Page images
PDF
EPUB

stakes and enlarging the cords of human societyfor bringing us nearer to God and nearer to one another this is the gift which, it may be, is reserved in full for the century which is yet to come. Το help forward this blessed end, belongs not to students and antiquarians only, but to all of us. O may God grant that the glory of the Third Temple may as much excel the glory of the Second, as the Second exceeded the glory of the First. Cast not away the old-cherish it, understand it, value it to the utmost; but "see" what it means, see what it embraces, see what it indicates, see what manner of stone it is, see "what manner" of building it is—and then, as in the case of sacred and ancient words, so also in the case of sacred and ancient buildings, they will become, as Luther said, not dead stones, but "living creatures with hands and feet,” living stones, which will cry out with a thousand voices; stones which will be full of sermons-dry bones which, when the Son of Man prophesies over them, will stand upon their feet, an exceeding great army-ancient everlasting gates which shall turn on their rusty hinges, and lift up their hoary heads, that the Lord of Hosts may come in a heavenly city which hath foundations, deeper than any earthly foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

II.

SOME PARTICULARS CONCERNING

THE MILITARY ARCHITECTURE OF THE

TOWER OF LONDON.

By G. T. CLARK.

ALTHOUGH Britain presents numerous examples of military works, and her Welsh and Scottish borders are very thickly set with the castles of the Lords Marchers and local gentry, the circumstances of the country have not been favourable to the production of military buildings of the first class. Our insular position has enabled us to dispense altogether with grand frontier fortresses; and our great nobles, although they often held their own against the Crown, and even encroached upon its legitimate powers, drew their resources from estates more or less scattered in position, and seldom possessed whole provinces, or ruled over a territory sufficiently compact and extensive to justify the construction of a great castle-palace like those of France, for the defence of the lordship and the residence of the baron. The keeps of Arques, Etampes, Provins, and Vez; the towers of Coucy and Beaucaire; the walls of Avignon; and the fortresses of Château-Gailliard, Carcassonne, Villeneuve-lesAvignon, and Pierrefonds, the details of which are familiar to the readers of the exhaustive work of M.

Viollet le Duc, are due to a period when France was divided into provinces, the rulers of which were scarcely subordinate to its Crown, and were either actual monarchs elsewhere, or held much of the state privilege and power of independent sovereigns.

It happens, however, that in that particular class of fortress of which the quadrangular Norman keep is the type, we have less to fear comparison, seeing that castles of this description are confined, or very nearly so, to our own country and to Normandy. Whereas, on the continent of Europe, in Italy, Spain, France, and Germany, the earlier castles appear to have sprung directly from Roman, or debased Roman patterns, in Normandy a simpler and more original type prevailed, unlike what is seen in other parts of France, and which there is some reason to regard as the invention of the Normans themselves. These buildings, so remarkable for their simple quadrangular form and the immense solidity of their masonry, were erected in Normandy during the eleventh century, and are well known by such examples as Arques near Dieppe, Falaise, and Caen.

By the Normans this class of fortress was introduced into England. It is quite unlike the Roman castles which preceded it, and to which, as at Portchester and Lincoln, it was sometimes superadded ; and had, of course, still less in common with the Celtic and Saxon works of earth and timber of which we have so many traces. No doubt the same circumstances that sometimes governed the pre-Norman natives in their choice of a military position-the

neighbourhood of a river, a detached rock, a marshy frontier, or an adjacent highway-governed also the Normans; and if it indeed be the fact that the

motte," or mound so common in Norman castles, both in England and in Normandy, is usually of earlier date, they must very frequently indeed have availed themselves of the earthworks of already existing strong places.

Until recently the mound was looked upon not only as Norman, but as an integral and almost typical feature in a Norman castle. It is, however, evident that heavy Norman walls, such as those remaining at Cardiff and Arundel, and known to have crowned many another earthwork, could only have been safely constructed upon ground consolidated by a considerable lapse of time. Military mounds also are found quite unconnected with Norman or later castles; and on the other hand, some of the finest examples of Norman fortresses have no mound: and this is remarkably the case in the subject of the present memoir, not only one of the earliest and most important of the works of the Conqueror, but placed where a mound of large size would have been peculiarly useful. The mound may be, and probably is, in some, perhaps in many cases, of Norman construction, but it is the quadrangular keep, rather than the mound, which is the grand characteristic of by far the greater number of Norman fortresses.

The pre-eminence of the Tower of London, even in a purely military and architectural point of view, does not, however, depend alone upon its keep. It is, in

its present state, a fine and very complete example of the concentric fortress, not indeed the execution of one period, but nevertheless presenting much harmony of design.

An unaltered Norman castle is very rare, if indeed such exists at all. It is, however, certain that the keep had an enceinte defence and ditch, the latter sometimes part of an earlier earthwork; and in the base court thus formed were stabling and barracks, and other subordinate accommodations. These buildings were at first often of timber, and the enceinte a stout palisade, the object having been to protect the workmen and the garrison during the construction of the stone keep. Both at Dover and Windsor the enceinte wall, part of which is of late Norman date, stands upon the scarp of the ditch of an earlier earthwork, the solid chalk of which, as at Arques, is traversed by subterranean galleries. Where, as at Cardiff and the Tower, the enceinte wall is of great strength, and of the twelfth century, it is probable that the palisade was retained longer than usual, and the wall now seen the first constructed. No regular Norman wall would so soon have required reconstruction.

Where the Norman enceinte was of light construction or insufficient area, it was frequently removed and in the larger works replaced by a double and concentric ring of defences. These additions, usually due to the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I., show that military engineering had made great progress, and that less dependence was placed upon passive strength, and more upon a skilful distribution of material.

« PreviousContinue »