The Medieval English Landscape, 1000-1540 (39 page)

From hereon, there was certainly variety in design: those who commissioned
donjons
, and those who devised and built them, were clearly prepared to experiment and to compete. Around the middle of the thirteenth century, the Earl of Surrey built a rounded structure with four projecting semi-circular turrets at Sandal Castle (Yorkshire); the Earl of Cornwall had a round tower added to the top of the motte at Launceston (Cornwall); and the royal castle at York was provided with ‘Clifford’s Tower’ as a crown for its motte, based on four circles which would have touched had they been extended to the centre. Further cylindrical towers were built on royal initiative during the 1280s at the castles of Cambridge and Hawarden. About 1310, Edward II rebuilt the great tower at Knaresborough to a distinctive design, which made it appear three-sided from outside but rectangular within; in 1348 the Earl of Stafford commissioned a new stone one with octagonal corner turrets for the top of the motte at Stafford Castle; and the Percy Earls of Northumberland followed at the beginning of the fifteenth century with a stone structure on the motte at Warkworth (itself a replacement for a thirteenth-century predecessor of similar design) essentially square but with a polygonal projection on each side. In addition, several thirteenth-century castles in Wales, including the Clare family’s Caerphilly and Edward I’s Harlech and Beaumaris, were built with elaborately constructed gatehouses defended both in front and behind which served effectively both as accommodation and as the principal fortified buildings; the idea was not widely adopted in England, but can be found at Tonbridge (Kent), another Clare property, about 1300, and at Dunstanburgh (Northumberland), where a strong gatehouse originally of around 1320 was similarly remodelled for John of Gaunt during the 1380s.

For all their ostentation, every one of these structures can be considered to have had a serious defensive purpose: that at Sandal for example had an elaborate barbican protecting its entrance, its counterpart at Stafford was described as a ‘castle’ in itself in the building contract of 1348, while Knaresborough was still being regarded in a sixteenth-century government survey as ‘a marvelous hous of strength … strongly fortified with worke and man’s ingyne to abide all assaults’. While siting on top of mottes can be interpreted as a statement of domination, it also rendered great towers such as those at Stafford and York less vulnerable to armed assault. The motte-top tower at Warkworth is a magnificent assertion of authority over the town
below – and the Percies could not resist adorning the side which faced the town with their heraldic device – but they were in too turbulent a part of the country to ignore the need for such defensive measures as splayed bases to the walls and arrow-loops at ground-floor level (
Figure 34
).
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Figure 34: Warkworth (Northumberland) from the Town Bridge
. The late fourteenth-century bridge over the River Coquet leads via a fortified gate tower to a main street of the town, with the great tower of Warkworth Castle dominating the settlement below. This elaborately designed building, an early fifteenth-century remodelling of an earlier structure, occupies the motte of the original castle.

However, there were certainly many other great towers built in medieval English castles which, however formidable they might appear, lack credibility in military terms. These include the D-shaped ‘east tower’ in the curtain wall at Helmsley Castle (Yorkshire) of about 1200, which had two entrances and so undermined its own security; the freestanding rectangular tower built at Whittington (Shropshire) in the 1220s with an undefended ground-floor doorway; the great tower designed as a rectangle with four rounded corner turrets erected at Dudley Castle (Warwickshire) for Roger de Somery in the 1270s, also with an undefended entrance at ground level and of no more than two storeys in height; and Sir John de la Mare’s Nunney Castle (Somerset) some 100 years later, where the tower has a very similar layout to Dudley and provides no defence to the ground-floor entrance other than a drawbridge over the moat. In fairness, all these towers display some concern for military protection, however compromised, but there is no room for argument with the brick-built towers at Tattershall (Lincolnshire) and Caister-by-Yarmouth (Norfolk), both of the 1430s and 1440s for Lord Cromwell and Sir John Falstolf respectively, nor with the gatehouses, also in brick and intended as their castles’ most impressive structures, at Herstmonceux (Sussex) for Henry VI’s treasurer Sir Roger Fiennes and Kirby Muxloe (Leicestershire) for Edward IV’s chamberlain William lord Hastings. Neither these, nor stone-built towers of the period, such as that at Hastings’s other Leicestershire castle at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, had a serious defensive intent: they had wide low-level windows, provided (at best) limited protection to their ground-floor entrances and were built on sites which – other than through the addition of moats in some cases – offered easy access rather than defensive advantage. In these instances, it is abundantly clear that – notwithstanding a display of some of the trappings of militarism – the essential purpose was that of fine residential status symbol.
³⁹

It remains to consider briefly the relationship between these great towers and the mottes which had featured in the immediate post-Conquest period, since both were characteristic of castles designed to focus on a single ‘dominant feature’. There was logic in building a stone tower on top of a pre-existing motte, often as successor to a timber one in the same position, since this preserved the overall configuration of the castle while also taking advantage of the extra height afforded by the motte. Rectangular
donjons
at Norwich, Norham and Okehampton, of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, and polygonal ones at Tickhill and Richard’s Castle, late in the twelfth century, were among those built on top of the mottes of existing motte-and-bailey castles, and as we have seen the elaborate keeps at Clifford’s Tower, York and at Warkworth continued the tradition thereafter.
⁴⁰
However, not every motte was sufficiently stable for this to be attempted. One solution, considered to apply at Berkeley (Gloucestershire) and possibly also at Kenilworth (Warwickshire), both during the twelfth century, was to build a large rectangular tower from the natural ground surface so that it encased the motte within. Another was to erect the structure from the original ground level but into the slope on one side of the motte: this happened at Guildford (Surrey), also in the twelfth century, and at Clun (Shropshire) in the thirteenth.
⁴¹
Apart from this, many
donjons
were built within what previously would have been seen as ringworks, or in brand-new castles where mottes were never considered: the de Vere family’s Hedingham and Henry II’s Scarborough being examples of the former, William d’Aubigny’s two castles in Norfolk at Rising and New Buckenham illustrating the latter.

An alternative means of enhancing the dominant point in a castle, without risking a heavy masonry structure on top of the motte, was to build a ‘shell keep’, an encircling ring of stone around its summit. During the first half of the twelfth century, these were added around several mottes, including those at Arundel, Lincoln and Windsor (Berkshire); examples at Pickering (Yorkshire) and Tamworth followed in later decades, and they continued to be
built occasionally into the thirteenth century, as at both Restormel (Cornwall) and Totnes. The term (which was popularized in the late nineteenth century) is not wholly satisfactory, but some of these ‘shell keeps’ certainly protected residential buildings constructed within them, so in effect fulfilled the same functions as great towers traditionally known as ‘keeps’. Indeed, the shell keeps at Windsor and Pickering both came to be known as ‘towers’ and the term ‘keep’ itself may originally have been used in medieval times to refer to this type of structure.
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‘Shell keeps’ were, in effect, renderings in stone of the timber palisades which had commonly protected the original buildings on top of a motte. They were curtain walls, like those which came to be built around baileys as well. Carisbrooke Castle (Isle of Wight), first built by William fitz Osbern soon after the Norman Conquest, had been entirely rebuilt in stone by 1136 and its curtain walls survive, enclosing the bailey and running up the sides of the motte to link with a shell keep. Much the same can be seen – even at speed from the West Coast main line – at Berkhamsted Castle, another early motte-and-bailey now encircled in stone.
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We have already seen that timber palisades, such as those at Tamworth and Lydford, could be quite sophisticated structures,
⁴⁴
but few castles in England still active by the close of the twelfth century had not by then replaced them by a stone curtain wall: Castle Rising was one, with stone tower and stone gatehouse but otherwise reliant on massive embankments rather than a wall, but that only takes us back to the question of how far this castle was intended as a serious fortification, especially once the civil war of Stephen’s reign was over. Yet while stone curtain walls might be considered to present a greater obstacle to assailants than their timber predecessors, they provided very limited protection to any member of the castle garrison who wanted to stand on the wall-walk, dodge between battlements and snipe at the enemy outside. There is sometimes evidence of postholes in the upper reaches of walls for timber hoardings used as projecting parapets from which items might be fired or dropped on those attacking the castle, similar in purpose to stone machicolation.
⁴⁵
But this must have been a precarious business. An answer to the problem of how castle defenders could go onto the attack – could take the offensive against besiegers rather than sit passively in a great tower or behind curtain walls hoping that relief would come – was found in the provision of arrow-loops, especially if these were positioned within projecting ‘curtain towers’.

Rectilinear towers set at intervals along stone curtain walls had been a feature of the pre-1100 castles at Ludlow and Richmond (Yorkshire) and
this tradition continued into the twelfth century, for example at Carisbrooke for the Redvers family, Windsor for Henry II and Framlingham (Suffolk) for the Bigods. There were, however, important differences between them since – unless there was once timber, now vanished, covering the rear – the towers at Ludlow, Carisbrooke and Framlingham were open-backed, essentially realignments of the walls to create elevated projections, while at the other two they were four-sided, providing accommodation as well as fighting platforms. With the greater favour shown towards curved surfaces from about 1200, rounded towers became popular features of thirteenth-century castles, normally elevated above the curtain walls into which they were set and offering a combination of living quarters (usually for servants or members of the garrison) and defensible fighting arenas. Helmsley Castle was rebuilt in stone by Robert de Roos II from the 1190s with a new curtain wall which featured a D-shaped ‘great tower’ on its eastern face, rounded towers projecting from three corners (though not perfect circles since they were straight-sided within), and a north gate flanked by two D-shaped towers. These ideas can be seen under development at castles such as the Earl of Chester’s Bolingbroke (Lincolnshire), Chartley (Staffordshire) and Beeston in the 1220s, all with D-shaped towers in the curtain walls (some of them open-backed in the case of Chartley) and with gatehouses which resembled that at Helmsley, though here with greater depth to the entrance passage since the flanking towers reached into the bailey behind.
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By this time, so-called ‘drum towers’, fully (or almost entirely) circular, were also coming into vogue, whether as a series on the outer circuit of Kenilworth for King John, or as individual ‘great towers’ set into the curtain walls such as at Whittington for Fulk fitz Warin; they were to become major features of the castles built for Edward I to secure his conquest of North Wales in the last quarter of the century.

It is the absence of a recognizable keep or single great tower in some of these castles, such as Framlingham, Beeston and Bolingbroke, which led to the idea widely held until the middle of the twentieth century that such structures were no longer favoured once strategic thinking shifted towards curtain towers intended for attack as well as defence. The argument was certainly pushed too far, given the examples of continued building of
donjons
noted above and – in particular – instances where they were erected contemporaneously with curtain towers; this happened, for example, at the Earl of Chester’s Chartley, which had a new cylindrical tower built on top of the motte, and at Edward I’s Flint, where the round
donjon
forms a separately defended fourth corner tower to the inner bailey. That said, the trust evidently being placed by the thirteenth century in curtain walls, curtain towers, and their accompanying gatehouses did lead some castle designers to dispense with a keep or great tower and build opulent halls and chambers inside the walls instead:
even Edward I’s castles at Rhuddlan, Conwy and Caernarfon lack a single ‘dominant feature’ which stands out from others, although any one of their curtain towers, and especially their gatehouses, could have been defended independently for a while, in the hope that relief would come.