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sleep." The third room was used by the garrison and menservants of the castle, where "they took their sleep at some time or other"-apparently as their duties permitted. On the eastern side of the main tower was apparently another projection, but whether this commenced at the ground level, or was supported by uprights, is not very clear. On the first floor level of this projection was the logium or parlour, probably principally used in the summer months, "where they used to sit in conversation for recreation"; above it was the chapel, evidently entered from the second floor level, a room which was made like unto the Tabernacle of Solomon in its ceiling and decoration." Possibly it is the cupola roof of such a chapel which is shown in the Bayeux Tapestry at the keeps of Bayeux and Rennes. "There were stairs and passages from storey to storey, from the house into the kitchen, from room to room, and again from the house into the logium."

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If we draw a plan of such a tower, giving only moderate dimensions to the apartments, and if we remember that its angles must have stood clear of the stockade and its accompanying fighting platform, we shall probably conclude that the motte on which it was placed could not have been less than 150 feet in diameter. Obviously these great timber keeps were no make-shift structures designed to exist only until the motte was sufficiently consolidated to bear a stone edifice. Their builders probably never contemplated the possibility of the future existence of a stone tower.

The great disadvantage of these timber towers was their liability to be destroyed by fire, and to partially obviate this danger there is no doubt that the cooking was done, at any rate during the summer months, in the little courtyard on the summit of the motte. Indeed, all our evidence goes to show that the habits and method of life of the Anglo-Normans were much more primitive than we have been led to imagine.1

The keep would be provided with turrets and battlements, and at convenient points crates of stones would be placed to be used as missiles against an enemy. We may almost

1 When the fine oval motte at Burtonin-Lonsdale was excavated, it was found that the courts of both the motte and the bailey were paved with rough stones, chosen haphazard and varying in shape and size, bedded in stiff clay. On this rude pavement were found traces of fires and a quantity of wood ashes, together with bones of animals used for food, many iron implements, such as knives

and arrow heads, an axe, a large key, and half a human jaw. Everything pointed to the cooking having been habitually done in the courtyards, and the excavation greatly strengthened the theory that domestic manners in the days of the Normans were primitive in the extreme (see the Trans., Cumb. and West. Antiq. Soc. (1905), 284).

take it for granted that there was generally a well on the motte, for this citadel was intended to be held after the bailey had been captured.1

The stockade running round the outer edge of the motte and enclosing the courtyard in which the keep stood evidently had a fighting platform attached to it. As the majority of these mottes were three-quarters detached, forming part of the general line of enceinte, we may conclude that there would be, in that part of the stockade looking towards the open field, a screened postern door by means of which the occupants of the citadel could leave it without having to pass through the bailey.2

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Jean de Colmieu,3 in his life of John, the sainted Bishop of Terouenne (obiit 1130), gives us a description of the method of entering these citadels from the bailey. "Bishop John," he says, was wont frequently to stay at Merchem, when visiting his diocese. Near by the churchyard was an exceedingly high fortress, which might be termed a castle or municipium (castrum vel municipium), built many years previously by the then lord of the manor according to the fashion which then prevailed. It is the custom of the great lords and nobles in that district, who spend much of their time in civil war, in order that they may be safe from their enemies, or that by their superior power they may conquer their equals or oppress their inferiors, to throw up a hill of earth as high as they can, and to encircle it with a ditch of great breadth and depth. They fortify the upper edge of this mound with a very strong palisade of hewn logs, sometimes placing turrets on its circuit at necessary points. Within this fortification they erect a house or keep (arx) dominating the entire enclosure. The entrance to this residence (villa) is only by means of a bridge, which rising from the counterscarp of the motte ditch, and being

He says

1 Neckham's treatise, De Utensilibus, tells us that a well was usually provided on the summit of the motte. that the motte should be placed on a site well defended by nature; that there should be a strong stockade of hewn logs running round the outer edge at the summit; that the keep or tower in the centre of this fortified enclosure should be provided with turrets and battlements; that there should be a well in the courtyard on the summit of the motte so that the citadel might be held after the bailey had been taken, and that crates of stones should be placed at suitable places to be used as missiles against an enemy. Unfortunately, only

a very limited number of mottes have been scientifically examined, but wells have been found at Almondbury, Berkeley, Berkhampstead, Carisbrooke, Conisborough, Kenilworth, Northallerton, Norwich, Pontefract, Oxford, Tunbridge, Worcester, and York. The well discovered at Northallerton, when the earthworks were destroyed by the railway, was, however, probably that of the bailey.

2 It was possibly by such a postern that the Empress made her escape from the castle of Oxford.

3 Jean de Colmieu, in his Vita beati Joannis Morinorum episcopi (Acta Sanctorum, 26 January, vol. iii, 409–417).

supported by double or even by triple columns placed beneath it at suitable intervals, rises by a graduated slope above the ditch until it reaches the level of the summit of the motte (agger) and touches the threshold of the enclosure." This method of entry is very clearly shown in the Bayeux Tapestry. The steep ladder or bridge was formed of planks, and was fitted with projecting pieces of wood nailed to it in order to afford. foothold, and it is evident, from the pictures of the castles of Bayeux, Dol, and Rennes, that horses were trained to climb. up this steep ascent. The bridge or ladder was evidently guarded at its base by a small outwork in the shape of a timber gate or turret, and terminated, at its upper end, in a timber platform or outwork projecting from the base of the stockade running round the outer edge of the summit of the motte. Jean de Colmieu goes on to tell us that when the aged Bishop was leaving the castle to consecrate the adjacent churchyard, a crowd of his admirers followed him down the bridge which, at its highest point, was some 35 feet above the motte ditch, and the frail structure, unable to bear the unusual weight, suddenly collapsed, and precipitated them all into the bottom of the ditch, where they were up to their knees in water.

Unfortunately, we seem to possess no contemporary description of the bailey of one of these earth-and-timber castles ; but the mere fact that no stables, outhouses, workshops, cowsheds, etc., are mentioned as existing on the motte shows that these must necessarily, when a bailey formed part of the fortress, have been placed in this usual accessory.

The bank of the bailey ditch was surrounded by a strong palum, pelum, palitium, or timber palisade, with its accompanying fighting platform, possibly about 18 feet high. It is possible that there was a timber gatehouse of two storeys at the entrance. The custom of enfilading the enceinte by projecting mural towers did not come into force until much later; but there can be no doubt whatever that, in those castles where the hall stood in the bailey, one or two small timber towers would be placed upon the enceinte, and it is a very significant fact that the stone curtains at Richmond, which date from the last quarter of the eleventh century, are so provided. The palisade. of the bailey at two points was carried up the sides of the motte until it met the stockade running round the outer edge

1" Locum in Eboraco qui dicitur Vetus Ballium, primo spissis et longis 18 pedum tabulis . .

fortiter in

cludebat." T. Stubbs, in Raine's Historians of the Church of York, R.S., ii, 417.

of the motte summit, exactly as stone walls do in those Norman castles which eventually developed works in masonry. Occasionally this portion of the bailey stockade was provided with its own banquette running up the sides of the motte, and at the interesting little motte and bailey castle of Ardmayle, Tipperary, erected by Theobald Walter, this banquette still remains in excellent preservation.

The entrance to the bailey was usually at a point as far distant from the motte as possible. Where the contour of the ground, or other circumstances, required the entrance to be placed near the motte, there was sometimes an earth-and-timber barbican, common to motte and bailey alike, placed at this point to afford an additional protection to the entrance.1

The counterscarp of the bailey ditch was defended by a quick hedge of thorns and brambles, or by a row of stakes entwined with thorns, termed the hericia.2

There is another point to note before we attempt to apply this contemporary evidence to the earthworks which we have enumerated as existing in the North Riding. Ordericus Vitalis tells us of the destruction, in the year 1090, of the great hall (principalis aula) in the bailey (in munimentis) of the castle of Brionne by means of red-hot darts or of arrows tipped with burning tow shot on to its shingled roof. This is sufficient contemporary evidence to prove that the great hall, the centre of the domestic life of the castle, was sometimes placed in the bailey and not in the timber keep on the summit of the motte. There can be no doubt whatever that there was, perhaps from the earliest times, invariably a hall in the bailey of a Norman earth-and-timber castle, which was the usual residence of a tenant-in-capite or great feudatory. This applies equally to stone castles. At Rochester, for instance, although the great stone keep contained a fine hall, there was also a timber hall in the bailey. This was also the case at Scarborough, and numerous other instances might be cited.

1 Examples may be seen at Mexborough (West Riding), Castle Acre, Castle Colwyn, Burton-in-Lonsdale, and Lilburne.

2 This would afford a useful additional protection, as the hedge would be practically impervious to fire (see Cohausen's Befestigungen der Vorzeit, pp. 8-13). Lambert of Ardres tells us, p. 623:

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Reparato exterioris Ardensis munitionis valli fossato et amplificato, et sepibus et ericiis consepto et constipato." In the account, by Jordan Fantosme, of the siege of the castle of Wark by the

Scots, we are told that the assailants managed to penetrate the hericon or hedge on the counterscarp and got into the bailey ditch, but failed to carry the palicium or stockade

3" Callidi enim obsessores in fabrili fornace, quæ in promptu structa fuerat, ferrum missilium callefaciebant, subitoque super tectum principalis aulæ in munimentis jaciebant, et sic ferrum candens sagittarum atque pilorum in arida veterum lanugine imbricum totis nisibus figebant (Ord. Vit., viii, 13).

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But on one point the writer must confess that he feels very doubtful, and that is where the Norman baron had his meals and where he slept.1 Wright, in his excellent History of Domestic Architecture (p. 19), says: "Dining in private was always considered disgraceful, and is mentioned as a blot on a man's character;" but he also says (p. 40): In some cases, where the party was not an ostentatious or a public one, the meal was served in a chamber instead of in the hall." The first meal of the day was often, if not always, brought to the lord in his private chamber, but it was undoubtedly the custom of the baron to have his main meal or meals with his retainers in the hall, the noble and his family on the dais, the retainers" below the salt." If the baron always resided in a chamber, either in a timber keep within the palisaded summit of the motte, or (when the motte was not of sufficient size to bear a detached tower) in a chamber in a wooden turret projecting from the palisade, we have only to see a number of these mottes to realise how very awkward it would be for the baron to take his evening meal in the hall in the bailey. Yet it is difficult to believe that he would take his meal alone or with his family in his chamber on the motte for, the work of the day done, this would be the time for the gathering together of the entire household. However useful, indeed absolutely essential, the motte was from a defensive point of view at the majority of these castles, it cannot have been a convenient place of residence. Try to imagine, for instance, my Lord Percy, after supping not wisely but too well in the great hall in the bailey of Topcliffe Castle, attempting on a dark and stormy night to ascend the steep ladder or bridge leading to his apartments on the summit of the motte. We shall probably come to the conclusion that there would be occasions when my lord would find it more convenient to occupy the solar opening out of the hall in the bailey. The whole point is one that requires elucidation.

Le

1 De Caumont (Abecedaire d'Archeologie, p. 392) thinks that the baron always slept in a tower on the motte. donjon était une tour plus ou moins élevée, tantot en bois, tantot en pierre, divisée en plusieurs étages et du haut de laquelle on découvrait, pour l'ordinaire, une étendue de pays assez considérable. Le commandant de la place habitait dans cette citadelle, sous laquelle était ordinairement une prison souterraine où le jour ne pouvait pénétrer."

Mrs. Armitage, Early Norman Castles of the British Isles, p. 74, says:

"The keep in which he (the baron) and his family live is placed on the top of the motte, which is ditched round so as to separate it from the bailey; the provisions on which all are dependent are stored in the cellar of the keep, so that they are under his own hand; and the keys of the outer ward are brought to him every night, and placed under his pillow."

Cohaussen, in his Befestigungen der Vorzeit, p. 282, would appear to think that the baron always resided on the

motte.

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