Castles

“ There is a bleak stern look about this country as a whole, but here and there stand castles, or lie low the ruins of castles, in many a chosen place of beauty; for harsh as were these lords, and devastating as were their deeds, life must have had its moments of wonder and of delight. ”

“ There are castles with windows and doors, pointed arches, a very orgy of natural architecture in which every style is represented. We pass through narrow rifts into which the sun never penetrates, arrive by long galleries at culs-de-sac, and are forced to retrace our steps. ”

“ The castles are there to-day to tell the tale, and some years ago before the war I travelled along 300 miles of that coast in a hammock borne on men's heads, and again and again as we moved along, our pace regulated by that of the slowest carrier who bore my goods upon his head, there loomed up before us either on a jutting headland, or at the head of some shallow bay, the grey and massive walls of some long-forgotten Castle. ”

“ At times the blue breaks through the clouds, and then the pictures are surpassingly lovely. The castles in their sorrowful majesty are very imposing: they are generally built of stone, are of fine architectural design, and are frequently the centre of charming old gardens, or are embowered in trees and shrubbery. Here they stand year after year, looking down upon the ever youthful river. Some of them are occupied, while others are desolate ruins. ”

“ The tall frowning keep and solid walls of the great stone castles, in which the Norman barons lived, betokened an age of violence and suspicion. Beauty gave way to the needs of safety. Girdled with its green and slimy ditch, round the inner edge of which ran a parapeted wall pierced along the top with shot holes, stood the buildings, spreading often over many acres. ”

“ The site of the castle is admirable. My approach was to the western extremity; which, as you look down, brings the village and church of Arques in the back ground. If the eye were to be considered as a correct judge, this venerable pile, composed of hard flint-stone, intermixed with brick, would perhaps claim precedence, on the score of antiquity, over most of the castles of the middle ages. A deep moat, now dry pasture land, with a bold acclivity before you, should seem to bid defiance, even in times of old, to the foot and the spear of the invader. ”

“ The air is pure and exhilarating. The city, with its many historical domes, spires, castles, and turrets, is seen to advantage here. As you stand beneath the thick, strong walls, supporting for ages these grand old castles of such great antiquity, you can but wonder if they are capable of carrying these vaulted roofs for generations yet to come. ”

“ Their castles themselves are but green mounds and shattered ruins: the place that once knew them, knows them no more—nay, many a race since theirs has died out and been forgotten in the very land which they occupied with all the authority of feudal proprietors and feudal lords. ”

“ I have always denied that the chief merit of a castle consists in its being haunted, and the simple-minded people who inhabit this old England of ours look to the circumstance of their houses being comfortable to live in, free from draughts and bad smells, large enough to entertain their friends, and possessed of good kitchen arrangements, rather than to their being the residence of any supernatural beings such as those of which you and your castles appear to be so proud. ”

“ The castles of the greater barons, reared in a rude but grand style of architecture, full of dark and winding passages, of secret apartments, of long uninhabited galleries, and of chambers supposed to be haunted with spirits, and undermined by subterraneous labyrinths as places of retreat in extreme danger ”

“ This was in all probability the acme of the great days of our castle–the grandest and most distinguished times these old Gothic walls ever knew. What gay hunting cavalcades, alight with sweet ladies' faces, their smiles and voices the wonder of northern ears and eyes, must have issued from these gates in the golden dawns of those years to Inglewood or otherwhere. And what great fires must have roared, that holy Christmas time, on the open hearths of the royal tower and apartments of this comely castle–a king and queen eating their brawn and plumb porridge in its then glowing chambers. ”

“ Such a castle is not merely a social arrangement, it is a political institution of the highest importance. Where such castles exist, we are certain to hear of some of them, sooner or later, in the pages of history. ”

“ You may smile at the fanciful structures I rear,
And say, that my castles are built but on sand;
Like bubbles, that on the blue waters appear,
That sparkle, invite, and then sink from the hand. ”

“ Build their castles fair to see.
"When I grow to be a man"
(So the wee one's prattle ran) ,
⁠"I shall build a castle so—
⁠With a gateway broad and grand;
⁠Here a pretty vine shall grow,
⁠There a soldier guard shall stand ”

“ In a corner of the demesne there are standing the remains of one of those strong, square, ugly castles, which, two centuries since, were the real habitations of the landed proprietors of the country, and many of which have been inhabited even to a much later date. ”

“ Here and there we find old castles serving as forts d’arrêt or block-houses in mountain passes and defiles, and in some few cases, as at Dover, they formed the nucleus of purely military places of arms, but normally the castle falls into ruins, becomes a peaceful mansion, or is merged in the fortifications of the town which has grown up around it. ”

“ When I could not sleep for the cold,
I had fire enough in my brain,
And builded, with roofs of gold,
My beautiful castles in Spain! ”

“ When the surrender, or the turning over, of the castle took place, all the population, including women and children, marched en masse upon the structure, and wall by wall and stone by stone dismantled it, leaving it in the condition one sees it to-day. A castle of sorts still exists, but it is a mere wraith of its former self. ”

“ Although there can be no doubt that private castles had become extremely common on the mainland of Western Europe before the end of the 10th century, it is more difficult than is generally supposed to trace their first appearance. Historians, even those of great repute, have been somewhat careless in translating the words castrum or castellum as castle or château, and taking them in the sense of the feudal or private castle. ”

“ In the East you know things have happened; remnants remain, ruined castles testify; in the West it is as though they had not happened, those far historic things; castles are heaps of blackened or crumbled stone ”

“ The aspect of the chateau to-day, declassed though it is, is most picturesque. It is the very ideal of a riverside castle, for it bears the proud profile of a fortress of no mean pretensions even now, far more than it does that of a luxurious dwelling or a banal factory. It is one of those structures one loves to know intimately, and not ignore just because it has become a commoner among the noble chateaux of history. ”

“ To pass again to different classes of building, the Mediæval castles, though belonging to a class which the altered modes of warfare have rendered obsolete, are in their degree as noble and as thoroughly suited to their purpose as the sacred structures. ”

“ The castle of my fathers is strangely incrusted into an excavation in a wall of basalt 500 feet high. The base of this wall, with that face to face with it, identically the same rock, forms a narrow and sinuous valley, through which winds and leaps an inoffensive torrent in impetuous cascades. The Château de la Roche is a nest of troglodytes, inasmuch as the whole flank of the rock we occupy is riddled with holes and irregular chambers which tradition points out as the residence of ancient savages, and which antiquaries do not hesitate to attribute to a prehistoric people. ”

“ In the pages of Flodoard or Ademar the action constantly turns on the building, besieging, and burning of castles, which by whatever name they are called, have every appearance of being private castles. In fact before we get to the end of the century, the private castle is as much the leading feature of the drama as it is in the 11th or 12th centuries. ”

“ Many of these castles and towers, though built originally hundreds of years ago, are still kept in repair and inhabited, some being used as the summer residences of princes, or of private men of fortune, and others, being armed with cannon and garrisoned with soldiers, are held as strongholds by the kings, or dukes, or electors, in whose dominions they lie. ”

“ Much is said in regard to "building castles in the air," and one who is given to this building is not always looked upon with favor. But castles in the air are always necessary before we can have castles on the ground, before we can have castles in which to live. ”

“ Leaving to wits the spacious air, With license to build castles there: In right whereof their old pretence To lodge in garrets comes from thence. ”

“ Castles in the air—they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build, too— [looks scornfully at him] —especially for the builders who have a—a dizzy conscience. ”

“ And it was nothing more. "
many of us in this old city of Carlisle are apt, we fear, to look upon our ancient castle simply as a castle, and nothing more; either forgetful or uninformed of all its strange brave histories, and its equally strange and striking perils and pageantries and long silenced sorrows. In these days we read so much history that its truth—its vivid living realities almost escape us: we do not hear the rush and push and struggle of the brave, or see the tears and terrors which in far off homes, or subsequently, in nearer dungeons, were often their tragic accompaniment. ”

“ The castle of my fathers is planted high up on a ledge of rock, but so that the conical roofs of the tower just reach above the level of the plain. My mother having poor health, and having no other place to walk save one tiny platform before the castle on the edge of the abyss, took it into her head to create for herself a garden at the summit of the crag on which we were perched midway. ”

“ The castle itself has no castleated roof, nor any of the usual features of the real Gothic castle, but is a large handsome massive structure, in the modern style of architecture, surmounted by a well-executed collosal lion, which gives an air of princely beauty to the whole building. Fronting the castle is a fine flowing lawn, which gently descending effectively sets off its stately proportions, and being plain, is in excellent keeping with them. ”

“ Those that with castle and town occupied a rock. The fastnesses of the routiers, the Companies in the Hundred Years' War. Outpost stations guarding fords, roads into a town, and passes into a country. And I shall begin with No. 3—The Castles of the routiers.
The face of a country is like that of a woman. It tells the story of its past. The many-windowed English mansion sleeping among turfy lawns to the plash of a fountain, and the cawing of rooks in the beechwood, tell of a tranquil past life-record broken only by transient unrest ”

“ It would be worth much now to many to annihilate the intervening years, and catch but for one brief minute the look and tone that pierced the hearts of that grotesque auditory on that special day in this castle court. So plain a man and yet so powerful, so courageous and yet so humble he rises on the imagination ”

“ The pigeons coo about the English gables and the peacock dreams in the sun on the balustrade of the terrace, as in past centuries, but the castle of the French noble and the burg of the German ritter are given over to the bats and owls, and are quarries whence the peasants pick out the heraldic carvings for the construction of their pig-styes.
Nowhere did tears so stain and furrow the face of the land as in that portion of France that was ceded to England. ”

“ Sir Walter Scott said that "There are few cities in England which have been the scene of more momentous and more interesting events than Carlisle;" and what is true of the city is true also of the castle, whose history is in reality the history of the city, and which has ample claim in comparison with all other castles in England to all that is stated in this assertion. ”

“ Then, when they had thus passed the day in building castles in the air, they separated their flocks, and descended from the elevation of their dreams to the reality of their humble position. ”

“ There is no advance to be seen in this keep on those of Henry I., except that the walls are faced with ashlar. The vaulting of the basement is pronounced by Mr Clark to be very evidently a late insertion. [1163]
With the reign of Henry II. a new era opens as regards the documentary history of our ancient castles, because the Pipe Rolls of that king’s reign have most fortunately been preserved. [1164] These contain the sheriff’s accounts for money spent on the building or repair of the king’s castles, and are simply invaluable for the history of castle architecture. ”

“ The writer hopes that such fuller statement of the case as is here attempted may help not only to a right ascription of British castle-mounds, and of the stone castles built upon many of them, but may also furnish material to the historian who seeks to trace the progress of the Norman occupation.
Students of the architecture of castles are aware that this subject presents much more difficult questions than does the architecture of churches. Those who are seriously working on castle architecture are very few in number, and are as yet little known to the world at [Pg x] large. ”

“ It will clear the ground greatly if it is recognised at the outset that these earthworks are castles, in the usual sense of the word; that is, the private fortified residences of great landowners. It was the chief merit of Mr G. T. Clark’s work on Mediæval Military Architecture, that he showed the perfect correspondence in plan of these earthen and timber structures with the stone castles which immediately succeeded them, so that it was only necessary to add a stone tower and stone walls to these works to convert them into a Norman castle of the popularly accepted type. ”