Dolbadarn
Dolbadarn
Another case is the keep of Tretower in Breconshire, which stands on a slightly elevated site near the confluence of the Rhiangol with the Usk. Here the arrangement is very curious. The keep, a round tower with a basement and three upper stages, stands within the ruins of an approximately rectangular enclosure. This enclosure bears a close resemblance to the outer wall of a rectangular keep, but has two octagonal projections from the south face, one of which contains a vice, and the other a large fireplace. The tower itself seems to be somewhat earlier than the year 1200: the fireplaces on the first and second floors have architectural decoration recalling that of the fireplaces at Conisbrough, shafts with capitals carved with foliage of a very elementary kind. The solution which suggests itself is that a rectangular tower, of a somewhat original plan, was begunand raised to a certain height, and that the builders then changed their minds, built a circular tower within the unfinished keep, and left the outer walls to serve as a curtain for the new structure.
The keep at Tretower, in its ordinary features, may be compared with the tower of Bronllys, only a few miles distant, on the other side of the pass through the Black mountains, at the southern foot of which Tretower stands. This tower also seems to be a work of the end of the twelfth century, but its architectural details are much plainer: both seem originally to have been between 70 and 80 feet high, and each contained a basement and three floors. Each has a battering base, and above this the wall at Tretower batters slightly to the summit; the diameter of Tretower exceeds that of Bronllys throughout. The original entrance in each case was on the first floor, from which at Tretower a vice led to the top of the building. The basement at Tretower had its separate stair in the wall opposite the entrance. At Bronllys the basement has a pointed barrel vault, and was entered by a stone stair and ladder from a trap-door in one of the window recesses of the first floor. The stair from the first floor to the second opened from another window recess, and curved through the wall, as at Conisbrough; there was, as also at Conisbrough, a separate stair to the third floor. The wall of the basement at Bronllys has been broken through in two places, and in one of these a hollow in the wall has been disclosed, in which originally a great beam was inserted to give coherence to the masonry. The same feature is seen in the outer building at Tretower. This device was frequently employed in the construction of medieval walls, but its traces are not often so clearly seen.
Dolbadarn; Interior
Dolbadarn; Interior
One feature of the tower of Bronllys is that, like that of Caldicot, it stands upon an artificial mount, which occupies the ordinary position of such earthworks, at the head of the enclosure. The more roomy, but lower, tower at Hawarden, the upper floor of which is internally an octagon, almost surrounded by a mural passage, is built upon a lofty mount. At Skenfrith in Monmouthshirethe tower, nearly equal to Bronllys in diameter, but not higher than Hawarden, stands upon a very low mount, and is placed in an isolated position, nearly in the centre of a trapezoidal enclosure. Here the lowness of the mount and the absence of indications of a normal earthwork plan suggest that it was raised to strengthen the foundations of the tower, and is not the mount of an earlier castle. The knoll, on the other hand, on which the round tower of Dolbadarn (183) stands, between the two lakes at the foot of the pass of Llanberis, is natural. The details of this tower are very plain, but it was probably built during the thirteenth century. There is no trace of any castle in connection with this small military outpost, which, like the not far-distant rectangular keep of Dolwyddelan, on the eastern slopes of Moel Siabod, bears some analogy to the “pele-towers” of the north of England, and may have been built by a Welsh chieftain upon an English model during the reign of Henry III.
York; Clifford’s Tower
York; Clifford’s Tower
None of the towers in England and Wales mentioned in this chapter have the inner spur which has been noticed as characteristic of French towers. It appears, as has been said, at Goodrich and Chepstow. Other instances are a tower in the outer curtain at Denbigh, and the spur on the inward face of the great tower at Barnard Castle. Here the work is not earlier than the time of Edward II., and the tower is little more than a large mural tower added to a large shell-keep standing on a high rocky point. The spur here is a half pyramid, the apex of which dies away in the face of the tower. Of an octagonal tower we have one example at Odiham in Hampshire, which may be of the end of the twelfth century. This has the feature,anomalous for so early a date, of angle buttresses which project 4 feet, but are only 2 feet broad.
Berkeley Castle; Plan
Berkeley Castle; Plan
Of donjons which were built in England during the reign of Henry III., the most interesting, by virtue of their plan, are those of York and Pontefract. The tower of York (185), raised upon the mount of the northern of the two castles, was built possibly about 1230, and assumed the quatrefoil shape which is found in France at Etampes. This keep, presumably because it is built on a mount, is usually called a “shell”; it was, however, a regular tower, and the entrance, in the angle between two of the leaves of the quatrefoil, is guarded by a rectangular fore-building, on the first floor of which was the chapel. As at Etampes, the quatrefoil plan is preserved internally, but the angles formed by the meeting of the four segments are chamfered off: there was no vaulting, as at Etampes, but the floors were of wood. A quatrefoil plan was also adopted at Pontefract, with some slight variation, owing to the irregular shape of the rocky mount. This keep is in a state of complete ruin, although some idea of its former shape may be gathered from a bird’s-eye view preserved among the records of the duchy of Lancaster.221We can see, from what is left, that it was not built upon the top of the mount; but that, on three sides, the mount was enclosed by walls of revetment,222which formedthe base of the segments composing the quatrefoil. This process recalls the walling-in of the mount at Berkeley, where, however, the lower part of the mount was left, and the space between the slope and the wall filled in with earth. At Pontefract the slope of the mount must have been much reduced before the walls of revetment were added: the sandstone upon which the castle was built is soft, and would lend itself easily to such an operation.
The bird’s-eye view of Pontefract just mentioned cannot be regarded as absolutely trustworthy, but it gives us the relative position of the various towers of the castle. It shows us a curtain flanked by a formidable row of mural towers; the keep, a complicated erection of several segments, with bartizans223projecting from the battlements in the angles formed by the junction of the segments, is still the dominant feature of the castle; but our attention is equally claimed by the defences of the curtain and the domestic buildings which it encloses. And, in pursuing our subject, we must first trace the growth of domestic buildings within the castle area, and then turn to that strengthening of the curtain which led eventually to the disuse of the keep.