Lesser landholders seldom had the resources or the need to build castles, but they often had to fortify their homes. The manor house was the local economic, residential, and administrative center and might be given the honorific title of “castle.” Stokesay Castle is a well-preserved example of the fortified manor house. Today, in a reversal of the usual castle ruins where we find outer walls but an empty bailey, the inner buildings still stand at Stokesay while the defensive walls are gone and the moat is dry. An Elizabethan gatehouse has replaced the original entryway. Laurence of Ludlow inherited the manor and acquired a “license to crenellate” from Edward I in 1290. He added a curtain wall, moat, and a tower with a turret at each end of an already existing hall. The hall has large windows and a chamber at each end.
Another kind of defensible country home characterizes Scotland and other border regions. Beginning in the fourteenth century, local lords on both sides of the English-Scottish border built residential towers set in a walled yard called a barmkyn. The buildings are rectangular or Z-shaped in plan and have three or four stories joined by a spiral staircase. The top of the tower was crowned by battlements and turrets. Like the Norman tower, these tower houses used the first floor for storage and had their principal hall on the second or even the third floor. The hall was the seat of local justice. One or two projecting wings might be built to add additional space for living rooms, giving the tower a distinctive Z-shaped plan. Larger windows, fireplaces, and garderobes were added to rooms on the third and fourth levels. The top of the building could be quite elaborate and have two levels of battlements, with machicolations and turrets corbelled out over the walls. The door was protected by an iron grille called a yet. These tower houses were still being built in the seventeenth century.
The Fortified City
While not strictly castles, fortified towns gained in importance until they approached the strength—and appearance—of castles. Some towns that grew up near monasteries or castles, at trade and transportation centers, required increasingly sophisticated defenses. At first, low walls and gates distinguished a town, with its royal privileges, from the countryside, which lay under the control of the local lord. Town gates, locked at night, kept out strangers. By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries a town like Carcassonne in southern France had walls, towers, and battlements that could rival a castle.
Ramparts of the old city at Carcassonne, France. The fortress was considered impregnable until it was conquered by the army of Simon de Montfort IV in 1209. (iStockphoto)
Within the city walls, people with the same interests and occupations lived together in small districts. Twisting streets and alleys led to a few public squares. Sanitation was minimal and depended on rain. Public services and safety were nonexistent. Tradespeople combined workshop, sales room, and living quarters in a single building that stood three or four stories high with brick or timber walls and thatched roof. Fire was a constant hazard. In short, life was hard and dangerous but stimulating. The energetic and creative people found their way to the towns and cities, leaving the more conservative to live as peasants working the land and living in feudal villages.
World History
