George Thomas Clark

“ The Keep is the glory of Conisborough, and though inferior in size to Cæsar’s or Beauchamp’s Tower at Warwick, is more than their equal in its masonry, and more complete, inasmuch as it is a keep, and those are subsidiary towers. It stands nearly at the north-east extremity, and at the highest part of the inner ward, actually upon the line of the curtain, of which two of its buttresses and the intermediate wall form a part. It is constantly described as standing upon an artificial mound, which is certainly not the case. Indeed, no artificial mound could bear so concentrated a weight. ”

“ No such thing is known to exist as an original design or a working drawing of a Norman or even an Edwardian castle. In ecclesiastical researches, from the known uniformity of the arrangements, this want is scarcely felt, but the plan and details of a castle vary with the disposition of the ground or the caprice of the builder, and although a hall, a kitchen, a chapel, a well, and a barrack are indispensable features in a castle, these parts have nothing of the regularity of position of a nave or choir, a cloister, a chapter-house, or a refectory. ”

“ Every part of England, much of Scotland, and the accessible parts of the Welsh border, were covered with strong places, which were, no doubt, defended, and well defended, with palisades, as more suitable to made ground than work in masonry such as was more or less in use for ecclesiastical purposes. If, at the Conquest, no English stronghold held out, it was not that such places were less capable of defence than those in Normandy, but that England was broken up into parties. ”

“ The flues appeared above the roof, and three large and highly-crocketed pinnacles were placed astride on the crest of the wall. The stone vault of the upper chamber was covered with lead, with occasional gutter openings outwards.
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Nothing can be grander than the conception of this tower, nothing more complete than the execution of its details. All is gigantesque, as though for a race above the ordinary stature of man, and the walls within were overlaid with a fine cement, and painted with care. The design of the sculpture is bold and masculine, as becomes a military building ”

“ The possessor of a strong castle was ever ready for rebellion, and was not uncommonly a tyrant even to his own people, of whom this made him independent: hence, castles properly so called,—buildings in masonry,—were hated by both king and people. The old-fashioned residence, half mansion, half fortress, formed of earth and timber or at best of a rude kind of masonry, such as Scott more by intuition than inquiry attributes to the Saxon Cedric, was strong when held by brave men in sufficient numbers for a short time ”

“ Even if the place were surprised and entered, each of the three towers, and the platform of the hall, admitted of being defended for a few hours, until aid had been signalled for, and sent from Cardiff. No doubt, before brave men, all defences fail; and the Welsh, who certainly were not wanting in courage, did, according to tradition, more than once take this castle, probably by surprise and escalade; nevertheless, it was a very strong fortress, both by nature and art, and must have been a sore thorn in the side of the mountaineers of Glamorgan. ”

“ The castle stands upon the southern extremity of the high ground. A few yards to its north is the parish church with its detached tower, and again a little to the north is the town, which has grown up under the protection of its lordly neighbour. A deep and wholly artificial ditch intervenes between the churchyard and the castle, crossing the high ground, and cutting off and isolating the latter, of which it protects the northern and western faces. These, to the south and east, are made secure by the natural declivity, scarped and rendered steeper by art. ”

“ Massive as is the rectangular keep, simple, uncompromising, and warlike its features, still, even when seen to its greatest advantage, as on the promontory of Dover or the bold impregnable rock of Bamburgh, it must be confessed to be inferior in grandeur and in completeness of outline to the stern round tower of other days, identified as it is with the early residences of the adventurous Northmen who laid the foundations of the English people. ”

“ This chapel is now destroyed to its foundations. It opened from the great hall.
The keep, or great tower, is the boast of Coucy, and deservedly so, being one of the finest towers in the world, and no doubt the largest and most complete single military building.
It is a plain tower, perfectly cylindrical, of excellent ashlar workmanship, 100 feet diameter at base and summit, and 200 feet high. It rises out of a paved moat, the base being about 12 feet below the level of the terre-plein, and is entered by a drawbridge from the level, all below being solid. ”

“ The meadows out of which the castle hill rises, being but little above the adjacent Severn, were formerly an extensive and almost impassable morass, adding much to the strength of the place. Under the skill and labour of centuries, they have become grass-lands of great beauty and fertility, and form a charming foreground to the castle. Beyond, are elms and oaks often of great magnitude, disposed in frequent hedgerows, and in the distance to the west are the Welsh mountains, and to the east the nearer scarp of the Cotteswold, here and there covered with thriving plantations. ”

“ In the north curtain is a half-round mural tower with four loops, and of one story, open at the gorge. The water-table of a double-gable roof is seen within, and the central gutter projects as a spout outside. Further on is a blocked-up arch, probably an early postern, and, still further, the seat and drain of a large garderobe, beneath an arch in the wall, 8 feet broad. Above is a plain corbel, hollowed to receive the wall-plate of a roof, and no doubt one of a series. The country people call it the gallows. ”

“ But the castle of stone was held by a stranger whose language, arms, and armour were strange to the people, and by them feared and hated. The Norman castle was a purely military building. It was not only strong when well garrisoned, but its passive strength was also great; and when the bridge was up and the gates closed it was at all times safe against an enemy unprovided with military engines. Fire, the ordinary and ready weapon of the populace, against such a wall, for example, as Cardiff (40 feet high and 11 feet thick) , or against such a Tower as London, could do nothing. ”

“ To the student of military architecture, or of the art of the defence of strong places before the introduction of gunpowder, the ground-plans of defensive works and the details of castellated architecture of every period are interesting; sometimes they are to be admired for the grandeur of their earthworks or the enormous strength of their walls; sometimes for their happily-selected site and the skilful disposition of their arrangements for a flanking defence; or, as at Arques, Dover,5 Sarum, and Windsor, for their subterranean outlets and countermines. ”

“ The last, or south-eastern, is the celebrated leaning tower, the obliquity of which has been much exaggerated, and absurdly accounted for. In the case of this tower the mine has exploded in a contrary direction from the rest, and the inner portion, with the adjoining curtain, has been thrown into the court, while the outer portion remains standing, although the force of the explosion has thrown the mass out of the perpendicular, so that it overhangs its base, towards the south-west, nine feet. The parapet at its summit remains quite perfect, and is the only one in the castle that is so. ”

“ The remains of the castle of Huntingdon, though reduced to banks, ditches, and a mound, nevertheless show how spacious and how strong must have been this chief seat of the broad earldom of Countess Judith and her descendants the kings of Scotland, earls also of Huntingdon. The Danes were encamped here in 921, and the burh which had been ruined was restored by Eadward in the same year. The ditches were fed from the Ouse, which expanded before the castle as a broad marsh, now a fertile meadow. ”

“ The outer and eastern moat, now of no great depth, is still marshy. At its northern end the sides are cultivated; towards the southern, cottages are built in it. Between these two portions, north of the pier, is the modern entrance, passing through the water gate, now a battered hole 11 feet wide: near it a door has been opened into a sort of cavity below the lower story of the gatehouse, used as a cart hovel. The foundations of the southern curtain, being in the moat, are tolerably perfect. Those of the northern, elevated upon a bank of earth, are much battered. ”

“ Upon Earl Roger’s fall, Clitheroe came to the Lacys. The great castle of Lancashire is at Lancaster, well placed high above the broad water of the Lune, and within the area of a Roman castrum, whence it derives its name. Here, as at Carlisle, the railway is so laid out as to show the castle to great advantage. The castle is attributed to Roger of Poitou, but the Norman keep, a grand structure, ninety feet high, appears somewhat later, as is the Edwardian gateway, also a superb specimen of military architecture. Unfortunately, being a prison, the whole is closed against antiquarian visitors. ”

“ The mine has been sprung near the centre of each tower, and has produced effects, differing in degree only, upon each. That on the north-east is altogether levelled, on the outside, entirely to the ground, crushing in its descent the very bastion on which its foundation rested—on the inside, the door and a portion of wall, as high as the curtain, only remain. The destruction of the north-western tower has not been by any means so complete. Only a third of its outer circumference has fallen, and the rest, deprived indeed of its floors, remains as firm as ever. ”

“ The first characteristic of a concentric castle is the arrangement of its lines of defence, one within the other, two or even three deep, with towers at the angles and along the walls, so planned that no part is left entirely to its own defences. A wall cannot be advantageously defended unless so arranged that the exterior base of one part can be seen and commanded from the summit of another. A Norman keep or an Early English round tower could only be defended by the159 projection of missiles from the battlements, exposing those who discharged almost as much as those who received them. ”

“ To go back to the sixth century, when the West Saxons, starting from the coast of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, pressed hard upon the Britons, many indications still show how firm was the resistance, so long as the ground was favourable; but, when once fairly driven over the crest of the Cotteswold, the Britons evidently retired more rapidly across the open country, nor is it until the commencement of the high ground is reached, that we find works which abundantly show how fierce was the struggle, how close and persistent the attack. ”

“ Conisborough Castle deserves a better fate than has of late years452 attended it, or than seems likely to attend it. Its position upon one of the most celebrated of the Yorkshire streams, its grand natural mount, and the striking character of the earthworks by which it is defended, are quite enough to attract public attention; but in addition it has an undoubted though obscure Saxon history, and from the Norman Conquest it was for three centuries or more the residence of a very powerful race of barons, the evidences of whose power and wealth are preserved in the ruins of their fortress. ”

“ On the whole, for whatever purpose the western pier may have been intended, the evidence is in favour of the approach having always been along the present line. Neither the north nor the west bank is commanded seriously by higher ground. That to the north rises, no doubt, but scarcely so as to give any great advantage to archers posted to annoy those entering the castle, and certainly no greater advantage than could be gained from the rising ground to the west. Possibly the pier was intended for the mooring and protection of the boats employed on that side of the moat. ”

“ In the inner ward the devastation has been severe. Of the keep, all the north and two-thirds of the adjacent west wall lie in enormous masses on the sward, and in their fall have utterly crushed the gateways of the ward and their adjacent curtain. The east wall is destroyed at its two ends, but a strip of the central part remains unhurt to its summit, a marvel of Norman masonry, and is completely shrouded in ivy. The south wall and garderobe tower are but little injured. The staircase tower is destroyed, all but a part of the north wall. ”

“ Towards the river, and westwards towards the town bridge about a furlong above the castle, the ground is perfectly flat, and under cultivation as a garden; but, on the north and north-east it is rather higher, and here are traces of a ditch at the foot of, and concentric with, the mound, and no doubt a part of its defence upon this its weaker side.
The only masonry that can possibly be old is a small rectangular mass on the south side of the mound, and which now carries a modern summer-house. ”

“ At Malling, though there are no mouldings, the first-floor window on one side is the centre of five deep plain full-centred niches in the exterior face, which cannot have been meant for use, and in another face, also outside, are five other niches, all unpierced. Occasionally false arches are turned in the walls, as though a door had been closed up, or the possibility of a new opening provided for. Such are seen at Dover, Norwich, and Guildford. They are thought, but scarcely on good grounds, to be intended to invite an attack where the wall is specially thick. ”

“ Half a mile north of the village a large tract of low land is traversed by the Babingley river, and it is evident that before this part of the country was drained and reclaimed by tillage, the approaches to the village upon at least three sides, the north, west and east, must have been almost impracticable. These considerations probably governed those who chose Rising as a residence. The soil is light and sandy, like that of the Dunes of Holland, but contains just enough of vegetable mould to support a growth of turf. ”