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
adjacent city, but this post, so important before the Conquest, does
not seem to have been occupied afterwards. Other Norfolk castles were
Buckenham and Tateshall, of which the date is doubtful, and Marnham, of
which it was reported in the reign of Edward I.—“Quod erectio castri de
Marnham est in præjudicium domini Regis.” Wirmegay, a Warenne castle,
strong in its marshy approaches, was certainly earlier. At Weting, near
the church, was a castle with a mound, on which a few years ago was a
fragment of the keep. It was the seat of De Plaiz, who represented Mont
Fitchet, and whose heiress married the ancestor of the house of Howard.
There was also a castle at Kenningdale, near Diss.
Cambridgeshire contained but a few castles, the fens presenting little
to attract the spoiler, and being in themselves a secure defence. At
Cambridge, upon the banks of the sluggish and winding Cam, a prison
has taken the place of the castle ordered by the Conqueror; but a part
of the mound and a fragment of its subsidiary banks remain, and are
not to be confounded with the still earlier Roman enclosure. At Ely a
large mound with appended earth banks is thought to have been the site
of the ancient castle of the bishop of that see. All traces of masonry
are gone, as at Wisbeach. The camp at Castle Camps, the seat of the
Saxon Wolfwin, once held a Norman castle, the work of the De Veres. Of
Chevely, an episcopal castle, a fragment remains. Burwell, the masonry
of which belonged to one of Stephen’s improvised castles, is remembered
as that before which Geoffrey de Mandeville received his fatal wound. A
fragment of its wall and the mound remain. Swavesey and Bassingbourne
were early castles.
Hertford, Bedford, and Buckingham, the inland positions of which
were insufficient to secure them from invasions from a foe beyond
the sea, were not unprovided with castles. Hertford, visited by the
Danes in 894, was fortified by Edward the Elder in 914, who there
threw up a burh between the rivers Lea, Mineran, and Bean, and in
the year following a second burh on the opposite bank of the Lea.
Hertford, says Smith in 1588, has two castles, one on each bank of the
Lea. These corresponded to the two banks already mentioned. Upon the
still existing mound Peter de Valoines placed the keep ordered by the
Conqueror. The Magnavilles next held it, and Henry of Huntingdon calls
it, “castrum non immensum sed pulcherrimum.” Berkhampstead, as old, and
a far more considerable fortress, and the head of a great Honour, has
been mentioned as one of the northern defences of the metropolis. Its
mound, wholly artificial, still supports the foundations of a Norman
shell keep, and appended to it is a large oval platform, the walls and
entrances to which remain. The whole is partially encircled by several
concentric lines of bank and ditch, the character of which shows that
they were protected by stockades instead of walls of masonry. Here the
Black Prince spent his latter days, and here he died.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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