Chapter XXX: Part 30

The entrance into the first floor was also the general entrance into the keep. The doorway, much broken, was 4 feet wide and 6 feet high, and about 10 feet above the original ground level. Over the doorway, outside, is a curious drip or hood, forming an equilateral arch, a sort of pediment; and on either side of the doorway are two holes, at the base and near the top, which seem to have carried the base of a wooden structure, probably covering an exterior stair. There is no portcullis. The door enters a passage vaulted with a drop arch, which traverses the wall leading direct by a second door, viz., into the first floor. From this passage, on the left, a door opens into a mural stair, 3 feet 3 inches wide, which ascends in the curve of the wall to the upper floors.

The first floor is 20 feet in diameter, and its walls about 8 feet 6 inches thick; its floor rested on two large parallel beams laid north-west and south-east. To the north-east and south-west are large window recesses, 4 feet 6 inches broad, with drop chamfered arches, and having stone seats. In each was a window of one light, about 2 feet opening, with an equilateral arch, and chamfered edges. In the south jamb of the south-west window is a door, the termination of the staircase, vaulted, and lighted by two external loops, and which has been already mentioned as rising from the basement floor. In the north-west wall is a large fireplace, with a bold flat stone hood dying into the wall above, beneath a bold bead moulding, and below resting upon two short columns with bell caps of a stiff early English character. The columns are cut away below, and in fact form corbels. On either side is a rude circular corbel, either to hold a light, or as at St. Briavel’s, to support the lateral thrust of the hood. This floor is 18 feet high. It was the state-room.

The staircase leading to the second floor, after ascending in the curve of the wall a few steps, terminates in a well staircase 6 feet in diameter, which continues the ascent to the second floor, and passes on to the battlements, as at Chepstow, Carlisle, Ludlow, and Newcastle. The staircase opens into the first floor by the intervention of a small recess or lobby in the thickness of the wall, where a door, now broken, opens into the main chamber.

The second floor was also 18 feet high, and had two windows under drop arches, about 2 feet broad and 5 feet high, with equilateral arched heads, closely resembling those below. One opens to the south-east and one to the north-west. The latter has over its outer opening an angular drip, or hood, or pediment, like that over the great entrance below. Here also is a fireplace, and exactly above that in the lower room, and similar to it, only the jambs are rather shorter. The hearth-stone was supported upon a kind of bressummer, formed by a table projecting about 18 inches from the wall below, and appearing as a carved moulding in the lower room. There is a set-off of about 6 inches at this level, to support the floor.

Following the staircase, the third floor is entered by a lobby similar to the one below. The stair is lighted by loops, those near the bottom being flat-topped, those above lancet-pointed. There is one long loop divided by a transom, which forms a part of the set-off on the outside. The third floor has no fireplace, but it has two windows, similar to the others, opening north-east and south-west. The roof seems to have rested upon one main beam, stiffened by spars at either end, the supports of which remain in the shape of two stout plain stone corbels. Thus stiffened, the platform above would have carried an engine of almost any weight. The wall is about 8 feet 6 inches thick at the summit; its thickness above the cordon is, in fact, uniform. To give greater strength to the masonry along the course of the staircase and about the lobbies, the wall is thickened internally by a sort of pilaster, the sharp edge of which remains.

Tretower is a rare, probably a solitary, example of a rectangular Norman keep, which has been gutted, and its central part occupied by an early English round tower. The space between the tower and the keep walls was then roofed in, probably in two floors. The alterations in the exterior Norman wall, blocking up the doors and windows, &c., were probably made when the inner tower was built.

The material of the keep is a hard variety of old red sandstone. The workmanship is good coursed rubble plastered within. The door and window quoins and the fireplaces are of ashlar, well worked, though plain, as is the whole building. The arches of the doors and window recesses are drop. Those of the windows are equilateral, and many of the loops lancet. The inner tower is wholly of one date, apparently late in the early English period.

It is said that Tretower was a residence of the Welsh Lords of Brecknock before the Norman era. If so, they were attracted by the dry gravel tump, covered on three sides by a morass. The Norman occupants seem to have constructed a square tower or keep on the knoll, having, on one side, a base-court, probably also walled in. Late in the reign of Henry III., the Norman keep was gutted, and a central stone tower built, and the triangular base-court enclosed by a curtain and mural towers.

CRICKHOWEL CASTLE.

This castle stands in the suburb of the town of Crickhowel, between it and the Usk, on the left bank of that river, and about a furlong from the parish church.

Its principal and most interesting feature is a large conical mound, wholly artificial, about 50 feet high, and on its table top 60 feet diameter north and south, and 50 feet east and west. This mound has been surrounded by a ditch, traces of which remain on the east, south, and west sides. Towards the north it is encroached upon by a pond and some cottages. Appended to the mound, on its east side, and outside of its ditch, is an enclosure of irregular shape, roughly rectangular, but rounded towards the north-west, and including about two acres. It is contained within a low bank, the exterior slope of which has been scarped, and seems to have descended into an exterior ditch. This was the base-court or ward of the castle, the mound being the keep. On the south face of this ward, where the bank would have abutted upon the ditch of the mound, are the remains of two conjoined towers, one rectangular and one round. The loop-like windows of the former are evidently of Decorated date, and the two towers seem of the same age. Upon the north-east corner of the ward, on the counterscarp of the ditch of the mound is part of a round tower, which, with some heaps of earth about it, seems to be the remains of the gatehouse of the keep, which also was probably connected with a protected staircase ascending the mound, the way up which must have been on this side. These are the only buildings actually remaining upon the _enceinte_ of the ward, but it is evident that a wall was carried round its edge, of which the bank probably contains and conceals the foundation. Buck’s drawing, taken in 1741, shows this curtain, and upon its three angles three drum towers, of which one covered the outer entrance, and is opposite to the gatehouse of the keep. The summit of the mound is much broken up, and there are traces of the foundations of buildings which formerly stood here, and which seem to have been contained within a circular or polygonal shell which formed the keep.

It is evident that Crickhowel, like Caerleon, Cardiff, Abergavenny, Brecon, and Builth, was a moated mound with appended base-court, upon which the Normans, on seizing the estate, constructed a castle. The earliest masonry was probably of the date of Henry II., but enlarged and rebuilt in the reign of Henry III.

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BLAEN-LLYFNI, or Blaen-Llevenny Castle, in Brecknockshire, stands above the Llyfni river, a tributary to Llangorse Lake. It was posted to guard the important pass of the Bwlch, above and a little within which it stands. It was in plan a parallelogram, contained within four curtain walls with towers at the angles, and apparently a gatehouse towards the north-east. Part of the north wall is standing, but the remainder is a heap of ruins. The castle occupied a natural tump; about 20 feet above the outer level and around it is a ditch, in parts wet. The castle stands on a slope, which, towards the north, is very steep and very strong. It was built by, and long belonged to, the Norman lords of Brecknock; and on the occurrence of an attainder or minority was held by the Crown; hence it is not only mentioned in local story, but occurs from time to time in the records of the realm. It seems of the age of Henry III., or perhaps somewhat earlier. In Buck’s time, 1741, much of the curtain remained and parts of the tower.

TUTBURY CASTLE, STAFFORDSHIRE.

The high broken ground of Needwood Forest, contained between the Trent and the Dove, is brought to a termination eastward by the union of those streams upon the confines of the three shires of Derby, Stafford, and Leicester. About five miles above this confluence, upon the right or Staffordshire bank of the Dove, stand the town and castle of Tutbury, once, according to Leland, a residence of the Saxon lords of Mercia, and named, it is said, from the god Thoth, who presides over Tuesday, and is thought to have been worshipped in the enclosure of the castle. This etymology is supported by Wednesbury; but, however this may be, Tutbury was certainly an ancient stronghold, and possesses in that respect unusual natural advantages.

The castle crowns the head or northern termination of a considerable ridge of new red sandstone rock, which projects from the high ground of Hanbury and Needwood, and forms an abrupt promontory above the broad and level meadows of the Dove. On the south or landward side the hill is partially severed from its parent ridge by a cross valley, within and about which is built the ancient town of Tutbury, celebrated from the days of John of Gaunt until the end of the last century for its attachment to the barbarous sport of bull-running.

The natural position of the castle is strong and well-defined, and has been turned to account from a very remote period, and materially strengthened by Norman and pre-Norman art.

Upon its west, south, and eastern sides the head of the ridge has been further protected by a broad and deep ditch, which thus covers about two-thirds of its circumference. Towards the north, where the hill projects upon the meadows, the ditch ceases, and this front, rising steeply about 100 feet, has been rendered steeper by art, and is further protected by a wide expanse of wet land, traversed by a very ancient and broad mill-leat, and by the sinuous channel of the Dove.

Upon the east and north-east fronts, where the area of the promontory was inconveniently large, two extensive semilunar spaces have been left outside the ditch. They are, in fact, outworks upon a large scale, useful for pasturing cattle in turbulent times, somewhat lower than, and commanded by, the main works; covering the ditch, and scarped, though not revetted, towards the field. They are separated by a deep ravine, up which the main approach to the castle ascended from the north-east, the direction of the Dove bridge, and probably of an earlier ford. On this, the east front, the contents of the ditch have been thrown inwards, crowning the scarp by an artificial bank about 15 feet or 20 feet in height.

Upon the south-west and west side the earth has been employed to form a large mound, about 40 feet high, and 70 feet across at its truncated summit, and which renders this front almost impregnable.

The space between the east bank and the west mound, forming the south front, is occupied by the castle buildings, which, built upon the natural soil, crown the scarp of the ditch, and overlook the town.

Opposite, also from the bank to the mound, is the north front, almost precipitous, and defended, therefore, by neither ditch nor bank. The space thus enclosed forms the base-court of the castle, and covers about three acres. It is in plan an irregular circle.

The best view of these magnificent earthworks is from the summit of the mound, which not only predominates over the court of the castle, to its east, but westward rises very steeply about 140 feet from the meadows. The counterscarp of the ditch is here seen to terminate on the north-west, at the base of the mound in a sharply-defined falciform ridge.

The masonry which has been added to these earlier defences is composed of a group of buildings on the south front, flanked by curtains which run, on the one hand, westward towards the mound, and, on the other, eastward, along the top of the bank by which that face is defended. This curtain is 6 feet thick at the top of its plinth, about 6 feet from the ground, to which level it is now reduced. There is evidence that it was about 20 feet high, with a rampart accessible from its flanking towers, and by a double flight of open steps from within. At one point is the vault of a large garderobe, marked in the “Vetusta” drawing by a bartizan turret. This east curtain is broken by a lofty rectangular mural tower, of which the interior wall with a square angle-turret only remains, and which faced the turn of the road up to the castle, on the opposite side of the ditch. The bank has been removed here, so that the tower is built upon the original soil, and its basement entered from the court on a level. This tower is Perpendicular in style, and has evidently been blown up by gunpowder.

At the north end of this curtain, at the north-east corner of the court, is the great gatehouse, a rectangular building pierced by a portal, and with lateral lodges. Above were other chambers of more pretention and larger size. This gatehouse is almost all outside the wall. Its south face rakes the ditch, and has a small projecting balcony at the first-floor level, communicating by a shaft with the basement lodge. Its north face looked towards the Dove; only its south and east walls remain. It had no flanking towers, the wall on one side of the gate being pierced by a loop. To it has been added, outside, flanking the gate and blocking up the loop, two thick solid cheeks of wall, from the front of which the drawbridge fell across the moat. The gatehouse seems to be of late Decorated date, its window recesses have half-round heads, and a window above the portal has something like Decorated tracery still remaining, and rudely indicated in the drawing given in the “Vetusta Monumenta.” The portal has a flat segmental arch, and outside this is a low drop arch, part of the additions. The details of the drawbridge, to judge from the holes cut in the stone, were peculiar. Two portcullis grooves remain.

The masonry of the drawbridge has been removed, and the ditch here solidly filled up with earth. The road from below, to reach this gate, is continued for some way along the crest of the ditch, within reach of the walls. Lower down it is commanded by the two demilunes. From the gatehouse westward the edge of the steep north front was crested by a curtain wall, probably low and light, of which there are slight traces.

Upon the summit of the mound is a ruined round tower, evidently an erection of very modern times, probably as a summer-house, or an object in a view. There is said to have been an earlier building here, destroyed before the reign of Elizabeth, probably by John of Gaunt, and likely to have been a polygonal shell of masonry. It was called Julius Tower, Juliet being a not uncommon name for such structures.

The castle buildings have been broken down, but what remains is as sharp and fresh as though lately executed. The outer wall and altered windows remain of the great hall, 61 feet long by 29 feet broad, and a group of state apartments at the east end. Here are two very fine crypts, no doubt cellars,—fitting receptacles for the very best of drinks,—entered from the court by handsome doorways and six or eight descending steps. They have been covered with barrel vaults, one of which was ribbed transversely and diagonally, with large carved bosses, probably of the time of Richard II. Above these are handsome rooms, with flush flat-topped chimney-places, with mouldings set with flowers and the “hart lodged,” and what may be a conventional pomegranate. These buildings are in the best and purest Perpendicular style, and the profiles and details of the mouldings are admirably suited to that fine but sometimes rather friable material, red sandstone, here of very superior quality.

In the court is a deep well, still in use. At the west end of the great hall is a brick building, probably the work of some Crown steward or lessee, about the time of Queen Anne or George I.

So far as can be observed, the castle exhibits no trace of Norman masonry. All the structures, walls, tower, gatehouse, hall, and apartments are nearly or quite of one date, and are probably the work of John of Gaunt, who resided here very frequently, and in regal state. This is very remarkable, because Tutbury is mentioned in Domesday, was the caput of a very important Norman honour, and the principal seat of the great Norman family of Ferrars, earls of Derby, from the Conquest to their ruin towards the close of the reign of Henry III., since which time it has been, for the most part, in the Duchy of Lancaster.

Shaw, in his “History of Staffordshire,” gives two most exaggerated drawings of this castle. Another, on a larger scale, a view from the east side, taken in the reign of Elizabeth, is engraved in the “Vetusta Monumenta,” vol. i., pl. 39. This, amidst much absurd perspective, shows the gatehouse and east tower, what may be a chapel east window in the state apartments, and a round tower at the east foot of and built into the mound, besides a west curtain with three mural towers upon it.

Tutbury was held for the king, and taken by the Parliament in the wars of Charles I., and subsequently, by order of the House, reduced very nearly to the condition in which it is now seen.

It may be mentioned that an addition to both the defences and the resources of the castle has been provided in the leat, known as the Fleam, in part only an artificial channel, which leaves the Dove about a mile above the castle, is led beneath its walls where it still works a large and very powerful mill, and finally returns to the river some way down, after a parallel course of about three miles.

Although the temporal evidence of the splendour of the house of Ferrars has disappeared, the memory, as usual, of their ecclesiastical beneficence has been preserved. The parish church of St. Mary, once the church of the Ferrars Abbey of Tutbury, still stands a stone’s throw from the castle wall, and seems anciently to have been included within the outer defences. It was founded by Henry de Ferrars, in the reign of Rufus, and has a Norman nave, clerestory, and aisles; and its west end is one of the most perfect and richest Norman fronts in existence. This structure, which had been much misused, was happily placed under the judicious care of Mr. Street, who was engaged to restore the Norman parts, and add a large semi-circular apse to the chancel. This is probably the chapel of St. Mary within the castle, in which (18 Edward I.) Edmund Earl of Lancaster founded a special mass.

Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned in Tutbury Castle, under the care of George Earl of Shrewsbury, then constable.

URQUHART CASTLE, INVERNESS-SHIRE.

About half-way between the two extremities of Loch Ness, the loch is suddenly reduced by about one-third of its ordinary breadth by the projection from its western shore of a bold headland, under cover of which the glens of Urquhart and Moriston open upon the loch, and contribute to it, across a marshy deposit of gravel and peat, their respective waters.

The headland which is thus partially isolated between these waters and the loch is moderately lofty, and slopes down steeply towards its extremity at the north-east, again to rise and finally to terminate in an oval and rugged knoll of rock, which stands out from 50 feet to 100 feet above both the water and the contiguous land. Upon and covering this knoll is placed Castle Urquhart, which is thus a very prominent object from Lochness, and combines, in a very remarkable degree, natural and artificial defences upon its _enceinte_ and within its area.

The rock, open at each end, and along its north-eastern side towards the loch, is protected on the land side by a deep and broad ditch, quarried across the neck of the peninsula from shore to shore, not, indeed, to the level of the water, by from 10 feet to 12 feet, but to a depth which at one point gives a precipitous height of 30 feet to 40 feet to the face forming its scarp.

In general plan, the castle, like the rock it stands upon, is an irregular oval, reduced to something of an hour-glass figure by the indentation of a small cove near its centre. At the north and most prominent end is the rectangular keep. On the landward front is the gatehouse, and in the side opposite appears to have been a small tower. The _enceinte_ is completed by curtain walls, ranging in thickness and height from 4 feet to 9 feet, and from 20 feet to 40 feet, according as they supported buildings within, or occupied weak or strong points in the defence.

The entrance is by a causeway of masonry, 12 feet broad, having a roadway between parapets, and about 80 feet long from the counterscarp to the scarp of the ditch. At about 40 feet from the counterscarp, and 6 feet beyond the centre of the ditch, there, 10 feet deep, is an opening of 20 feet, formerly occupied by a drawbridge, beyond which the parapets are higher, and probably formed part of some kind of advanced work, for the management and protection of the bridge. This part of the defence occupied the remainder of the causeway proper, about 20 feet, the ditch here being 80 feet broad, and a platform of 20 feet, with a rise of 6 feet, intervening between the end of the causeway and the gate.

The gate is removed about 6 feet to the south of the line of the causeway, so as to check a rush upon it. It is a plain round-headed portal of 9 feet opening, between two half-round towers, and above it is the usual small look-out window of the portcullis chamber. Just within the gateway is the square groove, in which hung the portcullis, and beyond is a barrel vault, ribbed at intervals, for gates, and having a lodge door on the left hand. The passage ends in a plain but good round-headed gateway, the coigns and ring stones of which are of excellent ashlar, and which is set in the inner face of the gatehouse. This is a rectangular building, with two half-round towers flanking its outer entrance, and on each side of the central passage is a chamber also barrel-vaulted, but having semi-circular and semi-domed west ends. One of these rooms, as mentioned, opens from its side into the passage, and the other from its end, into the court. The gatehouse had an upper floor, also vaulted, and apparently also a second floor, of which traces remain. Fragments of a chimney-shaft which has fallen from its front, encumber the causeway.

Emerging from the gatehouse, the rugged character of the interior comes at once into view. On the right is a path between two knolls of rock; that on the left moderately high, and not quite extending to the waterward curtain; that on the right high and steep, and its perpendicular face forming the landward curtain, the wall crowning which is 9 feet thick. At the south-east end, where the two ridges unite, is a small circular eminence, which may have been a beacon. This part of the outer ward is a fortress in itself, and upon its highest ground are traces of buildings. A fragment of the waterward curtain still stands about 30 feet high, and 6 feet thick; but there are no traces in this quarter of mural towers.

The gatehouse opens upon the narrowest part of the ward, where it is indented by a small cove. The curtain was carried round this cove, and contained a postern, whence a path led down to the water, here shielded by the cliff. There is a window in the curtain,—a part probably of a building for the protection of the postern and the galleys below.

The way from the gatehouse towards the left leads to the keep. It rises by a steep curve between, on the right, a high wall of some ruined building, and on the left a curious knoll of rock, scarped steeply into a rectangular figure, about 30 feet high, and on the top of which are foundations of a building, 15 feet by 30 feet, which must have been as tall as the upper floor of the gatehouse, and have commanded the adjacent curtain, from which it is separated by a narrow hollow way. Following the curved road, a cross wall is reached, which cuts off the inner from the outer ward, and formed an outwork to the keep. This ward is three-sided,—a sort of quadrant, the keep being at the apex. The land and waterward curtains form the two sides, and the base is a shallow curved ditch, in which is built the wall, and against it are two buildings like barracks. Between their inner ends was the entrance. This ward was exceedingly small, and is now thickly encumbered with ruins.

The keep is an excellent example of the stern rectangular Scottish fortalice of the fifteenth century. It is about 40 feet square, of four stages, and built on the steep, so that its basement is above ground on the outer, and below it on the inner, or court side. This basement is 16 feet by 18 feet within, barrel vaulted, with walls 10 feet to 16 feet thick, with a loop rising to the light on the land side. It was evidently the prison. The door is opposite to the loop, and opens into a small lobby, having on the left the foot of the well-stair, and in front a postern, 4 feet wide, flat topped, and closed by a door, which opened on a small platform about 25 feet above the loch, which is reached by a steep winding path. The turnpike stair is 8 feet in diameter, and is contained in the north-east angle of the tower, opening upon each floor, and finally upon the battlements. It makes no external projection, but is seen within, cutting off an angle from each floor. The basement and the highest floor are the only vaulted chambers.

The first floor is lighted by a segmental arched window to the court, and by small square-headed loops towards the water. These vary from 6 inches to 2 feet in breadth of opening, and each has, a little below it, an oeillet-hole, which opens from the window-seat. No fireplace remains, but the east wall is destroyed, in which it may have been. This chamber seems to have been entered only by the well-stair.

The second floor has also openings under flat segmental arches, and on the south side is the main door, opening about 20 feet above the ground, and reached either by wooden steps or some other means now destroyed.

The third floor, or fourth stage, differs from the rest in that a small chamber is contained in the south-eastern angle, the door into which is in the south wall, near its east end. This may have been an oratory, but, as the east wall of the keep is gone, and with it the east end of this chamber, which also is inaccessible, such details as may remain have not been examined. In the west wall of the main chamber is an excellent flat segmental arch in ashlar, which spans a fireplace and a window looking down the loch. This upper story was covered with a vault, in the west side of which are traces of a side arch, covering that over the fireplace and window. Most of the main vault has fallen in.

There do not appear to be remains of any garderobes. The parapet is gone, but the wall is crowned by a bold moulding, and beyond this, at each angle, there is a row of short corbels, which probably carried the usual bartizan turrets. Over the door, at the top of the wall, are four bold corbels, which evidently carried a machicolation for its defence.

Urquhart is more extensive than most Highland castles, and the traces of barracks show that its area was turned to full account. It would contain a garrison of from 400 to 500 men. Though the masonry is rough, it is good, the proportions of the keep are excellent, and the ashlar work used for the doorways, quoins, and window dressings, is well executed. What arches remain are round-headed or segmental, not pointed. At the north-east angle the keep has a small short buttress set on anglewise, and one, also short, of a pilaster character, and slight projection, set on the west face of the north-west angle. The curtain springs from the keep, half of which is outside it.

Urquhart is one of the chain of fortresses which stretched across the great glen from Inverness to Inverlochy, and were employed from an early period to defend and overawe the country. By some accounts it is spoken of as belonging to the Comyns of Badenoch, but certain it is that when Edward I. was at Kildrummie, near Nairn, in 1303, he despatched a party who laid siege to this castle, and with some difficulty took it, putting Sir Alen de Bois, its governor, and the garrison, to the sword. In 1334 it was held for Baliol by Sir Robert Lauder, of Quarrel Wood, as governor; and the office seems to have been heritable, for Lauder’s daughter married Chisholm, and their son, Sir Robert Chisholm, of Chisholm, who had Quarrel Wood, had also the constableship of Urquhart, then, and probably always, a royal castle. Chisholm’s title, however, was insecure, for in 1359 David II. disponed the barony and castle to William, Earl of Sutherland, and John, his son.

After this, Urquhart was held under the Crown by the Grants of Freuchie, afterwards of Castle Grant, who, as chamberlains for the Crown, got possession of most of the adjacent lands. In 1509, James IV., under an Act of the Scottish Parliament, granted three-fourths of Urquhart Lordship, and of the Baronies of Urquhart and Glenmoriston, to Grant of Freuchie, and his two sons, from whom descended the Grants of Glenmoriston and Corriemony. The castle has since remained in the Grant family, and is now the property of the Earl of Seafield, whose house of Balmacaan is in the lower Valley of Urquhart.

It appears that the Knights of the Temple had an establishment in the Bay, and brought into cultivation the lands on its eastern shore. Probably they were constables of the castle. On the farm of Phinians is still a place called Temple.

Until after the rebellion of 1745 Glen Urquhart was in a very disturbed state. Grant did not reside there, and the people were continually attacked by the clansmen from Glengarry, Lochiel, and Kintail.

It is difficult to establish with any precision the date either of the early or the present castle of Urquhart. The ditch is no doubt much older than the siege of 1303. The remains of the castle now standing can scarcely be older than the fifteenth century, and probably it was one of those built about the middle of it, in accordance with the strong recommendation published by James I. on his return from his captivity in England.

An excellent account of this part of the Highlands, and of the descent of the Urquhart property, will be found in the “New Statistical Account of Scotland, for Inverness-shire,” p. 43.

WAREHAM, DORSETSHIRE.

Wareham and Corfe are the keys of Purbeck, or rather Corfe is the fortress and Wareham the bridge-head of that bold projection of the chalk of Dorset, the southern headland of which bears the name of the protomartyr of England, and of which the triple spurs of Durlston, Peverell, and Studland form the eastern points, each with its own bay, and the whole protecting from the prevalent west wind the great indentation of the coast between Purbeck and the Needles, in the bight of which opens the harbour of Poole, and, under Hengistbury Head, the mouth of the twin streams that once gave name to Christchurch, before either castle or priory rose upon the banks of the Avon.

To the Northmen, these headlands, bays, and rivers were intimately known. Their long ships here found shelter while the hardy seamen ravaged the country of which they were one day to become joint inheritors. Though called, like Sheppy and Portland, an island, Purbeck is, in truth, not even a peninsula. If, indeed, it were to subside from 50 feet to 100 feet, the great chalk ridge which extends from Lulworth to Studland would alone be visible above the waters, and the low broad valley which marks the course of the Nether Frome and the Piddle would be covered, and form, with Poole harbour, a considerable estuary. Even now the river valleys are low and moist, and in the eighth and ninth centuries were no doubt an impracticable morass. Where nature had done so much, there remained but little needed from art, and accordingly the military remains in Purbeck are scanty. Worbarrow, a strong half-circular camp of banks and ditches, crowns the steep cliff at one end of the great ridge, and Corfe or Corfe-gat, occupies a gap or gate near its centre, while Wareham, posted to the landward of the marsh, and between the two rivers, guards effectually the approach from the north. Camps on sea-cliffs are generally supposed the work of those who used the sea, and drew up their galleys upon the beach; if this be so, Worbarrow must be the work of the Northmen, though in any other position it would be regarded as British. Corfe is probably entirely an English port; what Wareham is forms the subject of the present notice.

Wareham, a town which is still a Parliamentary borough, though one of its members was shorn away in the great struggle for reform, is built upon a knoll of chalk, the eastern extremity of a broad low ridge which descends and becomes narrower from the west and north-west, and finally sinks down into the lowland a little east of the town. This ridge divides the valleys of the Frome and the Piddle, the principal streams of Dorset, and its termination marks the meeting of the waters which flow together into the backwater of Poole Harbour. The Piddle lies to the north of the ridge, and the Frome to the south. The town between them is about half a mile broad, and their bridges are connected by its main street. In figure the town is nearly square, the west face about 600 yards, the north face 650 yards, and the area is pretty evenly divided by the main street, which is crossed by a second street, at right angles, thus dividing the town, after the Roman fashion, into four quarters. As at Wallingford and Tamworth the outline of this rectangular figure is an earthwork, within which the town was built, and which is now all too wide for its shrunken prosperity. The defence is a simple bank and ditch, the contents of the latter being piled up to add to the height of the former; but as the area inclosed is naturally high, with a steep slope to the north and east, on these two sides the bank is a scarp only, the river on the north forming the ditch. To the east the ground is not quite so low, and there is no river: here therefore is a ditch. The northern scarp is about 45 feet high, with a slope varying from one and a half to two to one. Its crest is 15 feet broad, and it rises about 15 feet above the ground within and behind it. Towards the west end this bank is rugged and angular; the eastern half is very uniform, and seems never to have been disturbed.

The northern side is straight, or nearly so; the eastern has a low salient near its centre. This side is not carried to the river. There is indeed a hollow way, which seems to represent the ditch, but the bank is wanting for the last 200 or 300 yards. The western face is far stronger, and more perfect. Here the bank, of full size, is carried down to the margin of the river, and the ditch is broad and deep. This was the weak side, the exterior ground being high. This bank also is much cut about, and it is pretty clear that in the Parliamentary wars an attack must have been apprehended from the north-west, as the bank is notched as for embrasures for guns, and there are various small mounds to prevent them from being reached by a lateral and raking fire. The ditch also, instead of being cut to a central line, V-shaped, as usual in mediæval fortifications, and as is the case with this ditch near the river, is broad and flat-bottomed, as though it had been widened and partially filled up to suit the requirements of the art of defence as practised in the seventeenth century.

There is no earthwork along the south or Frome front, towards which the ground slopes gradually. No doubt the river was a defence, as it was on the other front, but the absence of any special work on the south and south-eastern quarters looks as though those who constructed the work came from the sea, and desired to guard Purbeck, whereas the historical presumption is that Wareham must have been thrown up against invaders, and that it was a British fortress against the Saxons, and an English fortress against the Danes.

Of the four pretty equal quarters into which the area is divided, the south-western contains a later and subsidiary work, thrown up upon the bank of the Frome, and a little in the rear of the main defence. This is a conical mound, flat topped, rising about 50 feet above the river, and about 60 feet in diameter at its summit. It has a ditch proper to itself, about 60 feet wide, dividing it from the main bank, and to its east and south-east are traces of other and lower earthworks, which no doubt included the base courts or wards usually appended to such mounds. This whole tract, however, is exceedingly obscure, being laid out in lanes and courts and walled gardens. Here stood the Norman castle, built, as usual, upon the earthworks of the English residence.

There is another earthwork, also within and later than the main defence, found in the north-eastern quarter. This is a rectangular inclosure about 60 yards by 30 yards, within a bank of about 4 feet high with a base of 12 feet and an exterior ditch about 6 feet broad. There is an entrance at one end, and the angles are slightly rounded off, and, as the north-east angle rises somewhat with the tail of the adjacent bank, it is clear that it is a later work. This looks exactly like a small Roman camp, though in such a position it seems much out of place. It is called the bowling-green, and may have been laid out for that game. It is difficult to say what it is.

Of the two roads which intersect Wareham, that running north and south is the main one, and leads to Corfe. The Frome bridge over which it is carried is said to replace one built in the reign of William Rufus. The east and west road is an important way in one direction, as it leads from Dorchester, and may well therefore be Roman. After reaching the cross it is continued eastwards, but this branch of it led nowhere from the town.

Wareham, like Wallingford, was well supplied with ecclesiastical establishments, there having been within its limits eight churches and a priory. The priory, originally founded it is said by Adhelm, bishop of Sherborne, who died 709, certainly existed as a nunnery before 876, when the town was taken by the Danes. The church, dedicated to the Virgin, is now the principal church in the place, and Trinity, now used as a school, was probably the chapel of the castle. St. Martin’s is a small church upon the eastern edge of the deep cutting through which the north road enters the town. It has a small late tower, but the nave and part of the chancel seemed early Norman date. The sites are pointed out of the chapels of St. Peter, St. Nicholas, St. John, St. Michael, All Hallows, and another St. John.

Nothing of the masonry of the castle remains above ground, but the adjacent walls evidently contain much old material, and in one of them is an old Norman doorway, with a bold chevron moulding round the head, interspersed with a line of roundels. This no doubt belonged to the castle.

There is a great resemblance in position and plan between Wallingford and Tamworth and to some extent Cardiff, and Wareham. In each case the general earthwork is rectangular, of bold profile, and has a single ditch, and is placed near a river, and on that side unbanked. Each also has a mound towards the river, with its own proper defences, and upon each the Normans placed a shell keep. There is no evidence of Roman occupation of any of these places, though the road from Wareham to Dorchester may be Roman, and if the line of the Ackebury ditch from Sarum to Badbury were produced, it would pass close west of this place. Possibly the rectangular defences were the work of the Romanised Britons, the mound being an English addition of the ninth century. The work has never been known as a “Chester.”

Wareham was an important place in the West Saxon kingdom. King Beorhtric, who married the daughter of Offa, and in whose time the Danes first landed in Britain, was there buried in 800. In 876 the Danes attacked and took Wareham, but submitted to Alfred, and retired to Exeter. Florence says of the Danes:—“Castellum quod dicitur Werham intravit; ubi monasterium sancti-monialium inter duo flumina Fraw et Terente it in paga quæ Saxonice dicitur. Downseto, tutissimo situ terrarum situm est, nisi ab occidentali parte tantummodo, ubi contigua est terra.” And it is on that side that the works are the strongest. Some of the Danes left Wareham by sea and some on horseback. In the following year, however, they were again at Wareham, and their fleet was wrecked off Swanage, and 120 ships lost. At this time Wareham became the Danish head-quarters. A century later, in March, 978, King Edward, slain at Corvesgate or Corfe, was buried silently at Wareham, to be translated afterwards to Shaftesbury. In 982, Wulfwin, abbess of Wareham, there died. In 998, the Danes were again there, and in 1015 Canute sailed up the Frome, burning and plundering as he went. Domesday relates that the Confessor held 143 horses in demesne in Wareham. There were two mint-masters, but at the survey the town was in a desolate condition, and many houses were destroyed.

The castle is mentioned in Domesday:—“Of the manor of Chingestone the king has one hide in which he made the Castle of Wareham, and for that he gave to St. Mary’s the church of Gelingham, with its appendages, to the value of 40 shillings.” It is the only castle mentioned in the county. Chingestone is the manor of Corfe Castle, and St. Mary’s the Abbey of Shaftesbury. Robert, Duke of Normandy, was for a time imprisoned in the castle, as was Robert de Belesme, who is here said to have starved himself to death. Town and castle were burned in the wars of Stephen and Maud. Her great champion, the Earl of Gloucester, embarked here on his way to Anjou in 1142, and William, his son, was governor when the town was taken by Stephen. The Earl then retook it, the castle holding out against him for three weeks. It was at that time that he took Lulworth, and probably built “Bow and Arrow” Castle in Portland. King John landed at Wareham in 1205 and visited the place four times, staying about fifteen days in the years 1209–12–15, and 1216. Peter of Pomfret, was hanged here in 1213. Then and long afterwards it was rather a noted seaport, and as late as 1558 ships of fair size reached its quays. The “Castle Hill” was granted away by James I. The western earthwork long bore the name of the “Bloody Bank,” from the execution there of Judge Jeffreys’s victims.

Wyman & Sons, Gᵗ. Queen Sᵗ. London.]

During the civil war Wareham was the scene of much fighting, being taken and retaken many times. It was garrisoned by the Parliament in 1642, then taken for the king, then in 1643 retaken for the Parliament. In 1644 the Royalists took it by storm. It was in these wars that the west bank was so much altered, to make it suitable for the defensive system of that day.

WHITE CASTLE, MONMOUTHSHIRE.

White Castle, called also from the parish in which it stands, Llanteilo Cresseny, and in the records “Album Castrum,” stands upon very high ground about five miles east of Abergavenny, and commands an extensive and completely panoramic view over a country eminently characteristic of the old red sandstone. Within the wide circumference are mountains and hills green to their summits, deep valleys, oaks and elms of great size and in great profusion, and pastures of unusual richness. It is not to be marvelled at that the Welsh, having lost so glorious a possession, should strive to recover it, or that the English and the Normans, having won, should spare no labour or expense in the construction of strong places to enable them to retain it.

Unlike Grosmount, Skenfrith, Goodrich, and Chepstow, and the other castles upon the Munnow and the Wye, and the seaboard of the Channel, White Castle is far removed from any watercourse or defensible river, and is only to be reached by a long and steep ascent. It is five miles and a half from Skenfrith, and five from Grosmount—Grosmount and Skenfrith being four miles and a half apart—and forms the western and most exposed point of the celebrated trilateral. Its decay is due rather to time than to violence, for its walls and towers are all standing, and what is wanting are those parts which would naturally give way to rain and frost, or from time to time be removed for the rebuilding of houses and cottages in the neighbourhood.

White Castle is also as peculiar in its arrangements as in its position. It has no keep, and so far it resembles the Edwardian castle; but, unlike those structures—of which Caerphilly in South, and Beaumaris in North Wales, are typical examples—its main defences are confined to a single line, covered, however, at the principal entrance by a walled earthwork or barbican, and at the lesser entrance by a second and rather smaller earthwork, without, or with but little masonry. Its ditches also are on a formidable scale, both for depth, breadth, and extent, and altogether, both in position and details, it is not inferior in strength to any castle in the March, and is besides in the first class as regards capacity.

It is composed of a central ward, in general figure hexagonal, but oblong and somewhat pear-shaped, its internal diameter, north and south, being 50 yards, and its greatest cross diameter, east and west, 37 yards. The northern end measures, also internally, 15 yards, the southern 18 yards. The sides next to the north end are, in length, 27 yards, those next the south end 23 yards and 26 yards. The wall is 10 feet thick at the base, and slopes externally to 7 feet at a height of 15 feet. In height it is about 30 feet to the rampart walk or allure. The towers at the two southern angles are 18 feet internal diameter, with walls 7 feet thick. The two middle towers are 12 feet, the other two at the northern angles form the great gatehouse, and are 13 feet. They are about 45 feet high. The four southern towers have a basement floor a little below the court level, with one loop; a first floor with three loops, and a second floor, whence was a way to the ramparts of the curtain. There seems, also, to have been an upper or third story. The floors were all of timber, and there are no staircases or mural chambers. The gorge walls of the two southern towers are broken away, that of the western partially so; that of the eastern is perfect, and contains the entrance doorway of 3 feet opening. The gatehouse towers are also entered at the gorge from the court, but the gorge wall is thicker, and contains a series of mural staircases ascending to the summit. These are not “turnpike,” and are not continuous, but begin anew at each floor. The gateway, concealed, save from the front, by the unusually bold projection of the flanking towers, has a passage 10 feet wide and 8 feet deep. The barrel-vault remains, but the ashlar of the internal gate is gone, and its former existence is only shown by a bar-hole. Of the outer gateway two bar-holes remain, and a fragment of the portcullis groove, which is 4 inches square, and placed outside the gate, so that the grate was wholly visible even when raised, unless, indeed, concealed by a timber brattice. It was worked from a machicolation between the towers, now gone. The flanking towers are without loops, that to the left on entering is approached from the vault by a narrow doorway. If there was a drawbridge attached to this gate, its heel must have rested upon a large stone about 10 feet in advance and 6 feet below the level of the portal. The ditch at this point is nearly 100 feet broad, and 30 feet to 40 feet deep. It is evident that there were no bridge-piers of masonry in the ditch, so that the roadway probably rested on trestles.

The opposite and lesser gateway is in the south wall, close to its west end, and flanked, therefore on one side by the south-western tower. It seems to have been a simple opening in the curtain, about 10 feet broad. It is now a mere breach, but the bar-holes remain. There is no sign of a portcullis. The approach to this gate came up along the edge of the ditch, between it and the wall, from the east, and was commanded by two loops in the curtain and by the south-eastern tower.

The area of the court is quite clear of buildings, but a few heaps of rubbish show that it contained barrack buildings of timber, with stone basements, placed against the walls, which have been plastered. There is no trace of hall, chapel, kitchen, well, or permanent lodgings, and no ornament of any kind; no moulding, no mural chambers or garderobes, no staircase save in the great gatehouse, and only two small fireplaces, in the first and second floors of the north-eastern gate tower. The towers are not only bold and lofty, and about 60 feet high, but the outer half of their bases is carried many feet down the slope of the ditch, giving them great breadth of base, and a very substantial and massive character.