The Early Norman Castles of the British Isles.Armitage, Ella Sophia
History
The Early Norman Castles of the British Isles.
Armitage, Ella Sophia
Architecture, Norman; Castles -- Great Britain -- History -- To 1500; Normans -- Great Britain
LINCOLN (Fig. 20).--Domesday Book tells us that 166 houses were
destroyed to furnish the site of the castle.[497] The _Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle_ says that William built a castle here on his return from
his first visit to York in 1068, and Ordericus makes the same
statement.[498] Lincoln, like Exeter, was a Roman _castrum_, and the
Norman castle in both cases was placed in one corner of the castrum;
but the old Roman wall of Lincoln, which stands on the natural ground,
was not considered to be a sufficient defence on the two exterior
sides, probably on account of its ruinous condition. It was therefore
buried in a very high and steep bank, which was carried all round the
new castle.[499] This circumstance seems to point to the haste with
which the castle was built, Lincoln being then for the first time
subdued. The fact that it was inside the probably closely packed Roman
walls explains why so many houses were destroyed for the castle.[500]
Lincoln, like Lewes, has two mottes: both are of about the same height,
but the one in the middle of the southern line of defence is the larger
and more important; it was originally surrounded with its own ditch. It
is now crowned with a polygonal shell wall, which may have been built
by the mother of Ralph Gernon, Earl of Chester, in the reign of Henry
I.[501] The tower on the other motte, at the south-east corner, has
been largely rebuilt in the 14th century and added to in modern times,
but its lower storey still retains work of Norman character. There is
good reason to suppose that this bailey was first walled with stone
in Richard I.'s reign, as there is an entry in the _Pipe Rolls_ of
1193-1194 "for the cost of fortifying the bailey, £82, 16s. 4d."[502]
The present wall contains a good deal of herring-bone work, and this
circumstance led Mr Clark, who was looking for something which he
_could_ put down to William I.'s time, to believe that the walls were
of that date. But the herring-bone work is all in patches, as though
for repairs, and herring-bone work was used for repairs at all epochs
of mediæval building. The two gateways (that is the Norman portions of
them) are probably of about the same date as the castle wall. The whole
area is 5-3/4 acres.
The total revenue which the city of Lincoln paid to the king and the
earl had gone up from 30_l._ T. R. E. to 100_l._ T. R. W. For the sake
of those who imagine that Saxon halls had anything to do with mottes,
it is worth noting that the hall which was the residence of the chief
landholder in Lincoln before the Conquest was still in existence after
the building of the castle, but evidently had no connection with
it.[503]
[Illustration: FIG. 21. Monmouth. Montacute, Somerset. Morpeth,
Northumberland.]
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