Rochester Castle

“ Happily such a circumstance could not now take place, for, by the present excellent regulations of the Corporation of the city of Rochester, every visitor can explore the Castle and grounds to his heart's content.
On arriving at either railway station, Strood or Rochester Bridge, the Castle is the first object to claim attention. Our attention is constantly directed to it during our stay in the pleasant city; it is a landmark when we are on the tramp; and it is the last object to fade from our view as we regretfully take our departure. ”

“ The White Tower in London has been so often repaired and refaced that it is difficult to be sure of its original masonry. Part of the curtain of the enceinte of Rochester Castle may also be Gundulph’s work. The north wall looks very early, as does the east wall, which is of excellent though rudely coursed rubble, the stones being large and the joints broad, though there are no layers of flat stones as at St. Leonard’s.
Rochester much resembles Hedingham, a very pure and very perfect Norman keep, with three floors, the remains of a forebuilding, and the upper gallery in the main floor. ”

“ The ground plan is nearly a square, and the building, in its general appearance, bears a great resemblance to Rochester Castle, which was erected according to the designs of Bishop Gundulph—the architect of the White Tower in the Tower of London—in the early part of the reign of William Rufus. The walls of the keep of Dover Castle are from eighteen to twenty feet thick, and are traversed by galleries communicating with the principal apartments. ”

“ The windows are so battered, that no idea can be formed of their original style. The walls of the keep are filled with small square apertures. At Rochester, and at many other castles in England, we observe the same; and unless you can give a better guess respecting their use, you must content yourself with mine: that is to say, that they are merely the holes left by the scaffolding. At the foot of the hill to the west is a gate-house, by no means ancient, from which a wall ascends to the castle; and another similar wall connects the fortress with the ground below, on the north-eastern side ”

“ Proceeding down the Medway, it flows past the city of Rochester, the river being crowded with vessels and crossed here by a bridge with a swinging draw. Rochester has a fine old cathedral, rather dilapidated, and in part restored, but its chief attraction is the castle towering above the river, its Norman keep forming a tower over seventy feet square and rising one hundred feet high, its masonry disclosing vast strength and impressive massiveness. Cobham Hall, the residence of Earl Darnley, is near Rochester, standing in a nobly wooded [Pg 480] park seven miles in circumference. ”

“ Rochester consists of little more than one long street, stretching away from the castle and the river toward neighbouring Chatham, and edged with low brick houses, of intensely provincial aspect, most of which have some small, dull quaintness of gable or window. Nearly opposite to the shop of the old lady with the dissentient husband is a little dwelling with an inscribed slab set into its face, which must often have provoked a smile in the great master of laughter. ”

“ Would we sacrifice our great end for what we had intended to be but a means to it? ‘Let us,’ I said humbly, ‘try to keep our wits from wool-gathering again, lest we ride through Rochester and Canterbury without knowing it!’ We collected our thoughts in good time; for, lo! as mine host said to the monk, Rochester stands there hard by. Before many minutes we saw in the distance the town of Strood, and beyond it the broad Medway and Rochester, its castle and cathedral towering above the houses clustering about them. ”

“ We thought of the Englishman at Paris, who maintained ‘que parler c’étoit gâter la conversation.’ After visiting the Lancasterian school I mentioned,—where one person teaches sixty girls, some of whom come from the remotest parts of Lord D——’s estate, many miles, daily—I rode to Rochester to see the fine ruin of the old castle. What has not been destroyed by violence stands like a rock, from the time of William the Conqueror. The remains of the eating-hall, with its colossal pillars united by richly ornamented Saxon arches, are singularly fine. ”

“ I have seen many a mouldering castle, but I remember no single mass of ruin more impressive than this towering square of Rochester.
It is not the absence of a close that damages Canterbury; the cathedral stands amid grass and trees, with a great garden sweep all round it, and is placed in such a way that, as you pass out from under the gate-house, you appreciate immediately its grand feature—its extraordinary and magnificent length. None of the English cathedrals seems more beautifully isolated, more shut up to itself. ”

“ Rochester was master of the revels, and the Countesses of —— but I will say nothing about the ladies, although some of the highest of our aristocracy are descended from them. There were great preparations in the castle, for King Charles had invited down the Mayor of London, and a bevy of aldermen; not so much with a view of doing honour to the magistrates of the great and ancient city, as with the hope to extract some amusement from their peculiarities. ”

“ It is a rather dirty and poorly built town, and, for a thing unusual, it has many old wooden buildings. On one side all the works are shut in by strong fortifications. Forts Pitt and Clarence are on the Brompton side, and on the Rochester side are Fort Gillingham and Upnor Castle, which is now used as a menagerie. The walk on the Rochester side and along the river, and used as an approach to the park at the base of the rock, is a very fine one, and has on it an ancient stone balustrade, perhaps once used as a parapet for the bridge. ”

“ At the east gate the arch is full centred, of 14 feet opening, without chamfer or rebate, or ornament of any kind. Probably there is a portcullis groove, but if so it is blocked up and completely concealed by the woodwork of the modern doors. It is certain that the main entrance of a Norman castle could never have been so constructed that there should be no rebate against which the door should be pressed when closed, and probably the fitting was composed of a ring of stones inserted, as in the doorway in the cross-wall of Rochester keep, without bond, into the exterior arch. ”

“ Rochester is built upon a low cape or promontory formed by a grand bend of the Medway, the central part of which is occupied by the city, and the most prominent and northern point by the castle. The great Roman way from Canterbury to London traversed the length of the cape, and crossed the river near its apex, in the line of the ancient and nearly of the present bridge.
The position of the fortress is very noble. ”

“ After the siege of Rochester by William Rufus in 1088, Gundulf had built a stone wall round the new castle of Rochester. This probably moved the King to enclose the Tower of London with a similar wall, for the Saxon Chronicle tells us that in 1091 "a stone wall was being wrought about the Tower, a stone bridge across the Thames was being built, and a great hall was being erected at Westminster, whereby the citizens of London were grievously oppressed." ”

“ To-morrow we shall take the road for Rochester; and most like it were well to see what Sir John Newton in the castle may say to us: for the man is no ill man, and hath a tongue well-shapen for words; and it were well that we had him out of the castle and away with us, and that we put a word in his mouth to say to the King. And wot ye well, good fellows, that by then we come to Rochester we shall be a goodly company, and ere we come to Blackheath a very great company ”

“ Inside, the recess was splayed, and sometimes descended to the floor level, while in the jambs were door-openings into mural chambers. Some of these castle halls must have been noble rooms. Where there was a cross wall, as at Rochester, Norham, and Middleham, there were two rooms; at Kenilworth the large open space was probably subdivided by a brattice. Usually, in the larger castles, the wall of the main floor is pierced, high up, by a sort of triforium gallery, into which the outer windows open, and which opens into the chamber by lofty and larger arches of 3 feet to 4 feet opening. ”

“ Gundulph built the keep of the castle in London called the White Tower, and the cathedral of Rochester, of which we have a part of the crypt, and some remains of the wall of the nave and north transept. The whole of this work is extremely rude; the construction is usually rubble. When of ashlar, the joints are very wide, and the capitals of the shafts clumsy. ”

“ Finally, although the stern necessities of war did not admit of the banded shafts, lofty vault, or woven window-tracery of Tintern, or Fountains, or many a less distinguished church, the ornamentation of the richer castles, as Dover, Rochester, Hedingham, Newcastle, Knaresborough, Castle Rising, and Coningsborough, is marked by a chastened fitness peculiar to such works; and of the ruder and less ornate castles, the ruins of very many present a savage grandeur which few who have visited Caerphilly, Harlech, or Scarborough, can fail to appreciate ”

“ The first thing told us is that each of the head conspirators “went to his castle, and manned it and victualled it.” Then Bishop Geoffrey makes Bristol Castle the base of a series of plundering raids. Bishop Wulfstan, on the other hand, aids the cause of William by preventing an attempt of the rebels on the castle of Worcester. Roger Bigod throws himself into Norwich Castle, and harries the shire; Bishop Odo brings the plunder of Kent into his castle of Rochester. Finally the king’s cause wins the day through the taking of the castles of Tonbridge, Pevensey, Rochester, and Durham. ”

“ But they, meaning no hurt, had reason to expect none; and therefore the invasion after Michaelmas fell suddenly upon them like a tempest, or Hugh de Boves’s storm. And being wholly unprovided to resist such an inundation as this, they thought the best way to put some stop to it, would be by presently throwing in a good garrison into the castle of Rochester, that the King might not come immediately to besiege London. Accordingly they made choice of William d’Albinet who was just come from his own castle, and a noble band of seven-score knights with their retinue for this service. ”

“ The English having made themselves masters of La Rochelle, the inhabitants of that important city did not endure the yoke without impatience. They were only restrained by their fear of the military who garrisoned the castle, which dominated over both the port and the city. Jean Candorier, mayor of La Rochelle, proposed gaining possession of it by a stratagem. “We shall easily do so, and to our honour,” said he, “for Philip Monsel (the English commander) is not over cunning.” ”

“ There are in the street facing the cathedral the ruins of a much more ancient castle; a proper feudal fortress belonging to the Earls of Orkney, but called the King's Castle. It appears to have been very strong, being situated near the harbor, and having, as appears from the fragments, very massive walls. While the wicked Earl Patrick was in confinement, one of his natural sons defended this castle to extremity against the King's troops, and only surrendered when it was nearly a heap of ruins, and then under condition he should not be brought in evidence against his father. ”

“ The forebuilding which covers it is the finest in England. It is in fair preservation, all but its roofs and part of its east wall, which are modern. As at Rochester, it is of masonry inferior to the keep, at least outside, and there is no cordon at the base of its pilasters, but it contains within more ornamental work than the keep, with which it is so intimately connected that it cannot be an addition. In the north-east and south-west angles of the keep are well-staircases remarkably commodious and well lighted. ”

“ Inside, the church is dark and impressive. There are double rows of pillars in the aisles, and a huge crucifix hangs beneath the tower, thrown up darkly against the chancel, which is much painted and gilded. The remains of the great castle consist of nothing more than part of the tall keep, built eight hundred years ago, and fortunately not entirely destroyed when the rest of the castle came down by the order of Cardinal Richelieu. ”

“ Opposite Floors Castle, at the confluence of the Tweed and Teviot is the green tree-clad mound with a few crumbling walls, all that remains of the illustrious Castle of Roxburgh, one of the strongest on the Borders, the birthplace and abode of kings, and parliaments, and mints, and so often a bone of bitter contention between Scots and English. The town itself, the most important on the Middle Marches, has entirely disappeared, its site and environs forming now some of the most fertile fields in the county:
"Roxburgh! ”

“ An arrow shot from a battlement 50 feet or 70 feet high would lose some of its force in the descent. Of the siege of Rochester certain particulars are on record, and the account of the operations of the besiegers is confirmed by the evidence afforded by the existing keep. Rochester keep stands but 10 feet or 12 feet from the south-east angle of the outer wall, the angle of the keep corresponding with that of the wall. The angle of the wall and part of the adjacent curtain have evidently been removed and rebuilt, with the capping tower, in a later style. ”