List of Castles in England - History

History

A castle is a type of fortified structure, developed in Europe during the Middle Ages. The first castles appeared in France in the 10th century, and in England during the 11th. A few castles are known to have been built in England before the Normans invaded in 1066; a great many were built in the years following, the principal mechanism by means of which the Normans were able to consolidate their control over the country. Whilst a few important castles, such as the White Tower in the Tower of London, were built of stone, most early castles were motte-and-bailey castles of earthwork and timber, which could be constructed very quickly. Some were later rebuilt in stone, but there are a great many castle sites in England where all that is visible today are traces of earthworks.

Castles continued to be built in England for several hundred years, reaching their peak of military sophistication in the late 13th century. The two principal elements in their construction were the great tower or keep, such as the White Tower, and the fortified enclosure, such as is provided by the outer wall of the Tower of London. During the 14th century, largely as a result of the decline of feudalism, the construction of strong castles began to decline, in favour of more lightly fortified structures often described as fortified manor houses. In the far north of England, where conditions remained unsettled, fortified buildings continued to be built as late as the 16th century, not only by the rich and powerful but by any with adequate means, as defence not against great armies, but against the notorious Border Reivers. Many took the form of the pele tower, a smaller, more modest version of the castle keep, and many of these still survive, often incorporated in later buildings.

Castles differed from earlier fortifications in that they were generally private fortified residences. A castle was typically the residence of a feudal lord, providing the owner with a secure base from which to control his lands, as well as a symbol of wealth and power. Earlier fortified structures, such as the Saxon burh or the Iron Age hill fort, provided public or communal defences, as did the town or city walls which were built in medieval times. The many Roman forts of which ruins survive in Britain differed in being wholly military in nature, camps or strongholds of the Roman army: the Romans also built town or city walls in England which can still be seen, for instance at Silchester.

By the 16th century the role of fortifications had changed once more with the development of artillery capable of breaching even thick stone walls. In the reign of Henry VIII, fears of invasion led to the building of a series of new fortresses along the south coast of England, known as the Device Forts or Henrician Castles. These were designed to use and to defend against artillery, and since they were not private residences, but national fortifications, they do not possess what architectural historians have come to see as the defining characteristics of a castle. Nonetheless they are visibly castle-like, being compact, with battlemented walls, squat turrets and sometimes a keep; and they were the last generation of fortresses in England to be known as castles, long before architectural historians began to argue that they should not be. One of them, Pendennis Castle, was one of the last Royalist strongholds to fall to the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War—starvation forcing surrender after a siege of five months.

As the role of the castle as fortress declined in the later medieval period, its role as a residence increasingly became the more important. Castles such as Herstmonceux were built with fortifications seemingly designed more for show than for strength, implying a further evolution in the role and concept of the castle, becoming less a means of enforcing power but instead a symbol of its possession, a castle becoming a grand residence proclaiming the status of its owner. Once fortifications had become altogether redundant, it became increasingly rare in England for new buildings to be described as castles, in contrast to France, where country houses continued to be known as châteaux.

Once no longer needed as fortresses, castles—if they were not abandoned—were, over the centuries, adapted and modernised to make them more suitable for continued use as residences: large windows were inserted in defensive walls, as at Lumley; outer walls were demolished or lowered to open up views from within, as at Raby; new residential ranges were built to improve and extend accommodation, as at Windsor. Some castles were restored after falling into ruin, like Bamburgh; others, like Belvoir, were demolished and rebuilt, retaining little or none of the original structure. In the 18th and 19th centuries especially, many castles underwent "improvements" by architects such as Anthony Salvin, and in this period a fashion developed for entirely new houses to be built in the style of castles, and to be known as castles. Amongst these was Peckforton Castle, built by Salvin: a building so authentic in its recreation of a medieval castle that it has been described as possibly the last serious fortified home built in Britain.