonare Lumley, the licence for which was granted in 1392,345and Chillingham, the angle-towers of which are of a much earlier date than is usual in castles of this plan.346At Chillingham the medieval work is somewhat obscured by alterations made in the seventeenth century, but the original plan is retained. Survivals of the quadrangular plan may be traced in some of the great manor-houses of the early Renaissance period. It is not difficult to detect in the plan of Hardwick hall (1587), while the ground-plan of Wollaton hall (1580) is probably derived from a similar source. Smaller houses like Barlborough hall, near Sheffield, or Wootton lodge, near Ashbourne, have a kinship with it, although in these cases, and especially in the first, the elevation is more tower-like than is usual in medieval buildings of the type. It is needless to say that these Renaissance buildings are without any military character.

The traditional form of the rectangular keep was also responsible, no doubt, for the great tower-house which formed the principal feature, and is now the only portion left, of the castle of Tattershall in Lincolnshire. The discussion of this building belongs more properly to the last chapter of this book, for its general construction and architectural features are those of an age in which the military architecture of the middle ages was already little more than a survival. This age of transition begins in the last quarter of the fourteenth century; and, as already pointed out, castles like Bolton and Raby clearly show its influence. During the later half of the fourteenth and the fifteenth century, outside the north of England, it is rare to find a castle which actually deserves the name. The large private residence, with a certain amount of defensive precautions, became increasingly common; and, where alterations were made to existing castles, they were generally entirely in the direction of domestic comfort.

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