Timber Castles.

Timber Castles. ROBERT HIGHAM & PHILIP BARKER Philip Arthur Barker (1920 – 2001) was a British archaeologist most famous for his work on excavation methodology.He left school with no qualifications and served in the RAF during the Second World War before training as a teacher. . Timber castles. 390 pages, 241illustrations. 1992. London: Batsford; ISBN ISBNabbr.International Standard Book NumberISBNInternational Standard Book NumberISBNn abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m0-7134-2189-4 hardback|pounds~47.50.Some 30 years ago Philip Barker began the excavation of themotte-and-bailey castle of Hen Domen Hen Domen is a very famous medieval motte-and-bailey castle inWales. It is currently being excavated. , close to Offa's Dyke in themiddle Welsh Middle Welshn.See Medieval Welsh. Border. The site was well chosen. The castle was documentedand had been a seat of Roger of Montgomery, the first Norman Earl ofShrewsbury. It remained the caput of a Marcher lord until 1207, andcontinued to be inhabited until the later years of the 13th century.Throughout this period Hen Domen, or Old Montgomery as it should moreproperly be called, remained a castle built exclusively of timber. Theconcept of timber-built castles has been demonstrated by Ella Armitageas early as 1912, but it was widely assumed that the use of timber,justified on grounds of cost and expediency, was quickly abandoned inthose castles which remained in use in favour of masonry. Until recentlycastle studies were concerned largely if not wholly with stone-builtfortresses. In recent years, however, the importance of timber has cometo be stressed, notably by the authors of this book, but not until theappearance of the latter has the fundamental importance of timber beendemonstrated.This is an epoch-making study, as important in changing ourpreconceived ideas as Armitage's work of 80 years earlier. It doestwo things. In the first place, it relates timber-built castles to thehistorical tradition of building in wood. In northern Europe this wasnormal. The survival of a large number of masonry-built Anglo-Saxonchurches has tended to obscure the fact that most were constructed ofwood and have disappeared. The authors very properly relate the woodentowers in motte motte?1also mott ?n. TexasA copse or small stand of trees on a prairie.[American Spanish mata, from Spanish, shrub, probably from Late Latin matta, castles to those surviving in Scandinavian stavechurches. To most of those who built the castles of the Conquest, timberrather than masonry construction was normal. Secondly, this bookemphasizes the fact that fortifications in wood not only continued tocomplement those of stone, but also that, in some places outside theBritish Isles British Isles:see Great Britain; Ireland. , such as North America North America,third largest continent (1990 est. pop. 365,000,000), c.9,400,000 sq mi (24,346,000 sq km), the northern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. , long outlasted them. No one whohas seen, for example, the fort at Harrodsburg in Kentucky can doubt theeffectiveness of a well-constructed palisade.The authors rightly distinguish between the construction of theexternal fortifications of a castle and its internal structures, whichwere, in the main, of a domestic nature. Some use of timber remainedessential in the latter throughout the Middle Ages, and even inmasonry-built castles there were buildings constructed, except for astone plinth, wholly of timber. This was in the native tradition, andpeople would not really have expected otherwise.A vast number of motte-and-bailey castles was thrown up before themiddle of the 12th century. Most, in all probability, had only timberdefences which have left no trace. During the short period of theirexistence, as the Hen Domen excavations have demonstrated, theyunderwent continuous change and adaptation. Even the earthworks uponwhich they had been constructed were altered, and for this the authorspresent a very full statement of the archaeological evidence. Ringworkswere turned into mottes; mottes were levelled or raised higher; baileyswere added or abandoned as need arose. In the last resort, the shape ofthe defended home was dictated, not by a sort of primitive pattern-book,though preconceived ideas of form and material must have played somerole, but by countless people making countless ad hoc For this purpose. Meaning "to this" in Latin, it refers to dealing with special situations as they occur rather than functions that are repeated on a regular basis. See ad hoc query and ad hoc mode. decisions in thelight of personal needs and of local social and politicalconsiderations.This book is strong and presuasive in its analysis of thearchaeological evidence, which it draws from all of western as well asfrom parts of central and southern Europe. The social and politicalmilieu of the early earth and timber castle is not examined incomparable depth. Who built them? What did they cost? Whatconsiderations entered into their location? These questions, thoughhinted at, are not fully addressed. There was, as is clearlydemonstrated, an immense range in size, sophistication so��phis��ti��cate?v. so��phis��ti��cat��ed, so��phis��ti��cat��ing, so��phis��ti��catesv.tr.1. To cause to become less natural, especially to make less naive and more worldly.2. and comfort intimber-built castles. Reconstructions show the supposed elaboration ofthe work in the castles of Stafford and Hen Domen. One wonders, indeed,whether these may not be little exaggerated. But of those at theopposite extreme there can be no question. They were 'cold,uncomfortable and primitive', and there was little to distinguishlife in them 'from that of a site, say, of the Iron Age'. Mostcastles would have been closer to this extreme than to the opposite. Theauthors remark, 'one would have thought that any Norman lord ofhowever small a manor would have had the energy and resources to enlistor enforce the best craftsmen'. They evidently did not. It would beinteresting to determine at what income level, in Domesday terms, amanorial lord felt able to undertake the building of a simple castle. Itis paradoxical that close by the simplest motte castle there might be aparish church decked out in not inconsiderable in��con��sid��er��a��ble?adj.Too small or unimportant to merit attention or consideration; trivial.in Romanesque splendour.It is sometimes forgotten that the Conqueror did not at once bringstability and order. It was a deeply unsettled land upon which a foreignhierarchy of rulers had been superimposed. The hasty building of castlesreflected their insecurity. The abandonment of castles in the firsthalf-century after the Conquest is a measure of the way in which thefirst Norman rulers had created their own peace. It is not true, even ofthe Welsh March, that every manorial lord built himself a motte orringwork, though many must have possessed some form of'protected' home like that of the Anglo-Saxon who had'thriven to thegn-right'. How this differed from the simplestcastle is not easy to determine, though the authors make a brave attemptto link the two.This is a wide-ranging book, with implications far broader than itstitle would suggest. It is based, not only on the authors' ownexcavations, but also on an exhaustive study of reports and literary andpictorial evidence. Its discussion of the pitfalls inherent in theevidence of the Bayeux Tapestry Bayeux tapestry.This so-called tapestry is in fact an embroidery that chronicles the Norman conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066. It is a long, narrow strip of coarse linen, 230 ft by 20 in. is exemplary. One might, however, bepermitted to suggest that greater use could have been made of the rollsof official correspondence and of the available collections of charters,though these could only have strengthened the conclusions which theauthors had already reached. But this is a minor point. The book is aremarkable achievement, not only for the breadth of its coverage butalso for the insights which it offers into matters other than the actualuse of timber in early castles. It is to be recommended as much tosocial historians as to archaeologists.