Nowhere in the vast county should we find one of those grim but stately rectangular towers which have come to be regarded as the distinguishing feature of a Norman castle, but which, with a few exceptions, form merely one of the characteristics of an early Plantagenet castle; we should not find a single Juliet keep, and it is very doubtful whether we should find a single castle where the palisading running round the outer edge of the motte had been replaced by a stone wall, or as Mr. Clark terms it, a shell keep. And we must remember that the date of our imaginary visit is more than eighty years after the Conquest!

Brought up as we have been since boyhood on such works as Scott's Ivanhoe and the late mediæval romance of King Arthur, the word "Norman castle" conjures up a veritable Gustave Doré fortress, with towering turreted keep and enormous curtain walls and a crowd of "noble knights and fair ladies" in the glory of their heraldic arms, in the equal grandeur of their noble names. Just as on a summer's evening a far-off range of mountains, blue and hazy in the distance, calls to us with an irresistible appeal, so in these days of motor traction and wireless telegraphy, there is nothing that appeals to us with greater force than the glamour of the early Middle Ages. But were it possible for us to transport ourselves back into the year 1154, all these beautiful visions would tumble into the mud like a pack of cards.

The Gustave Doré castle would vanish into thin air and in its place we should find a frowsy, evil-smelling timber structure which a sanitary inspector of the present day would at once condemn as unfit for human habitation. A two-storey block of timber buildings in the bailey afforded the main accommodation, and of this block the great hall was the prominent feature. The hall proper was on the first floor level, approached from the courtyard by a flight of timber steps. A long, low apartment, devoid of a fireplace, and lit by unglazed loops in its timber walls, with a thatched roof which did not always keep out the

an unusually fine one, is some 75 feet in height, and about 80 feet in diameter at the summit, on which are the foundations of a polygonal shell keep erected by Henry II, as is proved by the Pipe Rolls of 1178-9, the cost being £123 128. 5d., equivalent to some £2,500 of modern money. The entire bailey was probably walled in at the time with which we are dealing, viz. the year 1154. Existing architectural detail shows that

the lower portion of the gatehouse was erected during the last quarter of the eleventh century, and possibly the curtains were commenced in 1101, when Ordericus (Hist. Ecc., iv, 33; xi, 3) tells us that Robert Belesme fortified the stronghold. The bulk of the bailey walls, however, were probably constructed by Henry I, and the Pipe Rolls, 31 Henry I, 33, 36, mention expenses connected with this work,

wet, and in which many a bird had its nest, this room was the centre of the daily life of the fortress. A heavy board fixed on trestles ran up the hall, with rough benches on either side for seats. At the dais end, raised a step or two above the rest of the room, was the high table where the lord and lady of the castle sat with the family and guests. After supper the hall became the dormitory of the household, the trestles being removed and beds of fern and dry rushes made along the sides of the room. Opening out of the dais end of the hall was the "solar" or private apartment of the lord and lady of the castle, a luxury which does not appear to have come into vogue until quite late in the eleventh century. Connected with this room was probably a smaller apartment, in which the daughters of the lord slept the sons would sleep in the hall with the other members of the household. Neckham, in his De Utensilibus, written in the last quarter of the twelfth century, mentions only four rooms in a house, the hall, the chamber, the kitchen, and the larder or store-room. Sometimes, in the lesser important castles, the timber tower on the summit of the motte provided the accommodation just mentioned as existing in the bailey, the latter place merely containing the stabling, outhouses, etc. the summer months the bulk of the cooking was done out of doors in the courtyard of the bailey or the motte; in the winter months it was done in a small room opening out of the lower end of the hall.

The domestic architecture of a period invariably gives us a clue to the habits and manners of that particular time. The barons of the Norman period, in spite of their highsounding and now historic names, were not exactly the sort of people one would now-a-days ask to dine with us. Take the roughest and most brutal Durham pit-lad you can find, invest him with absolute and uncontrolled authority, and you would have a very fair sample of the Norman baron of the time with which we are dealing. There would be exceptions, of course, we are speaking of the average It would be indiscreet to enter into details, but in those days it was not fashionable to wash, handkerchiefs were unknown, common decency, not to speak of privacy, was conspicuous by its absence. To cut matters short, the Norman baron was a verminous person in the ordinary meaning of the word. The less said the better of the morals of that period. The virtue of no girl or young married woman with any pretensions to good looks was worth a moment's

purchase; it was it was an acknowledged perquisite of the ruling classes to take what they chose in this line. The revolting cruelties practised upon prisoners, not only during the terrible intestinal warfare of the time of Stephen, but in every one of the many rebellions of the days of the four Norman kings, prove clearly enough how brutal, bestial, and horrible were those days. Nor were the women any better than the men. It is recorded that a high-born Norman lady would relieve the tedium of a long day, when her lord was out hunting, by having an unoffending servant-male or female stripped and soundly female-stripped thrashed in the courtyard. It relieved the tedium of the day! The Norman barons had their redeeming features; they were at least men. They had to be, for it was a case of the survival of the fittest, and the castles they erected reflect the brutality of their builders.

Having now put on one side the erroneous idea that the Norman castles were stately stone structures, let us endeavour to ascertain what fortresses were in existence in the North Riding at the time of the accession of the first of the Plantagenets. The writer is not prepared to contend that he is in a position to enumerate all the castles erected in that district between the time of the Conquest of the North and the year 1154. It is possible, indeed probable, that the sites of one or two may have been entirely obliterated owing to the cultivation of the soil. Local records dealing with the savage and troublous times of the four Norman kings are scanty and incomplete; we are, as it were, looking through a glass darkly, and the history of the existing earthworks marking the site of a Norman castle is often difficult to ascertain. It need, therefore, be a matter of little surprise to us if several castles have disappeared altogether, leaving no trace of their one-time existence either in earthworks or in records.

Nor is it at all easy to say definitely when such and such a castle was erected. Domesday gives us no assistance; it is as capricious in its mention of castles as it is of churches; neither were taxed, consequently they did not enter into the raison d'être of the Survey. We are almost entirely dependent upon historical inferences, and valuable though they be they are but inferences. The question, "What castles existed in the North Riding at the time of the Survey?" is a difficult, if not impossible one to answer. Richmond we know, from existing architectural detail, was completed, with its massive

curtain walls, its mural towers, its great hall, and its solar, possibly some ten years previous to the Survey. Foss Castle, near Whitby, was probably erected by Nigel Fossard previous to the Survey, and the same may be said of Skelton Castle, the great and apparently the only fortress of Richard de Surdeval. Pickering, in its original form, i.e. devoid of the outer or southern bailey, which was added much later, and Northallerton (Castle Hills), were probably erected by the Conqueror soon after the Conquest of the North, whilst Topcliffe was certainly constructed previous to the Survey by William de Percy. A castle would also appear to have been erected at Brompton-inPickering Lythe by Berenger de Todeni. If a castle really did exist at Guisborough, and on this point it is impossible to speak with any degree of certainty, it may have owed its origin to the Count of Mortain, and would probably be destroyed by Rufus in 1088; it would certainly not be in existence after. 1119.

The reign of Rufus may have been responsible for the erection by Robert de Brus of the fortress of Castleton. Crayke, a castle of the bishops of Durham, probably dates from this period, as do Middleham and Cotherston, the former erected by Ribald, brother of Alan le Roux of Richmond, the latter by Bodin, another brother. Thirsk, the great castle of Robert de Mowbray, probably dates from this reign, as may do Cropton and Buttercrambe, erected by Robert de Stuteville.

appear to have been Helmsley, the great

The long reign of Henry I would not unduly prolific in the erection of castles. stronghold of Walter l'Espec; Killerby, the castle of Scolland; Whorlton, the fortress of Robert de Meynell; Pickhill, the castle of Roald, constable of Richmond; Malton, the fortress of Eustace Fitz-John, and possibly a castle erected at Feliskirk by a junior branch of the house of Fossard, may date from this reign. On the other hand, the castle of Guisborough, if it ever existed, would be dismantled either by Rufus after the Mortain. rebellion of 1088, or by Robert de Brus previous to 1119.

The terrible intestinal disorders of the time of Stephen may have been responsible for the erection by Bernard de Balliol of a small castle on his manor of Easby; of the strong fortress of Castle Levington by Robert de Brus; of the castle of Kildale by a junior branch of the house of Percy; of the promontory fortress of Kilton by Pagan, the ancestor of the de Kiltons; of the castle of Sheriff Hutton by Bertram de Bulmer; of the

castle of Hode by the Mowbrays; of the small motte castle. of Carlton-in-Coverdale by the Fitz-Randolphs of Middleham ; of the stone castle of Scarborough by William le Gros, 3rd Earl of Albemarle, who already possessed a great fortress at Skipsea (East Riding), and of the two purely robber castles of Hutton Conyers and Yafforth, by Alan the Black, the holder of the Honour of Richmond.1 It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to remark that the date of the erection of the majority of the abovementioned castles is conjectural owing to almost complete lack of documentary evidence.

Tradition avers that several other castles, of which Hornby in Richmondshire is one, were founded during the Norman period; but as historical inferences do not strongly support these traditions, and as there are no earthworks at these places which can, with confidence, be assigned to this period, they are omitted from the list. The writer is, however, quite prepared to admit that a certain number of hastily constructed "adulterine" castles may have been erected in the North Riding during the anarchy of the time of Stephen-in addition to those mentioned above-all traces of which have disappeared. We have now, including Catterick, enumerated thirty-two castles as erected in the North Riding between the time of the Conquest of the North and the accession of Henry II. To this list we may add Northallerton-the Bishops' Palace-which, although not erected until the reign of Richard I, may be more conveniently referred to here as it was, in its original form, a motte and bailey castle; and the siege castle of Pickering (Beacon Hill), the date of which is unknown. This brings the list up to thirty-four in number. If, in order to err on the safe side, we omit Guisborough and Hode-of which all traces would seem to have disappeared-and also Carlton, Catterick, Brompton, and Feliskirk-which are more or less doubtful, the number is reduced to twenty-eight. Of these twenty-eight castles no fewer than nineteen possessed mottes, viz.:-Castle Levington, Castleton, Cotherston, Crayke, Cropton, Easby, Foss, Killerby, Middleham, Northallerton (2), Pickering (2), Pickhill, Sheriff Hutton, Thirsk, Topcliffe, Whorlton, and Yafforth. Of these, Castle Levington, Castleton, Cotherston, Easby, Pickering (Beacon Hill), and Yafforth were motte castles devoid of a bailey. At Skelton there is a certain amount of

1 If a castle existed at Catterick, it would probably owe its origin to Alan

the Black.

VOL. XXII.

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