Mediæval Military Architecture in England, Volume 1 (of 2)Clark, George Thomas
History
Mediæval Military Architecture in England, Volume 1 (of 2)
Clark, George Thomas
Architecture -- England; Architecture, Medieval; Military architecture
Framlingham is the chief castle of Suffolk. It is attributed originally
to Redwald, king of East Anglia, at the close of the sixth century.
Here there is at present no keep, but the Norman walls, of unusual
height, forty to fifty feet, and eight feet thick, still enclose the
court, and are protected by enormous earthworks, deep and high and of
great extent. This was the chief of the Bigot castles, said to have
been built by Hugh Bigot in 1176, and to the same powerful family
belonged Bungay, “hard by the river Waveney,” with grand earthworks,
a mound, and the remains of a square keep. Walton, another Bigot
castle, was destroyed by Henry II. Clare, the manor whence the earls of
Gloucester and Hertford derived their family name, retains its mound
with part of a polygonal keep, and outworks in earth and masonry on a
scale commensurate with the power of their lords. The area is occupied
in part by a railway station. Eye, the mound of which remains, was a
castle at Domesday, the seat of Robert Malet, and afterwards was given
by Henry II. to Ranulph, Earl of Chester. Dunwich, though not a walled
town, was protected by a deep ditch and high bank, upon which as late
as the reign of Henry III. was a palisade.
The chief castle of Norfolk was Norwich, a place of immense strength
and high antiquity. Its rectangular keep of great size and more ornate
than usual, though much injured by injudicious repairs, and closed
against the antiquary by its conversion to the base uses of a prison,
still predominates grandly over the fine old city, of which it was long
the glory and the dread. Its deep, single ditch, far older than its
works in masonry, is now for the most part filled up and built over.
The city also was strongly walled. Haganet, a Norfolk castle taken by
the Earl of Leicester and his invading Flemings, is utterly destroyed.
Mileham, of which the moated mound, though low, and a fragment of a
square keep remain, was the work of Alan, son of Flaald, who held the
manor from the Conqueror. To him also is attributed the adjacent castle
of Burghwood, of which large earthworks remain. Orford, an almost
solitary example of a Norman polygonal keep, is tolerably perfect.
The keep of Castle Rising, though smaller in dimensions than Norwich,
resembles it in type. It is the most highly-ornamented keep in England,
and, though a ruin, is well preserved and cared for. Here also is
that great rarity, a tolerably perfect and unaltered fore-building
and entrance. This keep stands within a lofty bank, beyond which,
on one side, is a spacious outwork, also heavily embanked. Castle
Acre, best known for its Norman priory, contains also the mound and
other earthworks and part of the shell keep of a large castle, and
near to these is the town of Lynn, once strongly fortified, and still
possessing an early gatehouse. At Thetford, girt by a double ditch, is
the great mound thrown up by the Danes in 865-6 to command the then
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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