Chapter 17

Carnarvon Castle; Crenellated parapet

What has just been said of the parapets of walls applies naturally to the parapets of towers. Towers on the curtain had, as we have seen, a double use. They flanked the wall, so that each pair could rake with their shot the entire face of theenceintecontained between them. They also commanded the rampart-walk, so that an enemy who scaled the wall was still exposed to their fire and confined to a limited area. A distinction, however, must be drawn between the closed and open types of tower, as they may be called. The ordinary rampart tower was of two or three stages, divided into a basement and upper guard-room or rooms. The basement was sometimes vaulted, as in the northern tower at Pevensey (247) or towers at Alnwick. Fireplaces and garde-robe chambers are often found in the upper rooms,264the garde-robes being often placed at the junction of the tower with the curtain, and corbelled out over the outer wall.265At Carew, where there was no keep, but the castle formed a rectangular enclosure with drum-towers at the angles, all thetowers were provided with garde-robe chambers, which, with the passages leading to them, are roofed by lozenge-shaped slabs, corbelled out one above another. In the south-east tower, the first-floor chamber has a pointed barrel-vault, and is entered by an outer stair from the ward. In the east wall are two garde-robe chambers, entered by elbow-shaped passages. Each had a door opening inwards, and was lighted by a separate loop. The chambers were so planned that the seats were placed on opposite sides of a partition wall, with a common vent.

Pevensey; Vaulting in basement of north tower

The tower at Carew just mentioned is at earliest of late thirteenth-century date, and has several advanced features. Though its projection from the curtain is regularly rounded, its inward projection is rectangular, so that its plan is actually an oblong with a rounded end. It seems to have been intended to have been used in connection with the gatehouse: its first and second floors had no direct communication with each other, but both communicated with the gatehouse, and the ground-floor of the gatehouse had a large lateral opening in the direction of the first floor of the tower. The corresponding tower at the north-east angle was used in connection with the domestic buildings, and had a vaulted chapel (248) upon its first floor, from the north wall of which open two rooms for the use of the priest, with a garde-robe in the second. One tower, therefore, was purely defensive, additional precautions having been taken, no doubt, to guard a postern which opens from the basement upon the scarp of the ditch; while the other was merely an annexe to one of the two dwelling-houses within the enclosure.The use of the eastern and south-western towers at Warkworth (49) was equally distinct. We have seen that the south-west tower (Cradyfargus) was used in connection with the domestic buildings: this may not have been its original purpose, but it was certainly thus employed early in the fourteenth century. The great feature of the east tower is the huge loop in each of its five outer faces, designed for a cross-bow 16 feet long: these loops, splayed throughout and fan-tailed at top and bottom, are the finest examples of cross-loops left in England, and declare the main purpose of the tower at once. In later years, when the cross-bow was out of fashion, the interior of the tower was somewhat altered, and a fireplace inserted.

Carew; Chapel

Door of main gatehouseChepstow Castle

Stair to vaulted chamber in outer baileyChepstow Castle

The best examples of curtain-towers, both abroad and in England, form complete cylinders, like the angle-towers at Coucy, or polygons, like some of the towers at Carnarvon. But room was spared if the cylinder or polygon was left incomplete, and its inner face made nearly flush with the curtain. The two towers on the curtain of the inner ward at Pembroke projected with semicircular curves into the outer ward, but were flat at the back: the south tower covered the gateway of the inner ward, which was not in the face of the wall, but round an angle. The towers of the outer ward, on the other hand, are mostly complete cylinders: the stairs were vices contained in rectangular turrets on one side, the outer wallsof which are curved to meet the circumference of the towers (181).266Marten’s tower at Chepstow, and the towers of the curtain of the fine early fourteenth-century castle of Llanstephan, are cases in which the projection of the tower is only external. The tower which caps the eastern angle at Llanstephan is a half-cylinder, springing, not directly from the curtain, but from a broad rectangular projection on its face.267The variations which might be noticed in the attachment of towers to the curtain are manifold: but, as time goes on, the ordinary curtain-tower, where it was not placed at an angle of a ward, stood flush with the curtain on its inner side (228). Where the tower stood on the curtain by itself,unattached to other buildings within the castle, there was usually an entrance to the basement direct from the bailey, on one side of which a vice in a turret attached to the tower rose to the upper floors and roof, communicating on the level of the first floor with the curtain. The doorway opening on the curtain was fitted with a strong door, and, in Marten’s tower at Chepstow castle, where the tower was of special importance, standing as it does at the lowest and most vulnerable point of the site, was provided with a portcullis.

Fougères

There were cases, however, especially in walls of towns, where the curtain-tower, although projecting outside and above the wall, and covered with a timber roof, was left open at the gorge or neck, where it was flush with the curtain, so that it was simply an open tower, with a platform on the first floor, level with the rampart-walk, and a rampart-walk of its own at the level of its battlements. Such a tower could be actively employed in time of war, and had all the advantages of the ordinary closed tower in flanking the wall and cutting the rampart-walk up into sections. The numerous towers of the walls of Avignon, between the gatehouses, were arranged thus.268At Conway, thesemi-cylindrical towers of the town walls, of which there are twenty, and the similar towers which flank the gatehouses, are open to the town: one tower only, on the south-west side of the town, where the wall turns to join the castle, is walled at the gorge. The walls of Chepstow provide further examples of open towers. At Carnarvon (251), the round towers on the face of the town walls are open, but the angle-towers were closed; and that at the north-west angle was entered through the town chapel, which was built against the curtain at this point. The open tower was not, as a rule, used in castles: even the small towers which flank the outer curtain at Beaumaris have a wall continued across the gorge.

Carnarvon; Tower of town wall

Every large castle was provided with a postern or sally-port. This was generally a small doorway, preferably in the base of a tower, but often in the curtain, opening on the least frequented side of the castle. In time of siege, in a castle of the ordinary plan, a postern might easily be a source of danger; and its employment in the scheme of defence was incompletely understood at first. But it was useful for the conveyance of provisions to the castle; and a postern, as at Warkworth, is often found in connection with a kitchen or store-room. Where a castle stood near a river, a water-gate, communicating with a private wharf was made. At Pembroke, where the castle stands between two water-ways, there were two water-gates, one in the south side of the outer ward, the other, as already mentioned, formed by walling in the mouth of the cave below the great hall. For the scientific employment of the postern, however, we have to look to the great castles of the later part of the thirteenth century, in which the means of defence described in this chapter were perfectly co-ordinated; and, with the introduction of a new plan, the last signs of a merely passive strength vanished from the castle.

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