Military developments
Castle design in Britain continued to change towards the end of the 12th century. After Henry II mottes ceased to be built in most of England, although they continued to be erected in Wales and along the Marches. Square keeps remained common across much of England in contrast to the circular keeps increasingly prevailing in France; in the Marches, however, circular keep designs became more popular. Castles began to take on a more regular, enclosed shape, ideally quadrilateral or at least polygonal in design, especially in the more prosperous south. Flanking towers, initially square and latterly curved, were introduced along the walls and gatehouses began to grow in size and complexity, with portcullises being introduced for the first time. Castles such as Dover and the Tower of London were expanded in a concentric design in what Cathcart King has labelled the early development of “scientific fortification”.
The developments spread to Anglo-Norman possessions in Ireland where this English style of castles dominated throughout the 13th century, although the deteriorating Irish economy of the 14th century brought this wave of building to an end. In Scotland Alexander II and Alexander III undertook a number of castle building projects in the modern style, although Alexander III’s early death sparked conflict in Scotland and English intervention under Edward I in 1296. In the ensuing wars of Scottish Independence castle building in Scotland altered path, turning away from building larger, more conventional castles with curtain walls. The Scots instead adopted the policy of slighting, or deliberately destroying, castles captured in Scotland from the English to prevent their re-use in subsequent invasions – most of the new Scottish castles built by nobles were of the tower house design; the few larger castles built in Scotland were typically royal castles, built by the Scottish kings.
Some of these changes were driven by developments in military technology. Before 1190, mining was used rarely and the siege engines of the time were largely incapable of damaging the thicker castle walls. The introduction of the trebuchet began to change this situation; it was able to throw much heavier balls, with remarkable accuracy, and reconstructed devices have been shown to be able to knock holes in walls. Trebuchets were first recorded in England in 1217, and were probably used the year before as well. Richard I used them in his sieges during the Third Crusade and appears to have started to alter his castle designs to accommodate the new technology on his return to Europe. The trebuchet seems to have encouraged the shift towards round and polygonal towers and curved walls. In addition to having fewer or no dead zones, and being easier to defend against mining, these castle designs were also much less easy to attack with trebuchets as the curved surfaces could deflect some of the force of the shot.
Castles saw an increasing use of arrowslits by the 13th century, especially in England, almost certainly linked to the introduction of crossbows. These arrowslits were combined with firing positions from the tops of the towers, initially protected by wooden hoarding until stone machicolations were introduced in England in the late 13th century. The crossbow was an important military advance on the older short bow and was the favoured weapon by the time of Richard I; many crossbows and vast numbers of quarrels were needed to supply royal forces, in turn requiring larger scale iron production. In England, crossbows were primarily made at the Tower of London but St Briavels Castle, with the local Forest of Dean available to provide raw materials, became the national centre for quarrel manufacture. In Scotland, Edinburgh Castle became the centre for the production of bows, crossbows and siege engines for the king.
One result of this was that English castle sieges grew in complexity and scale. During the First Barons’ War from 1215 to 1217, the prominent sieges of Dover and Windsor Castle showed the ability of more modern designs to withstand attack; King John’s successful siege of Rochester required an elaborate and sophisticated assault, reportedly costing around 60,000 marks, or £40,000. The siege of Bedford Castle in 1224 required Henry III to bring siege engines, engineers, crossbow bolts, equipment and labourers from across all of England. The Siege of Kenilworth Castle in 1266, during the Second Barons’ War, was larger and longer still. Extensive water defences withstood the attack of the future Edward I, despite the prince targeting the weaker parts of the castle walls, employing huge siege towers and attempting a night attack using barges brought from Chester. The costs of the siege exhausted the revenues of ten English counties. Sieges in Scotland were initially smaller in scale, with the first recorded such event being the 1230 siege of Rothesay Castle where the besieging Norwegians were able to break down the relatively weak stone walls with axes after only three days. When Edward I invaded Scotland he brought with him the siege capabilities which had evolved south of the border: Edinburgh Castle fell within three days, and Roxburgh, Jedburgh, Dunbar, Stirling, Lanark and Dumbarton castles surrendered to the King. Subsequent English sieges, such as the attacks on Bothwell and Stirling, again used considerable resources including giant siege engines and extensive teams of miners and masons.
Economy and society
A number of royal castles, from the 12th century onwards, formed an essential network of royal storehouses in the 13th century for a wide range of goods including food, drink, weapons, armour and raw materials. Castles such as Southampton, Winchester, Bristol and the Tower of London were used to import, store and distribute royal wines. The English royal castles also became used as gaols – the Assize of Clarendon in 1166 insisted that royal sheriffs establish their own gaols and, in the coming years, county gaols were placed in all the shrieval royal castles. Conditions in these gaols were poor and claims of poor treatment and starvation were common; Northampton Castle appears to have seen some of the worst abuses.
The development of the baronial castles in England were affected by the economic changes during the period. During the 13th and 14th centuries the average incomes of the English barons increased but wealth became concentrated in the hands of a smaller number of individuals, with a greater discrepancy in incomes. At the same time the costs of maintaining and staffing a modern castle were increasing. The result was that although there were around 400 castles in England in 1216, the number of castles continued to diminish over the coming years; even the wealthier barons were inclined to let some castles slide into disuse and to focus their resources on the remaining stock. The castle-guard system faded into abeyance in England, being replaced by financial rents, although it continued in the Welsh Marches well into the 13th century and saw some limited use during Edward I’s occupation of Scotland in the early 14th century.
The remaining English castles became increasingly comfortable. Their interiors were often painted and decorated with tapestries, which would be transported from castle to castle as nobles travelled around the country. There were an increasing number of garderobes built inside castles, while in the wealthier castles the floors could be tiled and the windows furnished with Sussex Weald glass, allowing the introduction of window seats for reading. Food could be transported to castles across relatively long distances; fish was brought to Okehampton Castle from the sea some 25 miles (40 km) away, for example. Venison remained the most heavily consumed food in most castles, particularly those surrounded by extensive parks or forests such as Barnard Castle, while prime cuts of venison were imported to those castles that lacked hunting grounds, such as Launceston.
By the late 13th century some castles were built within carefully “designed landscapes”, sometimes drawing a distinction between an inner core of a herber, a small enclosed garden complete with orchards and small ponds, and an outer region with larger ponds and high status buildings such as “religious buildings, rabbit warrens, mills and settlements”, potentially set within a park. A gloriette, or a suite of small rooms, might be built within the castle to allow the result to be properly appreciated, or a viewing point constructed outside. At Leeds Castle the redesigned castle of the 1280s was placed within a large water garden, while at Ravensworth at the end of the 14th century an artificial lake was enclosed by a park to produce an aesthetically and symbolically pleasing entrance to the fortification. The wider parklands and forests were increasingly managed and the proportion of the smaller fallow deer consumed by castle inhabitants in England increased as a result.
Welsh principalities and Edwardian castles
During the 13th century the native Welsh princes built a number of stone castles. The size of these varied considerably from smaller fortifications, such as Dinas Emrys in Snowdonia, to more substantial castles like Deganwy Castle and the largest, Castell y Bere. Native Welsh castles typically maximised the defensive benefits of high, mountainous sites, often being built in an irregular shape to fit a rocky peak. Most had deep ditches cut out of the rock to protect the main castle. The Welsh castles were usually built with a relatively short keep, used as living accommodation for princes and nobility, and with distinctive rectangular watch-towers along the walls. In comparison to Norman castles the gatehouses were much weaker in design, with almost no use of portcullises or spiral staircases, and the stonework of the outer walls was also generally inferior to Norman built castles. The very last native Welsh castles, built in the 1260s, more closely resemble Norman designs; in the case of Dinas Brân including a round keep and Norman gatehouse defences.
In 1277. Edward I launched a final invasion of the remaining native Welsh strongholds in North Wales, intending to establish his rule over the region on a permanent basis. As part of this occupation he instructed his leading nobles to construct eight new castles across the region; Aberystwyth and Builth in mid-Wales and Beaumaris, Conwy, Caernarfon, Flint, Harlech and Rhuddlan Castle in North Wales. Historian R. Allen Brown has described these as “amongst the finest achievements of medieval military architecture [in England and Wales]”. The castles varied in design but were typically characterised by powerful mural towers along the castle walls, with multiple, over-lapping firing points and large and extremely well defended barbicans. The castles were intended to be used by the king when in the region and included extensive high-status accommodation. Edward also established various new English towns, and in several cases the new castles were designed to be used alongside the fortified town walls as part of an integrated defence. Historian Richard Morris has suggested that “the impression is firmly given of an elite group of men-of-war, long-standing comrades in arms of the king, indulging in an orgy of military architectural expression on an almost unlimited budget”.
James of Saint George, a famous architect and engineer from Savoy, was probably responsible for the bulk of the construction work across the region. The castles were extremely costly to build and required labourers, masons, carpenters, diggers, and building resources to be gathered by local sheriffs from across England, mustered at Chester and Bristol, before being sent on to North Wales in the spring, returning home each winter. The number of workers involved placed a significant drain on the country’s national labour force. The total financial cost cannot be calculated with certainty, but estimates suggest that Edward’s castle building programme cost at least £80,000 – four times the total royal expenditure on castles between 1154 and 1189.
The Edwardian castles also made strong symbolic statements about the nature of the new occupation. For example, Caernarvon was decorated with carved eagles, equipped with polygonal towers and expensive banded masonry, all designed to imitate the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople, then the idealised image of imperial power. The actual site of the castle may also have been important as it was positioned close to the former Roman fort of Segontium. The elaborate gatehouse, with an excessive five sets of doors and six portcullises, also appears to have been designed to impress visitors and to invoke an image of an Arthurian castle, then believed to have been Byzantine in character.
Palace-fortresses
In the middle of the 13th century Henry III began to redesign his favourite castles, including Winchester and Windsor, building larger halls, grander chapels, installing glass windows and decorating the palaces with painted walls and furniture. This marked the beginning of a trend towards the development of grand castles designed for elaborate, elite living. Life in earlier keeps had been focused around a single great hall, with privacy for the owner’s family provided by using an upper floor for their own living accommodation. By the 14th century nobles were travelling less, bringing much larger households with them when they did travel and entertaining visitors with equally large retinues. Castles such as Goodrich were redesigned in the 1320s to provide greater residential privacy and comfort for the ruling family, while retaining strong defensive features and a capacity to hold over 130 residents at the castle. The design influenced subsequent conversions at Berkeley and by the time that Bolton Castle was being built, in the 1380s, it was designed to hold up to eight different noble households, each with their own facilities. Royal castles such as Beaumaris, although designed with defence in mind, were designed to hold up to eleven different households at any one time.
Kings and the most wealthy lords could afford to redesign castles to produce palace-fortresses. Edward III spent £51,000 on renovating Windsor Castle; this was over one and a half times Edward’s typical annual income. In the words of Steven Brindle the result was a “great and apparently architecturally unified palace … uniform in all sorts of ways, as to roof line, window heights, cornice line, floor and ceiling heights”, echoing older designs but without any real defensive value. The wealthy John of Gaunt redesigned the heart of Kenilworth Castle, like Windsor the work emphasised a unifying, rectangular design and the separation of ground floor service areas from the upper stories and a contrast of austere exteriors with lavish interiors, especially on the 1st floor of the inner bailey buildings. By the end of the 14th century a distinctive English perpendicular style had emerged.
In the south of England private castles were being built by newly emerging, wealthy families; like the work at Windsor, these castles drew on the architectural themes of earlier martial designs, but were not intended to form a serious defence against attack. These new castles were heavily influenced by French designs, involving a rectangular or semi-rectangular castle with corner towers, gatehouses and moat; the walls effectively enclosing a comfortable courtyard plan not dissimilar to that of an unfortified manor. Bodiam Castle built in the 1380s possessed a moat, towers and gunports but, rather than being a genuine military fortification, the castle was primarily intended to be admired by visitors and used as a luxurious dwelling – the chivalric architecture implicitly invoking comparisons with Edward I’s great castle at Beaumaris.
In the north of England improvements in the security of the Scottish border, and the rise of major noble families such as the Percies and the Nevilles, encouraged a surge in castle building at the end of the 14th century. Palace-fortresses such as Raby, Bolton and Warkworth Castle took the quadrangular castle styles of the south and combined them with exceptionally large key towers or keeps to form a distinctive northern style. Built by major noble houses these castles were typically even more opulent than those built by the nouveau riche of the south. They marked what historian Anthony Emery has described as a “second peak of castle building in England and Wales”, after the Edwardian designs at the end of the 14th century.
Introduction of gunpowder
Early gunpowder weapons were introduced to England from the 1320s onwards and began to appear in Scotland by the 1330s. By the 1340s the English Crown was regularly spending money on them and the new technology began to be installed in English castles by the 1360s and 1370s, and in Scottish castles by the 1380s. Cannons were made in various sizes, from smaller hand cannons to larger guns firing stone balls of up to 7.6 inches (19 cm). Medium-sized weapons weighing around 20 kg each were more useful for the defence of castles, although Richard II eventually established 600 pound (272 kilo) guns at the Tower of London and the 15,366 pound (6,970 kilo) heavy Mons Meg bombard was installed at Edinburgh Castle.
Early cannons had only a limited range and were unreliable; in addition early stone cannonballs were relatively ineffective when fired at stone castle walls. As a result, early cannon proved most useful for defence, particularly against infantry assaults or to fire at the crews of enemy trebuchets. Indeed, early cannons could be quite dangerous to their own soldiers; James II of Scotland was killed besieging Roxburgh Castle in 1460 when one of his cannons, called “Lion”, exploded next to him. The expense of early cannons meant that they were primarily a weapon deployed by royalty rather than the nobility.
Cannons in English castles were initially deployed along the south coast where the Channel ports, essential for English trade and military operations in Europe, were increasingly threatened by French raids. Carisbrooke, Corfe, Dover, Portchester, Saltwood and Southampton Castle received cannon during the late 14th century, small circular “keyhole” gunports being built in the walls to accommodate the new weapons. Carisbrooke Castle was subject to an unsuccessful French siege in 1377, the Crown reacting by equipping the castle with cannon and a mill for producing gunpowder in 1379. Some further English castles along the Welsh borders and Scotland were similarly equipped, with the Tower of London and Pontefract Castle acting as supply depots for the new weapons. In Scotland the first cannon for a castle appears to have been bought for Edinburgh in 1384, which also became an arsenal for the new devices.
Bilbliography
Attribution
The text of this page was adapted from “Castles in Great Britain and Ireland” on the English language website Wikipedia, as the version dated 22 July 2018, and accordingly this page is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Principle editors have included Hchc2009, Cameron and Nev1, and the contributions of all editors can be found on the history tab of the Wikipedia article.
Photographs on this page are drawn from the Wikimedia website, as of 22 July 2018, and attributed and licensed as follows: “Keep and entrance of Dover Castle, 2007“, author Webzooloo, released under CC BY-SA 2.0; “Trebuchet“, author ChrisO, released under CC BY-SA 3.0; “BitvaLincoln1217ortho” (Public Domain); “Tower of London King’s room“, author Bernard Gagnon, released under CC BY-SA 3.0; “Okehampton Castle ‘motte’“, author doc, released under CC BY-SA 2.0; “CastellybereFMA01“, author Cadw, released under Open Government Licence v1.0; “Caernarfon Castle 1994“, author Herbert Ortner, released under CC BY-SA 3.0; “Bodiam-castle-10My8-1197“, author WyrdLight.com, released under CC BY-SA 3.0; “Warkworth Castle’s keep, 2007“, author Draco2008, released under CC BY-SA 2.0; “Carisbrooke Castle 14th century“, author Charles D P Miller, released under CC BY-SA 2.0.
