Round Keeps
About the turn of the 12th and during the 13th centuries important developments took place in British castle design. This was largely due to the experience gained in the Crusades by western military architects, who for the first time not only made close acquaintance with the mighty fortifications of the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim civilization, but also were confronted with sophisticated siege methods. The single keep with surrounding protective walled bailey reinforced with mural towers continued as a basic design, but gradually changes and improvements were introduced. The sitting and design of castles reflected concerns about advances in siege warfare, and military architects were anxious to devise works that eliminated these threats. Buildings prominently located on elevated solid rock outcrops were considered to be very secure, and the provision of a broad ditch was regarded as the best deterrent to siege tactics, the more so when the ditch was filled with water. Another noticeable change was the discarding of the Norman rectangular or square plan, replaced with a polygonal, circular or cylindrical plan. Over a square keep a
Conisbrough today. Located in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, the keep was built by Hamelin Plantagenet, Earl of Warenne, a half-brother of King Henry II in the 12th century. The
Tower is entirely built with beautiful magnesian limestone ashlar. It measures 50 feet in diameter and 90 feet in height. It is supported throughout its entire height by six massive butresses. The tower has five stories, including, from the top downwards, a top fighting platform (today destroyed), the lord’s private room (with a chapel built in the thickness of the buttress), a hall, and two tiers of cellarage and a well. Communication between the stories was obtained by separate flights curving round the building and arranged in the thickness of the wall. The tower, leaving no doubt about its military character, also had rich architectural details (chapel, fireplaces, latrines and other domestic fitments) clearly indicating that it was the regular dwelling for a powerful magnate. By the end of the 1400s, Conisbrough had been abandoned as a residence and, ironically, it was its very state of disrepair that saved it from total destruction during the English Civil War. The castle is now owned by English Heritage and is open to the public.
Round tower presented several advantages. It limited the dangerous dead angles or dead grounds (spots which could not be seen and shot at from the top). It lent itself readily to domevaulting on all, or at least on the principal floors, and thus could be made virtually fireproof. Space for space, a round building is volumetrically more economical in masonry than is a square one, and it has no corners (weak points exposed to the battering ram or the miner’s pick). That a rectangular or square keep was vulnerable
Right: Conisbrough keep (conjectured reconstruction). Note the use of plinth (also called talus, or batter), referring to the base of a wall being provided with a thick, compact and widening slope. This mass of large stones added stability to the construction, strengthened the bottom of the wall against undermining and sapping, and provided a ricochet surface for projectiles such as rocks being dropped down that would splinter and bounce off horizontally, creating a crushing shrapnel effect on enemies below.
Bottom: Plan of Conisbrough Castle. 1: Outer bailey; 2: Motte; 3: Inner bailey; 4: Cylindrical keep.
Orford Castle, located 12 miles (20 km) northeast of Ipswich in Suffolk, was built by order of King Henry II between 1165 and 1173. Its purpose was to overlook Orford harbor. Technically speaking, Orford was a link between the Norman square keep and the Angevin round tower. Its core is circular but it has a multi-angular external outline broken by three large rectangular projections, not mere buttresses like Conisbrough, but wings devised to supply additional accommodation, with two kitchens, a chapel and a variety of rooms opening off the central structure. One of the wings has an additional forework with a defensive entrance. The keep was placed in the center of a bailey enclosed by walls and towers. Today, the outer curtain wall has largely disappeared, leaving only traces of the outer defenses and a deep trench surrounding the central keep. The well-preserved tower of Orford is now managed and maintained by English Heritage.
Plan of Orford Castle. The plan of the second floor shows the circular core and the three rectangular projections. 1: Main entrance; 2: Kitchen; 3: Sleeping chamber; 4: Staircase; 5: Guard room.
To mining was demonstrated in 1215 when parts of the keep of Rochester were destroyed by a mine, which did nullify all the keep’s ponderous strength and brought its massive walls tumbling down in ruin. That siege of Rochester proved the point and paved the way to the round tower and the development of the concentric castle. However, even before 1215, everywhere in Western Europe round keeps were erected. In Britain, one of the first and best instances of this new fashion is the keep of Conisbrough in Yorkshire, celebrated in Sir Walter Scott’s historical novel, Ivan-hoe. Other remarkable keeps based on a cylindrical design include Orford in Sussex and Pembroke in Wales. More sophisticated forms were also experimented with, such as the quatrefoil (or quadrilobe, consisting of four intersecting vertical cylinders), as can be seen at Clifford’s Tower in the royal castle of York, and at the donjons of Pontefract in Yorkshire. In the 13th century the fashion of cylindrical keeps was continued and spread northward into Scotland, and the donjon of Bothwell Castle provides a remarkable example.
(Continued on page 188).
Above: Pembroke, located on a strategic steep rocky promontory dominating the Pembroke River in West Wales, is one of the outstanding examples of a cylindrical keep. Around 1093 the Norman Arnulf de Montgomery built a small motte-and-bailey castle at the end of the promontory. In the late 12th century, c. 1189, the castle was acquired by Earl William Marshall, who turned it into an impressive stone castle with a cylindrical donjon. The massive donjon, forming the central feature of the castle, was built in 1200. Made of limestone ashlar, it stands on a massive plinth and its walls, approximately 19 feet (6 m) thick, rise to a height of 80 feet. The keep has a diameter of 53 feet, and was divided into four stories, the uppermost roofed with a stone dome 30 feet high at the center. Externally there were two fighting terraces, the uppermost around the top of the dome. Below and outside this was a second terrace or rampart walk on top of the main wall. Another remarkable feature of the castle is the gatehouse, which defended the outer ward and which had a complex barbican and no fewer than three portcullises. Historically, Pembroke is important not only for its architecture but also for the fact that Henry VII, who inaugurated the Tudor line of monarchs, was born there in 1457, reputedly in the tower now known as the Henry VII Tower. Today, Pembroke Castle is owned and managed by a private charitable trust. The imposing ruined castle is open to the public all year. The illustration shows how the donjon and the inner ward might have appeared in the early 13th century.
Opposite top: Plan of Pembroke Castle. 1: Circular keep; 2: Chapel and Western Hall; 3: Inner ward; 4: North Tower; 5: Court; 6: Norman Hall; 7: Northern Hall; 8: Prison Tower; 9: Inner gatehouse; 10: Monkton Tower; 11: West Gate Tower; 12: Town walls; 13: Henry VII Tower; 14: Barbican; 15: Great Gatehouse; 16: Barbican Tower; 17: North Gate Tower; 18: St. Ann’s Bastion; 19: Outer ward; 20: Moat.
Clifford’s Tower (originally known as King’s Tower) in York originated from a typical Norman timber motte castle erected in 1068-1069 by order of King William I the Conqueror right after the conquest. Rebuilt by order of King Henry II, Clifford embodied the new concept that round walls were harder to destroy than sharp corners. The still-existing stone tower of quatrefoil plan stands on top of a large motte approximately 100 feet in diameter. The tower is about 49 feet high with only two stories. Entry was at ground level through a forebuilding with porch. The building derived its present name after Edward II’s victory at the battle of Boroughbridge in 1322. Sir Roger Clifford, being on the losing Lancastrian side, was executed in the castle.
Above: The illustration shows how the King’s Tower (later renamed Clifford’s Tower) might have appeared in the 12th century.
Opposite top: Chepstow, on its rock above the swirling waters of the River Wye, stands guard over a strategic crossing point into Wales. Started not long after the Battle of Hastings in 1066 by William Fitz Osbern, a companion of William the Conqueror created Earl of Hereford, it was a landmark in many ways. Chepstow, built to secure Fitz Osbern’s new territories in the Welsh borders, was amongst the first of Britain’s stone-built strongholds. The mellow-walled (soft, toned-down by time) Chepstow we see today is an intriguing amalgam of different periods. Started during the infancy of castle building, it was improved throughout the centuries right up to the Civil War and beyond. Beautifully preserved Chepstow Castle is a history lesson in stone, which brings to life the way a castle can grow from rudimentary keep to sophisticated fortress. At its core remains the Norman stone keep. In later centuries, towers, walls, gatehouses and barbicans were added, until the long, narrow castle occupied the entire cliff backed ridge above the Wye. As a final complement to its strength and siting, Chepstow was adapted for cannon and musketry after a long siege in the Civil War, and continued in use until 1690. The map shows 1: Barbican; 2: Southwest Tower; 3: Upper bailey; 4: Great Tower; 5: Middle Bailey; 6: Lower bailey; 7 and 8: Domestic buildings, hall and kitchen; 9: Outer gatehouse; 10: Marten’s Tower.
The massive roundish and austere Marten’s Tower at Chepstow Castle, built about 1285, was 12.8 m in diameter and 19.2 m high. It was an improvement on earlier square designs, and was given additional protection and strength by two integral aprons. The apron was a thick, compact and sloping mass of large stones added to the lower part of curtains and towers. It had different forms: triangular, angular, almond-shaped, or similar to a bridge-fender, the prow of a ship or a bird’s snout. Used in the 13th and 14th centuries, the apron increased the stability of the construction and rendered sapping, mining and ramming more difficult. The tower derives its name from Henry Marten, one of the Parliamentarians who signed the execution warrant of Charles I. Marten was imprisoned—fairly comfortably—in this tower from his trial after the restoration of Charles II in 1666 until his death in 1680 at the age of 78.
Left: Nenagh Castle in the county of North Tipperary, Ireland, was built by Theobald Walter around 1200. The castle boasts the finest cylindrical keep in Ireland, named “Nenagh Round.” Built of limestone rubble, irregularly coursed, and measuring about 55 feet in external diameter at the base, it rises now to a height of about a hundred feet. The topmost quarter, however, is modern (c. 1860), the original height to the wallwalk being about 75 feet. Above this, there was the crenellated parapet. The keep included four stories, with a basement, which was accessible, originally, only from the entrance story above. At the base, the walls are 16 feet thick, and at the top, just 11 feet. The architecture is gracefully decorative, and it includes a series of clerestory windows beneath a corbelled parapet wall ornamented with stepped merlons.
Below: Nenagh Castle plan. Like most keeps, Nenagh Round formed part of the perimeter of the fortress, being incorporated into the curtain walls surrounding a rather small, five-sided courtyard. These walls have now almost disappeared (dashed line on the illustration), but fragments (in bold) remain. There were originally four flanking towers, one on each side of the entrance gateway to the south, the others at the east and west angles of the pentagon; the great keep occupied the northern angle.
Dirleton Castle (Conjectured reconstruction), located in the village of Dirleton about 2 miles (3.2 km) west of North Berwick, and around 19 miles (31 km) east of Edinburgh in East Lothian, Scotland, was built by John De Vaux around 1240. Dirleton Castle stands on a rocky outcrop, at the heart of the rich agricultural lands of the former barony of Dirleton, and guards the coastal approach to Edinburgh from England, via the port of North Berwick. Basically the plan is an obtusely angled L-shape, with four part-round towers ranged along the two arms of the curtain wall, raised on the almost vertical crag completing the fortified area. Two small corbelled, snuffer-roofed turrets flanked the entrance. The ruins comprise a 13th-century keep and a 16th-century house which the Ruthven family built adjacent. Only the basement levels survive of the 14th-and 15th-century additions built by the Haliburton family, notably a large hall and tower house along the east range. Other buildings within the courtyard have also been demolished. Surrounding the castle are gardens, which may have been first laid out in the 16th century, although the present planting is largely of the 20th century. The ruins of sternly romantic appearance and gardens are now maintained by Historic Scotland.
Above: Bothwell Castle (conjectured reconstruction), located on a steep ridge above a bend of the River Clyde in South Lanarkshire southeast of Glasgow in Scotland, strongly recalls Coucy and Najac castles in France, of which built in 1277, it was the exact contemporary. The castle of Bothwell is composed of an oblong walled inner bailey with walls reaching 60 feet high, with jutting towers, and at its western end an enormous round donjon. To the north there are substantial foundations of a gatehouse, towers and curtains to enclose a roughly triangular outer bailey. These were never completed. Bothwell is a very grand but rather unfortunate castle with a confusing history made of construction, incompleteness, sieges, captures, partial demolition and rebuilding, and final abandonment in the 18th century. Bothwell Castle is now managed by Historic Scotland and is open to the public.
Opposite: Bothwell donjon. The Bothwell keep is nearly 70 feet in diameter and still survives today to a height of 90 feet. The polished ashlar reveals a possible French involvement. The donjon had four stories, with the lord’s private apartment on top.
Towered Curtain
At the same time that the fortress designers were experimenting with round, multi-angular or even quadrilobed keeps, they were devoting more and more attention to the curtain walls. By the 13 th century the bailey was more often enclosed by increasingly massive curtain walls, flanked by wall - and corner-towers either of the
Older rectangular or newer cylindrical pattern. Bartizans, also called echauguettes or pepper-pot towers—small corbelled watchtowers or turrets projecting from the corner or flank of a tower or wall, overhanging at the top — were also introduced. They had the same flanking combat and observation function as normal towers, but they were much cheaper to build.
The bailey still screened the usual domestic buildings, but the hall and the chapel, now built in stone, had grown in importance.
The hall was the main room in a castle, often of great dimensions, in which all parts of the household of the castle community would eat and live, with those of highest status being at the end, often on a raised dais, and those of lesser status. It was a room of relative comfort and status, which usually included a fireplace (with additional braziers and charcoal-pans in winter) and decorative woodwork, trophies, tapestries, and wall hangings. The hall was used as place for entertainment, banquets, feasts, and celebrations, but also as a room to gather a meeting, a council, or a court of justice. At night it could be used as a dormitory for servants. As seen before, in the early Middle Ages it was a large room in the keep, but increasingly it became a separate building in its own right, a hall-house placed in the bailey. By far the noblest medieval hall in Britain is Westminster Hall, built by King Rufus and remodeled by King Richard II. This astounding structure measures internally 239 by 67 feet, but it is rather an independent building in its own right rather than a castle hall. Another remarkable hall is that of Winchester Castle, built by King Henry III between 1220 and 1236. This splendid stateroom measures 110 by 56 feet and is constructed like a church with a nave and aisles separated by arcades. Another noticeable great hall was that of Grosmont Castle in Monmouthshire, built by Hubert de Burgh. Grosmont Castle stands within a D-shaped moat and includes a walled enclosure with two round towers and a simple gatehouse. Along the straight or rearward side stands a hall-house measuring 96 by 32 feet. This
Murder-holes (1) were voids spared in the ceiling of a gateway or above a passageway-gener-ally in the gatehouse-through which the defenders could drop down projectiles at attackers. Invented by the Romans in c. 200 b. c., the portcullis (2) was a vertical wooden grille often shod with iron, placed above the doorway of a gatehouse. It could be raised open using to a winching system (3) of counterweights, pulleys, ropes or chains and a windlass placed on the first floor of the gatehouse (seen here in profile). In time of crisis the portcullis could be instantly lowered by releasing a latch, and the heavy grilled door slid down along side-grooves or guides owing to its own weight. These elements, together with the drawbridge (4), were standard parts of the defense of the entrance of a castle.
Is massively constructed and strongly buttressed, almost in a Norman fashion, yet clearly dated to the early 13th century.
Next in importance to the hall came the chapel. Norman keeps, as we have already discussed, had a room arranged as an oratory or a chapel, but in the new castles of the 13th century it became an independent church placed in the bailey. It often had outstanding features such as a circular nave, vaulted rectangular chancel, sanctuaries and rich decorations in the so-called Gothic style. Some remarkable castle chapels in Britain may be seen, amongst many other examples, at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire, Kildrummy in Aberdeenshire, and Dunstaffnage near Oban in Scotland.
In some instances the keep lost its importance both as dwelling and military structure, and the bailey and its fortified enceinte tended to become essentially the castle. The donjon was sometimes reduced to the position of just one tower on the line of the curtain, larger and stronger than the others, often vaulted on one or more
Above: Shutter. The crenel (void between two solid merlons) could be fitted with a wooden shutter (or huchette) hanging upon swivels in the merlon on either side. The shutter (1) could be pushed far open when required in order to enable an archer or a crossbowman to shoot his weapon through the crenel while the sloping shelter offered him overhead protection from enemy projectiles. The merlons could be pierced with observation slits (2), and below the battlements there was often a row of weepers (3) for carrying off the rainwater from the wallwalk.
Right: A brattice (also called a breteche or bre-tasche or moucharabieh) was a small masoned or timber projecting balcony resting on corbels introduced in the 12th century. Often placed above an entrance, it was a variation of the murder-holes, as its floor was fitted with one or more machicoulis-openings through which missiles could be thrown downwards upon assailants. It was a cheap substitute, allowing vertical flanking. Its summit was either roofed or open and furnished with one or two crenels. The brattice, originating from the Middle East, was introduced in the western military architecture by the Crusaders.
Above: Machicolation (or machicoulis), introduced in the late 13th century, is an opening made in the floor of the wallwalk on top of a wall, between supporting corbels, through which rocks or other projectiles could be dropped down on attackers at the base of a defensive wall.
Bottom: Skenfrith Castle. An early and interesting example of a transitional disposition may be seen at Skenfrith Castle in Monmouthshire, Wales. Skenfrith originated from an 11th-century earth and timber ringwork and bailey fortress, founded by William Fitz Osborn. In the late 12th century, King Henry II founded the stone castle, encasing the platform with a curtain wall flanked by a small square keep. In the early 13th century, Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, demolished the earlier fortress and founded the stone keep and courtyard castle on the levelled site. The great circular three-story keep is placed in an archaic position in the center of the bailey, and stands on a sub-rectangular platform, which was encased by a wide stone revetted motte. The enceinte enclosing the bailey is trapezoidal with a wall approximately 8 feet thick. It was reinforced with a round projecting tower at each corner, a fifth on the west flank, and a gatehouse now destroyed. The castle was surrounded by a wet moat fed from the River Monnow.
Skenfrith Castle Keep. The illustration shows the keep in its actual state.
Floors and provided with its own well so that it could serve as the last defensive place if the castle were invaded and captured. In such castles, the donjon was generally sited as remotely as possible from the entrance, always the weak point in the defense. Therefore great attention was now devoted to the strengthening of the entrance, which began to take the form of a regular and powerful gatehouse. Basically the gatehouse included a wide arched portal — large enough to let a cart through. The portal could of course be closed by heavy stout wooden folding doors reinforced with nails and metal parts. The portal was arranged either into a rectangular building, or a mural tower through which the entryway passed, or, very commonly, was deeply recessed between a pair of strong flanking towers. This large and complex gatehouse was increasingly heavily fortified and defended with a drawbridge, one or more portcullises, arrow loops, and murder-holes in the vault or ceiling of the entrance passage.
In addition the defense of the gatehouse was often reinforced with a barbican — an advanced or exterior work protecting the gatehouse of a city or castle. The barbican, originating from the Middle East and brought back to Europe by returning
Gatehouse of Carisbrooke Castle, situated near Newport on the Isle of Wight, originated from a Roman fort, then an Anglo-Saxon settlement and a Norman motte-and-bailey castle. Re-built in the 13th, 14th and 16th centuries, the castle was the strongest point on the island. The depicted gateway was erected by Lord Scales, who was owner of the castle in 1464.
Crusaders, could be a simple palisade or an earth wall with stockade, but these were often replaced with a thick masonry work. It could have various forms, for example a large round tower or a strong rectangular building, or an oval or horseshoe shape, or an advanced walled enclosure, or even an outer ward with towers and turrets. Erected on the far side of the ditch, at the exterior end of the bridge, it concealed the gatehouse, worked as a filter, and provided an additional external line of defense as it was fitted with combat emplacements, its own ditch and its own drawbridge. The entrance to the barbican was not placed in line with the main portal but on a flank,
So as to check a direct rush upon the latter. The provision of successive lines of defense had long been a well-understood device in the designing of castles. The barbican also enabled the assemblage of a party to prepare for a sortie or to protect a retreat.
Enceinte Castle
In some examples the keep was discarded altogether, and the castle became a fortified enclosure with walls, towers and gatehouse, but now without donjon or main tower. The bailey then provided protection, and the defense focused on the gatehouse, corner - and wall-towers, and curtains. Towers and walls were amply fitted with arrow-loops and often furnished with hoardings—timber oversailing galleries enabling the defenders to command the bases of their walls. This arrangement was also a great improvement regarding the daily life and organization of the community living in the castle. The bailey (sometimes covering several acres) offered more space and easier communication between service buildings and living quarters, which had previously been included in the crowded vertical keep. All elements could then be placed commodiously at ground level in separate buildings in the courtyard. Castles of this type are thus often termed enceinte-castles.
Again it must be stressed that not every baron in the 13th century lived within strong castles as just described. Many of the smaller landlords continued to dwell in homesteads made of timbered earthwork, or in mansions and manors which hardly deserved the term of castle. They were forced to do so either because they were not
Ludlow Castle (conjectured reconstruction), situated in the Marches of Wales in south Shropshire, probably originates from a Norman castle built soon after William I’s conquest. Construction was extended over the centuries, and the castle was a border stronghold and a fortified royal palace. It occupies a strong defensive position on a steep cliff above the rivers Teme and Corve. Ludlow Castle stands prominently on high ground, able to resist attack from would-be invaders from over the Welsh border. For the first 200 years, Ludlow Castle was owned by the De Lacy family, and then came into the possession of the Mortimers until 1461, when it became Crown property. During the next 350 years it remained largely a royal castle, but had fallen into a state of decay by the mid-18th century, becoming the lovely romantic ruin seen today.
Rich enough to afford elaborate fortifications or because they had not received a royal license to “crenallate.” In medieval parlance to crenellate was to embattle, which meant to fortify his residence. In theory at least, no lord was allowed to do so without the king’s permission. It need hardly be said that such a regulation was apt to be more honored in the breach than in the observance, particularly when the central royal power was weak.
It is still unclear where the initiative for new castle designs lay. While skilled
Plan of Ludlow Castle. Situated at the northwest extremity of the town of Ludlow, the castle forms a large rectangular enceinte, with the town and principal entry on the east side, and the west side overlooking the river. The northwest corner is enclosed by another enceinte wall (1) and a moat (2) forming the inner ward and the heart of the castle. In the early 12th century, the gatehouse was extended and converted to a four-story rectangular keep (3), containing a living hall and private solar, and to which entry was gained by a bridge. The inner ward contains the residential buildings (4) that formed the castle’s principal accommodations. These buildings feature large windows that overlook the courtyard. The most important structure in this range was the Great Hall, a huge room measuring some 60 feet (18 m) by 30 feet (9 m), with an undercroft beneath. In addition, the inner ward features the remains of the Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene (5) with an unsual circular chancel reminiscent of that of Temple Church in London. The outer ward (6) contained service buildings (7), and a sallyport (8).
Master-builders would presumably bring their own experience to bear on the most suitable solution for a defensive building, the commissioning lords were also innovative soldiers who had been besieged and who had besieged themselves. These professional warriors undoubtedly had their own views on how to construct and attack a castle. Castle-designers, kings, barons and lords traveled around Europe; some went on pilgrimages or crusades in the Holy Land. They would certainly have taken note of any fortresses they saw, remembering and eventually copying impressive and useful features.
Concentric Castle
From the mid-12th century a new development appeared, called the concentric castle. This had no keep where the defenders could retreat, but a series of enclosing walls punctuated by towers, one inside the other, in fact two castles in one. The early motte-and-bailey castle was highly vulnerable because the various parts of the defense
Caerphilly Castle, located in south Wales, is one of the great medieval castles of Western Europe. Several factors give it this pre-eminence: its immense size (1.2 hectares), making it the largest in Britain after Windsor; its large-scale use of water for defense; and the fact that it is the first truly concentric castle in Britain. At the time of its building in the late 13th century, it was a revolutionary masterpiece of military planning. The castle was built by one of Henry III’s most powerful and ambitious barons, Gilbert de Clare, lord of Glamorgan. His purpose was to secure the area and prevent lowland south Wales from falling into the hands of the Welsh leader Llywelyn the Last, who controlled most of mid - and north Wales. De Clare built other castles on the northern fringes of his territory for the same purpose, such as Castell Coch. He had seized the upland district of Senghenydd, in which Caerphilly lies, from the Welsh in 1266 to act as a buffer against Llywelyn’s southward ambitions. Apart from the remodelling of the great hall and other domestic works in 1322-26for Hugh le Despenser, no more alterations were carried out, making it a very pure example of late 13th-century military architecture.
Plan of Caerphilly Castle. Walls and towers are not the only elements in fortification, and water defenses, both natural and artificial, have always been important. The castle standing in the loop of a river is a commonplace, but there are two supreme instances where the elaborate flooding of shallow valleys are transformed into lakes by damming: Kenilworth and Caerphilly. The central part of Caerphilly Castle is a concentric arrangement, quite similar to Harlech and Beaumaris, standing originally on an island in a lake held on one side by a dam called Grand Front (1), nearly 1,000 feet long, protecting the approach from the east. There are gateways on to the dam at either end and at the center, a barbican (2) and a drawbridge giving access to the castle proper, on the island. There was an outer bailey (3), whose lower curtain wall follows closely the plan of the inner; it is plain, without towers, except for those of the two gatehouses, on the eastern and western sides opposite the inner gatehouse. The inner bailey (4) is of the usual rectangular form (c. 200 by 150 feet) with boldly projecting corner-towers and two twin-towered gatehouses in the east and west wall. In front of the western entrance is another large outwork in the form of an island called Hornwork (5), with a curtain wall, covering the western approach. All in all Caerphilly, with its concentric inner castle, its two great outworks and its water defense, is a formidable fortress.
Could not support each other. That was solved by the introduction of flanking towers and concentric walls. The inner enclosure had the highest walls, dominating the outer lower walls around it. This enabled the inner, higher defenders to command, or fire over the heads of their comrades deployed on the outer lower enceinte, so creating sophisticated killing-grounds for the attackers. Thus both enceintes could be simultaneously in action, and a combined instead of successive defense faced assailants. The concentric castle was invented in the Middle East, and brought back to Western Europe by returning crusaders. One of the earliest examples of this new concentric design was Belvoir Castle, built north of Jerusalem in Galilee in the Jordan Valley in Palestine about 1168, and rebuilt in the 1170s by the Knights of the Hospital. It has been argued that the concentric design originated from the military/religious lifestyle; the interior courtyard (a sort of religious sanctuary) would have been restricted to the warrior-monks, and the outer courtyard would have been left for use by secular knights and mercenaries employed and hired by the brethrens. Alternatively it has been argued that the concentric design evolved in order to meet new developments in siege techniques used by the Muslims in Palestine. Other historians point out that the crusaders simply took on Byzantine military architecture, hence the similarities between the concentric castle and the fortifications of Constantinople, for example. Anyway, as we have just seen, the concentric design presented obvious military advantages.
One of the earliest concentric castles in Britain was Caerphilly, built in the 1270s by order of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester.
Appearance
A castle had to be militarily strong, of course, but by the 13th century, attention was also paid to its appearance. Kings and lords of that period stressed that castles not only had to look impressive, but had to be beautiful as well. Walls, towers, and gatehouses had to be strong, thick and high, but buildings, particularly the great hall offered a degree of comfort that made a striking contrast with the gloomy early Norman keeps. Refinements became elaborate, with, for example, magnificent stairways rising up to the main doorway, tall and delicately carved chimneys rising above roofs and battlements, beautiful painting and decorations on the interior walls, tapestries and stands of arms adorning the stateroom, and banners hanging from finely carved windows. Towards the end of the 12th century leaded glass for windows became available, giving the builders opportunities to allow more light and air inside the building and create refined decorations. Engineering skill had greatly increased and builders had come to a proper understanding of the thrusts set up inside a structure based on arches, resulting in elegant vaulting in the inner chambers. Stonecutting was by then improved beyond all recognition, and alternating courses of stone, smooth ashlar and brick produced a striped effect and decorative patterns, which enhanced the beauty of the walls. Sculpture, too, had made enormous advances and capitals on top of elegant columns became deeply undercut with beautiful
Above: Gothic decorations. Left: Window; Right: Capital on column.
Opposite left: Crossbow man. The crossbow or arbalest, although known since antiquity, appeared as a weapon of war in Western Europe only in the late 11th century. It consisted of a short but strong bow mounted on a stock, with a groove cut along it to guide the quarrel or bolt (short arrow). A pivoting nut held by a trigger-catch kept the drawn string back. Various systems were invented to span it. The illustration shows the man using the leverage exerted with an iron crow’s foot, which helped pull back the string of the powerful stave. The crossbow was slow to bend (a skilled arbalestier could shoot two bolts per minute) and thus had a slow rate of fire, but it was a powerful weapon capable of piercing a knight’s body armor at a range between 150 and 200 yards. Held up and aimed very much like a rifle, the crossbow’s compactness enabled it to be fired easily from behind defensive walls. The Church considered it too deadly a weapon and so repeatedly banned its use (in 1097,1099 and 1139), but to no avail. Mercenary crossbowmen, usually from Gascony, France, were employed by the Plantagenet kings in most of the Welsh and Scottish campaigns. The crossbow continued to be employed as a weapon of war until the 16th century, when it was replaced with the matchlock musket.
Opposite right: Gothic chimney. This tall octagonal chimney still to be seen on the great hall of Grosmont Castle (Monmouthshire) rises from a delicately molded base and terminates in a truncated spirelet sumounted by a crown. The base of the spirelet is surrounded by a series of gablets, one for each side of the octagon, and beneath these are trefoiled lancet openings to allow the smoke to escape.
Representations and elaborate stone patterns. Builders and artists were no longer, as the Normans were, so interested in mass and thickness, but liked to create a feeling of spaciousness by allowing the eye to travel past objects in the immediate foreground and glimpse possibilities of further spaces beyond. Inside the castle the internal layout was designed to emphasize the prestige, power and authority of the lord, to impress, ravish and subdue visitors. These remarkable achievements were eventually derisively termed “Gothic” by the classicists of the 18th century, implying barbarity. It is difficult to imagine a more inappropriate word with which to describe the great engineering feats of the Middle Ages, but the name has stuck, and, having lost all its original meaning, it is now used quite without any intention of disparagement.
World History
