The motte-and-bailey type of castle is to be found throughout feudal Europe, but is probably more prevalent in France and the British Isles than anywhere else. We say probably, because there are as yet no statistics prepared on which to base a comparison.[205] How recent the inquiry into this subject is may be learned from the fact that Krieg von Hochfelden, writing in 1859, denied the existence of mottes in Germany;[206] and even Cohausen in 1898 threw doubt upon them,[207] although General Köhler in 1887 had already declared that “the researches of recent years have shown that the motte was spread over the whole of Germany, and was in use even in the 13th and 14th centuries.”[208] The greater number of the castles described by Piper in his work on Austrian castles are on the motte-and-bailey plan, though the motte in those mountainous provinces is generally of natural rock, isolated either by nature or art. Mottes were not uncommon in Italy, according to Muratori,[209] and are especially frequent in Calabria, where we may strongly suspect that they were introduced by the Norman conqueror, Robert Guiscard.[210] It is not improbable that the Franks of the first crusade planted in Palestine the type of castle to which they were accustomed at home, for several of the excellent plans in Rey’s Architecture des Croisés show clearly enough the motte-and-bailey plan.[211] In most of these cases the motte was a natural rock.
On the other hand, we are told by Köhler that motte-castles are not found among the Slavonic nations, because they never adopted the feudal system.[212] Nor are there any in Norway or Sweden.[213] Denmark has some, which are attributed by Dr Sophus Müller to the mediæval period.[214]
Of course whenever a motte was thrown up, the first castle upon it must have been a wooden one. A stone keep could not be placed on loose soil.[215] The motte, therefore, must always represent the oldest castle. But there is no reason to think that the motte and its wooden keep were merely temporary expedients, intended always to be replaced as soon as possible by stone buildings. Even after stone castles had been fully developed, wood continued to hold its ground as a solid building material until a very late period.[216] And mottes were used not only throughout the 11th and 12th centuries, but even as late as the 13th. King John built many castles of this type in Ireland; and as late as 1242 Henry III. ordered a motte and wooden castle to be built in the island of Rhé.[217] Muratori gives a much later instance: in 1320 Can Grande caused a great motte to be built near Pavia, and surrounded with a ditch and hedge, in order to build a castle on it.[218] And as will be seen in the next chapter, there is considerable evidence that many mottes in England which were set up in the reign of William I., retained their wooden towers or stockades even till as late as the reign of Edward I. The motte at Drogheda held out some time against Cromwell, and is spoken of by him as a very strong place, having a good graft (ditch) and strongly palisaded.[219] Tickhill Castle in Yorkshire had a palisade on the counterscarp of the ditch when it was taken by Cromwell.[220]
The position of these motte-castles is wholly different from that of prehistoric fortresses. They are almost invariably placed in the arable country, and as a rule not in isolated situations, but in the immediate neighbourhood of towns or villages. It is rare indeed to find a motte-castle in a wild, mountainous situation in England. The only instance which occurs to the writer is that of the motte on the top of the Hereford Beacon; but there is great probability that this was a post fortified by the Bishop of Hereford in the 13th century to protect his game from the Earl of Gloucester. Nothing pointing to a prehistoric origin was found in this motte when it was excavated by Mr Hilton Price,[221] though the camp in which it is placed is supposed to be prehistoric.
The great majority of mottes in England are planted either on or near Roman or other ancient roads, or on navigable rivers.[222] It was essential to the Norman settlers that they should be near some road which would help them to visit their other estates, which William had been so careful to scatter, and would also enable them to revisit from time to time their estates in Normandy.[223] The rivers of England were much fuller of water in mediæval times than they are now, and were much more extensively used for traffic; they were real waterways. When we find a motte perched on a river which is not navigable, the purpose probably was to defend some ford, or to exact tolls from passengers. Thus the Ferry Hill (corrupted into Fairy Hill) at Whitwood stands at the spot where the direct road from Pontefract to Leeds would cross the Calder. It was probably not usual for the motte to be dependent on a stream or a spring for its supply of water, and this is another point in which the mediæval castle differs markedly from the prehistoric camp; wells have been found in a number of mottes which have been excavated, and it is probable that this was the general plan, though we have not sufficient statistics on this subject as yet.[224]
Occasionally, but very rarely, we find two mottes in the same castle. The only instances in England known to the writer are at Lewes and Lincoln.[225] It is not unfrequent to find a motte very near a stone castle. In this case it is either the abandoned site of the original wooden castle, or it is a siege castle raised to blockade the other one. We constantly hear of these siege castles being built in the Middle Ages; their purpose was not for actual attack, but to watch the besieged fort and prevent supplies from being carried in.[226] Hillocks were also thrown up for the purpose of placing balistæ and other siege engines upon them; but these would be much smaller than mottes, and would be placed much nearer the walls than blockade castles.
The mottes of France are in all probability much more decidedly military than those of England. France was a land of private war, after the dissolution of the empire of Charlemagne; and no doubt one of the reasons for the rapid spread of the motte-castle, after its invention, was due to the facilities which it offered for this terrible game. In England the reasons for the erection of mottes seem to have been manorial rather than military; that is, the Norman landholder desired a safe residence for himself amidst a hostile peasantry, rather than a strong military position which could hold out against skilful and well-armed foes.
Attached to the castle, both in England and abroad, we frequently find an additional enclosure, much larger than the comparatively small area of the bailey proper. This was the burgus or borough, which inevitably sprang up round every castle which had a lengthened existence. Our older antiquaries, finding that the word burgenses was commonly used in Domesday in connection with a site where a castle existed, formed the mistaken idea that a burgus necessarily implied a castle. But a burgus was the same thing as a burh, that is, a borough or fortified town. It may have existed long before the castle, or it may have been created after the castle was built. The latter case was very common, for the noble who built a castle would find it to his advantage to build a burgus near it.[227] In exchange for the protection offered by the borough wall or bank, he could demand gablum or rent from the burghers; he could compel them to grind their corn at his mill, and bake their bread at his oven; he could exact tolls on all commodities entering the borough; and if there was a market he would receive a certain percentage on all sales. The borough was therefore an important source of revenue to the baron. Domesday Book mentions the new borough at Rhuddlan, evidently built as soon as the castle had been planted on the deserted banks of the Clwydd. In some cases a “new borough” is clearly a new suburb, doubtless having its own fortifications, built specially for the protection of the Norman settlers in England, as at Norwich and Nottingham.[228]
That even in the 12th century a motte was considered an essential feature of a castle is shown by Neckham’s treatise “De Utensilibus,” where he gives directions as to how a castle should be built; the motte should be placed on a site well defended by nature; it should have a stockade of squared logs round the top; the keep on the motte should be furnished with turrets and battlements, and crates of stones for missiles should be always provided, as well as a perpetual spring of water, and secret passages and posterns, by which help might reach the besieged.[229]
What the outward appearance of these motte-castles was we learn from the Bayeux Tapestry, which gives us several instructive pictures of motte-castles existing in the 11th century at Dol, Rennes, Dinan, and Bayeux.[230] There is considerable variety in these pictures, and something no doubt must be ascribed to fancy; but all show the main features of a stockade round the top of the motte, enclosing a wooden tower, a ditch round the foot of the motte, with a bank on the counterscarp, and a stepped wooden bridge, up which horses were evidently trained to climb, leading across the moat to the stockade of the motte. In no case is the bailey distinctly depicted, but we may assume that it has been already taken, and that the horsemen are riding over it to the gate-house which (in the picture of Dinan) stands at the foot of the bridge. The towers appear to be square, but in the case of Rennes and Bayeux, are surmounted by a cupola roof. Decoration does not appear to be have been neglected, and the general appearance of the buildings, far from being of a makeshift character, must have been very picturesque.
The picture of the building of the motte at Hastings shows only a stockade on top of the motte; this may be because the artist intended to represent the work as incomplete. What is remarkable about this picture is that the motte appears to be formed in layers of different materials. We might ascribe this to the fancy of the embroiderer, were it not that layers of this kind have occasionally been found in mottes which have been excavated or destroyed. Thus the motte at Carisbrook, which was opened in 1903, was found to be composed of alternate layers of large and small chalk rubble. In some cases, layers of stones have been found; in others (as at York and Burton) a motte formed of loose material has been cased in a sort of pie-crust of heavy clay. In the Castle Hill at Hallaton in Leicestershire layers of peat and hazel branches, as well as of clay and stone boulders, were found. But our information on this subject is too scanty to justify any generalisations as to the general construction of mottes.
The pictures shown in the Bayeux Tapestry agree very well with the description given by a 12th-century writer of the castle of Merchem, near Dixmüde, in the life of John, Bishop of Terouenne, who died in 1130. “Bishop John used to stay frequently at Merchem when he was going round his diocese. Near the churchyard was an exceedingly high fortification, which might be called a castle or municipium, built according to the fashion of that country by the lord of the manor many years before. For it is the custom of the nobles of that region, who spend their time for the most part in private war, in order to defend themselves from their enemies to make a hill of earth, as high as they can, and encircle it with a ditch as broad and deep as possible. They surround the upper edge of this hill with a very strong wall of hewn logs, placing towers on the circuit, according to their means. Inside this wall they plant their house, or keep (arcem), which overlooks the whole thing. The entrance to this fortress is only by a bridge, which rises from the counterscarp of the ditch, supported on double or even triple columns, till it reaches the upper edge of the motte (agger).”[231] The chronicler goes on to relate how this wooden bridge broke down under the crowd of people who were following the bishop, and all fell 35 feet into the ditch, where the water was up to their knees. There is no mention of a bailey in this account, but a bailey was so absolutely necessary to a residential castle, in order to find room for the stables, lodgings, barns, smithies and other workshops, which were necessary dependencies of a feudal household, that it can seldom have been omitted, and the comparatively rare instances which we find of mottes which appear never to have had baileys were probably outposts dependent on some more important castle.
Lambert of Ardres, the panegyrist of the counts of Guisnes,[232] writing about 1194, gives us a minute and most interesting description of the wooden castle of Ardres, built about the year 1117. “Arnold, lord of Ardres, built on the motte of Ardres a wooden house, excelling all the houses of Flanders of that period both in material and in carpenter’s work. The first storey was on the surface of the ground, where were cellars and granaries, and great boxes, tuns, casks, and other domestic utensils. In the storey above were the dwelling and common living rooms of the residents, in which were the larders, the rooms of the bakers and butlers, and the great chamber in which the lord and his wife slept. Adjoining this was a private room, the dormitory of the waiting maids and children. In the inner part of the great chamber was a certain private room, where at early dawn or in the evening or during sickness or at time of blood-letting, or for warming the maids and weaned children, they used to have a fire.... In the upper storey of the house were garret rooms, in which on the one side the sons (when they wished it) on the other side the daughters (because they were obliged) of the lord of the house used to sleep. In this storey also the watchmen and the servants appointed to keep the house took their sleep at some time or other. High up on the east side of the house, in a convenient place, was the chapel, which was made like unto the tabernacle of Solomon in its ceiling and painting. There were stairs and passages from storey to storey, from the house into the kitchen, from room to room, and again from the house into the loggia (logium), where they used to sit in conversation for recreation, and again from the loggia into the oratory.”[233]
This description proves that these wooden castles were no mere rude sheds for temporary occupation, but that they were carefully built dwellings designed for permanent residence. The description is useful for the light it throws on the stone keeps whose ruins remain to us. They probably had very similar arrangements, and though only their outside walls are now existing, they must have been divided into different rooms by wooden partitions which have now perished.[234]
In this account of Lambert’s it is further mentioned that the kitchen was joined to the house or keep, and was a building of two floors, the lower one being occupied by live stock, while the upper one was the actual kitchen. We must remember that this account was written at the end of the 12th century. In the earlier and simpler manners of the 11th century it is probable that the cooking was more generally carried on in the open air, as it was among the Anglo-Saxons.[235] The danger of fire would prevent the development of chimneys in wooden castles; we have seen that there was only one in this wonderful castle of Ardres. But even after stone castles became common, we have evidence that the kitchen was often an isolated building in the courtyard. One such kitchen still exists in the monastic ruins of Glastonbury.
The word mota, which was used in the 12th century for the artificial hills on which the wooden keeps of these castles were placed, comes from an old French word motte, meaning a clod of earth, which is still used in France for a small earthen hillock.[236] The keep itself appears to have been called a bretasche, though this word seems to have meant a wooden tower of any kind, and was used both for mural towers and for the movable wooden towers employed for sieges.[237] At a much later period it was given to the wooden balconies by which walls were defended, but the writer has found no instance of this use of the word before the 14th century. On the contrary, these wooden galleries for the purpose of defending the foot of the walls by throwing missiles down are called hurdicia or hourdes in the documents, a word of cognate origin to our word hoarding.[238] The word bretasche is also of Teutonic origin, akin to the German brett, a board.
The court at the base of the hillock is always called the ballium, bayle, or bailey, a word for which Skeat suggests the Latin baculus, a stick, as a possible though very doubtful ancestor. The wooden wall which surrounded this court was the palum, pelum, or palitium of the documents, a word which Mr Neilson has proved to be the origin of the peels so common in Lowland Scotland, though it has been mistakenly applied to the towers enclosed by these peels.[239] The palitium was the stockade on the inner bank of the ditch which enclosed the bailey; but the outer or counterscarp bank had also its special defence, called the hericio, from its bristling nature (French hérisson, a hedgehog). There can be little doubt that it was sometimes an actual hedge of brambles, at other times of stakes intertwined with osiers or thorns.[240]
Thus the words most commonly used in connection with these wooden castles are chiefly French in form, but a French that is tinctured with Teutonic blood. This is just what we might expect, since the first castles of feudalism arose on Gallic soil (France or Flanders), but on soil which was ruled by men of Teutonic descent. We may regard it as fairly certain that it was in the region anciently known as Neustria that the motte-castle first appeared; and as we have previously shown, there is some reason to think that the centre of that region was the place where it originated. But this must for the present remain doubtful. What we regard as certain is that it was from France, and from Normandy in particular, that it was introduced into the British Isles; and to those islands we must now turn.
In this chapter we propose to give a list, in alphabetical order for convenience of reference, of the castles which are known to have existed in England in the 11th century, because they are mentioned either in Domesday Book, or in charters of the period, or in some contemporary chronicle.[241] We do not for a moment suppose that this catalogue of eighty-four castles is a complete list of those which were built in England in the reigns of William I. and William II. We have little doubt that all the castles in the county towns, such as Leicester, Northampton, and Guildford, and those which we hear of first as the seats of important nobles in the reign of Henry II., such as Marlborough, Groby, Bungay, Ongar, were castles built shortly after the Conquest, nearly all of them being places which have (or had) mottes. Domesday Book only mentions fifty castles in England and Wales,[242] but it is well known that the Survey is as capricious in its mention of castles as in its mention of churches. It is possible that further research in charters which the writer has been unable to examine may furnish additional castles, but the list now given may be regarded as complete as far as materials generally accessible will allow.[243] One of the castles mentioned (Richard’s Castle) and probably two others (Hereford and Ewias) existed before the Conquest; they were the work of those Norman friends of Edward the Confessor whom he endowed with lands in England.
Out of this list of eighty-four castles we shall find that no less than seventy-one have or had mottes. The exceptions are the Tower of London, Colchester, Pevensey, and Chepstow, where a stone keep was part of the original design, and a motte was therefore unnecessary: Bamborough, Peak, and Tynemouth, where the site was sufficiently defended by precipices: Carlisle and Richmond, whose original design is unknown to us: Belvoir, Dover, Exeter, and Monmouth, which might on many grounds be counted as motte-castles, but as the evidence is not conclusive, we do not mark them as such; but even if we leave them out, with the other exceptions, we shall find that nearly 86 per cent. of our list of castles of the 11th century are of the motte-and-bailey type.
About forty-three of these castles are attached to towns. Of these, less than a third are placed inside the Roman walls or the Saxon or Danish earthworks of the towns, while at least two-thirds are wholly or partly outside these enclosures.[244] This circumstance is important, because the position outside the town indicates the mistrust of an invader, not the confidence of a native prince. In the only two cases where we know anything of the position of the residence of the Saxon kings we find it in the middle of the city.[245] Even when the castle is inside the town walls it is almost invariably close to the walls, so that an escape into the country might always be possible.[246]
Of the towns or manors in which these castles were situated, Domesday Book gives us the value in King Edward’s and King William’s time in sixty-two instances. In forty-five cases the value has risen; in twelve it has fallen; in five it is stationary. Evidently something has caused a great increase of prosperity in these cases, and it can hardly be anything else than the impetus given to trade through the security afforded by a Norman castle.
Our list shows that Mr Clark’s confident statement, that the moated mounds were the centres of large and important estates in Saxon times, was a dream. Out of forty-one mottes in country districts, thirty-six are found in places which were quite insignificant in King Edward’s day, and only five can be said to occupy the centres of important Saxon manors.[247]
In the table in the Appendix, the area occupied by the original baileys of the castles in this list has been measured accurately by a planimeter, from the 25-in. Ordnance maps, in all cases in which that was possible.[248] This table proves that the early Norman castles were very small in area, suitable only for the personal defence of a chieftain who had only a small force at his disposal, and absolutely unsuited for a people in the tribal state of development, like the ancient Britons, or for the scheme of national defence inaugurated by Alfred and Edward. We may remark here that in not a single case is any masonry which is certainly early Norman to be found on one of these mottes; where the date can be ascertained, the stonework is invariably later than the 11th century.
Abergavenny (Fig. 8).—This castle, being in Monmouthshire, must be included in our list. The earliest notice of it is a document stating that Hamelin de Ballon gave the church and chapel of the castle of Abergavenny, and the land for making a bourg, and an oven of their own, to the Abbey of St Vincent at Le Mans.[249]
The castle occupies a pointed spur at the S. end of the town, whose walls converge so as to include the castle as part of the defence. The motte has been much altered during recent years, and is crowned by a modern building; but a plan in Coxe’s Tour in Monmouthshire, 1800, shows it in its original round form. The bailey is roughly of a pentagonal shape, covering 1 acre, and is defended by a curtain wall with mural towers and a gatehouse. The ditch on the W. and N. is much filled in and obscured by the encroachment of the town. On the E. the ground descends in a steep scarp, which merges into those of the headland on which the motte is placed.[250]
Arundel (Fig. 8).—“The castrum of Arundel,” says Domesday Book, “paid 40s. in King Edward’s time from a certain mill, and 20s. from three boardlands (or feorm-lands), and 2s. from one pasture. Now, between the town feorm and the water-gate and the ships’ dues, it pays 12l.”[251] Castrum in Domesday nearly always means a castle; yet the description here given is certainly that of a town and not of a castle. We must therefore regard it as an instance of the fluctuating meaning which both castrum and castellum had in the 11th century.[252] Arundel is one of the towns mentioned in the “Burghal Hidage.”[253] But even accepting that the description in Domesday refers to the town, we can have very little doubt that the original earthen castle was reared by Roger de Montgomeri, to whom William I. gave the Rapes of Arundel and Chichester, and whom he afterwards made Earl of Shrewsbury.[254] Roger had contributed sixty ships to William’s fleet, and both he and his sons were highly favoured and trusted by William, until the sons forfeited that confidence. We shall see afterwards that their names are connected with several important castles of the early Norman settlement. We shall see also that the Rapes into which Sussex was divided—Chichester, Arundel, Bramber, Lewes, Pevensey, and Hastings—were all furnished with Norman castles, each with the characteristic motte, except Pevensey, which had a stone keep. Each of these castles, at the time of the Survey, defended a port by which direct access could be had to Normandy. It was to protect his base that William fortified these important estuaries, and committed them to the keeping of some of the most prominent of the Norman leaders.
The castle stands on the end of a high and narrow ridge of the South Downs, above the town of Arundel. It consists of an oblong ward, covering 4½ acres, in the middle of which, but on the line of the west wall, is a large motte, about 70 feet high, surrounded by its own ditch. The lower and perhaps original bailey is only 2 acres in extent. Round the top of the motte is a slightly oval wall, of the kind called by Mr Clark a shell keep. We have elsewhere expressed our doubts of the correctness of this term.[255] In all the more important castles we find that the keep on top of the motte has a small ward attached to it, and Arundel is no exception to this rule; it has the remains of a tower, as well as the wall round the motte. The tower is a small one, but it is large enough for the king’s chamber in times which were not extravagant in domestic architecture. It is probable that this tower, and the stone wall round the motte are the work of Henry II., as he spent nearly 340l. on this castle between the years 1170 and 1187. His work consisted chiefly of a wall, a king’s chamber, a chapel, and a tower.[256] The wall of the motte corresponds in style to the work of the middle of his reign; it is built of flints, but cased with Caen stone brought from Normandy, and has Norman buttresses. The original Norman doorway on the south side (now walled up) has the chevron moulding, which shows that it is not earlier than the 12th century. The tower, which we may assume to be the tower of Henry II.’s records, has a round arched entrance, and contains a chapel and a chamber (now ruined) besides a well chamber.
There is earlier Norman work still remaining in the bailey, namely, the fine gateway, which though of plain and severe Norman, is larger and loftier than the early work of that style, and of superior masonry.[257] The one Pipe Roll of Henry I. which we possess shows that he spent 78l. 6s. 2d. on the castle in 1130, and possibly this refers to this gatehouse.[258] We know that Henry was a great builder, but so was the former owner of this castle, Robert Belesme, son of Roger de Montgomeri.
The value of the town of Arundel had greatly increased since the Conquest, at the time of the Domesday Survey.[259]
Bamborough, Northumberland.—We first hear of this castle in the reign of Rufus, when it was defended against the king by Robert Mowbray, the rebel Earl of Northumberland; but there can be little doubt that the earliest castle on this natural bastion was built in the Conqueror’s reign. In the 13th century certain lands were held by the tenure of supplying wood to the castle of Bamborough, and it was declared that this obligation had existed ever since the time of William I.[260] William certainly found no castle there, for Bamborough had fallen into utter ruin and desolation by the middle of the 11th century.[261] William’s hold on Northumberland was too precarious to give opportunity for so long and costly a work as the building of a stone keep. It is more probable that a strong wooden castle was the fortress of the governors of Northumberland under the first Norman kings, and that the present stone keep was built in Henry II.’s reign.[262] There is no motte at Bamborough, nor was one needed on a site which is itself a natural motte, more precipitous and defensible than any artificial hill.[263] As the Domesday Survey does not extend to Northumberland, we have no statement of the value of Bamborough. The area of the castle is 4¾ acres.
Barnstaple, Devon (Fig. 9).—This castle is not mentioned in Domesday, but the town belonged to Judhael, one of the followers of the Conqueror, whose name suggests a Breton origin. William gave him large estates in Devon and Cornwall. A charter of Judhael’s to the priory which he founded at Barnstaple makes mention of the castle.[264] Barnstaple, at the head of the estuary of the Taw, was a borough at Domesday, and the castle was placed inside the town walls.[265] The motte remains in good condition; the winding walks which now lead to the top are certainly no part of the original plan, but are generally found in cases where the motte has been incorporated in a garden. There was formerly a stone keep, of which no vestige remains.[266] The castle seems to have formed the apex of a town of roughly triangular shape. The bailey can just be traced, and must have covered 1⅓ acres.
The former value of Barnstaple is not given in the Survey, so we cannot tell whether it had risen or not.
Belvoir, Leicester.—This castle was founded by the Norman Robert de Todeni, who died in 1088.[267] It stands on a natural hill, so steep and isolated that it might be called a natural motte. The first castle was destroyed by King John, and the modernising of the site has entirely destroyed any earthworks which may have existed on the hill. There appears to have been a shell wall, from the descriptions given by Nicholls and Leland.[268] It was situated in the manor of Bottesdene, a manor of no great importance, but which had risen in value at the date of the Survey.[269]
Berkeley, or Ness.—The identity of Berkeley Castle with the Ness castle of Domesday may be regarded as certain. All that the Survey says about it is: “In Ness there are five hides belonging to Berkeley, which Earl William put out to make a little castle.”[270] Earl William is William FitzOsbern, the trusty friend and counsellor of the Conqueror, who had made him Earl of Herefordshire. He had also authority over the north and west of England during William’s first absence in Normandy, and part of the commission he received from William was to build castles where they were needed.[271] Berkeley was a royal manor with a large number of berewicks, and the probable meaning of the passage in Domesday is that Earl William removed the geldability of the five hides occupying the peninsula or ness which stretches from Berkeley to the Severn, bounded on the south by the Little Avon, and appropriated these lands to the upkeep of a small castle. This castle can hardly have been placed anywhere but at Berkeley, for there is no trace of any other castle in the district.[272] Earl Godwin had sometimes resided at Berkeley, but probably his residence there was the monastery which by evil means had come into his hands;[273] for we never hear of any castle in connection with Godwin. But a Norman motte exists at Berkeley, though buried in the stone shell built by Henry II. Mr Clark remarks: “If the masonry of Berkeley Castle were removed, its remains would show a mound of earth, and attached to three sides of it a platform, the whole encircled with a ditch or scarp.”[274] The motte raised by Earl William has, in fact, been revetted with a stone shell of the 12th century, whose bold chevron ornament over the entrance gives evidence of its epoch. What is still more remarkable is that documentary evidence exists to fix the date of this transformation. A charter of Henry II. is preserved at Berkeley Castle, in which he grants the manor to Robert Fitzhardinge, pledging himself at the same time to fortify a castle there, according to Robert’s wish.[275] Robert’s wish probably was to possess a stone keep, like those which had been rising in so many places during the 12th century. But there had been a Norman lord at Berkeley before Fitzhardinge, Roger de Berkeley, whose representatives only lost the manor through having taken sides with Stephen in the civil war.[276] This Roger no doubt occupied the wooden castle on the motte built by William FitzOsbern. Henry II.’s shell was probably the first masonry connected with the castle. This remarkable keep is nearly circular, and has three round turrets and one oblong. As the latter, Thorpe’s Tower, was rebuilt in Edward III.’s reign, it probably took the place of a round tower. The keep is built of rubble, and its Norman buttresses (it has several later ones) project about a foot. The cross loopholes in the walls are undoubtedly insertions of the time of Edward III. The buildings in the bailey are chiefly of the time of Edward III., but the bailey walls have some Norman buttresses, and are probably of the same date as the keep.[277] This bailey is nearly square, and the motte, which is in one corner, encroaches upon about a quarter of it. The small size of the area which it encloses, not much more than half an acre, corresponds to the statement of Domesday Book that it was “a little castle.” There is no trace of the usual ditch surrounding the motte, and the smallness of the bailey makes it unlikely that there ever was one. A second bailey has been added to the first,[278] and the whole is surrounded on three sides by a moat, the fourth side having formerly had a steep descent into swamps, which formed sufficient protection.[279]
There is no statement in the Survey of the value of Ness, but the whole manor of Berkeley had risen since the Conquest.[280]
Berkhampstead, Herts (Fig. 9).—Mr D. H. Montgomerie rightly calls this a magnificent example of an earthwork fortress.[281] It is first mentioned in a charter of Richard I., which recapitulates the original charter of William, son of Robert, Count of Mortain, in which he gives the chapel of this castle to the Abbey of Grestein in Normandy.[282] We may, therefore, with all probability look upon this as one of the castles built by the Conqueror’s half-brother. And this will account for the exceptional strength of the work, which comprises a motte 40 feet high, ditched round (formerly), and a bailey of 2⅔ acres, surrounded not only with the usual ditch and banks, but with a second ditch outside the counterscarp bank, which encircles both motte and bailey. At two important points in its line, this counterscarp bank is enlarged into mounds which have evidently once carried wooden towers;[283] if this arrangement belonged to the original plan, as it most probably did, it confirms a remark which we have made elsewhere as to the early use of wooden mural towers. Works in masonry were added to the motte and the bailey banks in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. There are traces of a semicircular earthwork outside the second ditch on the west, which appears to have formed a barbican. But the most exceptional thing about this castle is the series of earthen platforms on the north and east, connected by a bank, and closely investing the external ditch, which were formerly supposed to form part of the castle works. Mr W. St John Hope has suggested the far more plausible theory that they were the siege platforms erected by Louis, the Dauphin of France, in 1216. We are told that his engines kept up a most destructive fire of stones.[284]
The value of the manor of Berkhampstead had considerably decreased, even since the Count of Mortain received it.[285]
Bishop’s Stortford, Herts (Fig. 9).—Waytemore Castle is the name given to the large oval motte at this place, which is evidently the site of the castle of “Estorteford,” given by William the Conqueror to Maurice, Bishop of London.[286] The manor of Stortford had been bought from King William by Maurice’s predecessor, William, who had been one of the Norman favourites of Edward the Confessor.[287] He may have built this castle, but he cannot have built it till after the Conquest, as the land did not belong to his see till then.
“The castle consists of a large oval motte, 250 × 200 feet at its base, rising 40 feet above the marshes of the river Stort, and crowned by a keep with walls of flint rubble, 12 feet thick. On the S. of the motte there are traces of a pentagonal bailey, covering 2½ acres. It is enclosed on four sides by the narrow streams which intersect the marshes. The dry ditch on the fifth side, facing the motte, is discernible. The castle abuts on the road called The Causeway, which crosses the valley; it is in a good position to command both road and river.”[288] The value of the manor had gone down at Domesday.[289]
Bourn, Lincolnshire (Fig. 10).—The manor of Bourn or Brune appears to have been much split up amongst various owners at the time of Domesday. A Breton named Oger held the demesne.[290] A charter of Picot, the Sheriff of Cambridgeshire, a person often mentioned in Domesday Book, gives the church of Brune and the chapel of the castle to the priory which he had founded near the castle of Cambridge—afterwards removed to Barnwell.[291] Bourn was the centre of a large soke in Anglo-Saxon times. Leland mentions the “Grete Diches, and the Dungeon Hill of the ancient Castel,”[292] but very little of the remains is now visible, and the motte has been almost removed.
“The castle lies in flat ground, well watered by springs and streams. The motte was placed at the southern apex of a roughly oval bailey, from which it was separated by its own wet ditch, access being obtained through a gatehouse which stood on the narrow neck by which this innermost enclosure, at its N.W. end, joined the principal bailey, which, in its turn, was embraced on all sides but the S. by a second and concentric bailey, also defended by a wet ditch, which broadens out at the S.W. corner into St Peter’s Pool. There is another enclosure beyond this which may be of later date. The inner bailey covers 3 acres. Very little is now left of the motte, but a plan made in 1861 showed it to be fairly perfect,[293] and some slight remains of the gatehouse were excavated in that year. The castle is on the line of the Roman road from Peterborough to Sleaford, and close to the Roman Car-Dyke.”[294]
The value of Bourn had risen at Domesday.