History
Manchester Castle was first referred to in 1184; in 1215 it was recorded as belonging to the Greley family, who were barons of Manchester. This is the last historic reference to the castle. Before the manor house was built, Manchester Castle may have taken the form of a ringwork constructed from timber and with a wooden palisade. This earlier castle has been described as "of no political or military importance". Three rings of ditches have been discovered surrounding the likely site of the castle, however these may be part of a Saxon burh or Norman castle.
In his book Warfare in England (1912), author and historian Hilaire Belloc identified the "Manchester Gap", between the Pennines and the Mersey estuary, to be one of the two most important defensive lines in medieval England along with the line of the River Thames. Although Belloc ascribed great importance to Manchester and its notional ability to hamper troop movements, castle historian D. J. Cathcart King refuted Belloc as the site was forgotten at an early date.
Read more about this topic: Manchester Castle
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)