The Early Period and Timber Castles.

Herefordshire is an important county for the study of the development of the Norman Castle. It’s position as a county on the Welsh border and the aggression of the Welsh Princes quickly established it as a district of importance for frontier control after the Norman Conquest of England.

Once the Norman Conquest was completed each major landowner was allowed to build a castle as his main seat of power, which he held from and on behalf of the King.

The earliest castles in Herefordshire after the Conquest were nearly all timber. This typical early Norman stronghold included a moated mound or motte, which would often have a wooden palisade (wall) and a timber tower, maybe even 3 stories high. The motte may have had a court, or bailey attached, which was often defended by ditches and palisades. The palisade could sometimes be further strengthened by the addition of towers or turrets.

A stylised diagram of a motte and bailey castle.

The bailey was where the residential and commercial buildings of the castle would stand. These buildings would include workshops for the carpenters and blacksmiths, stables for the lord’s horses and storage buildings for supplies.

There are many sites in Herefordshire where the motte is little more than a mound with a surrounding ditch but no sign of an outer bailey. Such sites are known as castle mounds, tumps and twts. There is very rarely any sign of stonework on these sites and they may have been constructed as temporary defences at times of war (see Castle Twts, Kington: SMR 347).

The extensive castle building by the Normans caused friction among the natives and when Godwin, Earl of Hereford, returned from exile (he had been exiled for raising troops against King Edward and disobeying his orders) he demanded that the Norman’s be banished and their castles destroyed. Many of the Norman Lords fled but Osbern Pentecost remained and surrendered his castle. Ewyas Harold Castle was dismantled in 1052.

In the Domesday Survey of 1086, 50 castles and 2 ‘domus defensabiles’ (fortified manors) were mentioned in England. Of these 12, or one quarter, are on the Welsh border with 7 of the castles and the 2 ‘domus defensabiles’ being in Herefordshire. This demonstrates the importance of Herefordshire as a frontier zone. The need to conquer and consolidate in this county was stronger than in most other parts of Britain.

As Herefordshire was on the border of Wales it was important that the Norman’s install an efficient form of defence. Wales had not been conquered and the Norman’s were well aware of the power of the Welsh and the trouble that they could cause, so the Herefordshire border and it’s new castles were to act as a buffer zone between the conquered and the ‘rabble’.

In 1067 the Norman King, William The Conqueror, put his cousin William fitz Osbern in charge of a castle building regime in Herefordshire. In the four years between 1067 and the death of William fitz Osbern in 1071 he had rebuilt the castles at Ewyas Harold and Hereford and built significant castles at Clifford and Wigmore. The Lords of these new castles then gave sections of land to their knights in return for periods of military service. This regime split the county into castelries creating a semi-military feudal system.

Henry I (1100-1135) had only one true heir, his daughter Matilda, though there were many ‘pretenders’, his nephew Stephen being one of them. When Henry died Stephen quickly crossed the border into Scotland and had himself crowned as King. People opposed to him quickly pledged their allegiance to Matilda and between 1139 and 1148 there was civil war in this country.

In 1138-9 King Stephen campaigned in the county, but Herefordshire was held by Matilda. Matilda garrisoned Hereford Castle against Stephen and rebuilt many castles along the Marches. Stephen marched on Hereford and whilst taking the castle burnt the city and all below the River Wye. Matilda arrived soon after and overpowered Stephen’s men. She created a new earldom in Hereford for Miles of Gloucester, one of her most loyal supporters. Miles’ son Roger along with Hugh de Mortimer and Gilbert De Lacy were the chief barons when Matilda’s son Henry came into power in 1154. These barons were responsible for building Aymestrey and Longtown castles among others.

Another major period of castle building occurred in around 1403 when the Welsh rebel Owain Glyn Dwr exposed Herefordshire to the risk of invasion by the Welsh and Henry IV, worried about the state of the border defences, ordered many castles to be re-fortified. Ewyas Harold, Goodrich, Eardisley, Snodhill, Lyonshall, Huntington and Brampton Bryan were all warned of the danger of not being prepared for Welsh attack. They were ordered to equip themselves with men, stores, arms and artillery. Unfortunately Owain Glyn Dwr and the Welsh took many castles in this area.

Timber is a very vulnerable material, prone to decay and damage by fire, and because of this all that survives of the many timber fortifications of the county are the earthworks. Even so, the ease of building in timber means that there are over 3,000 of these around the country built in the 150 years after the Conquest, compared to the 500 – 600 stone castles built between 1066 and the end of the medieval period.

A final, late period of castle building occurred in the English Civil War between King Charles II and Parliament (1642-1647). Herefordshire nobles were mainly on the side of the Royalist cause, with the notable exception of the Harleys of Brampton Bryan, who were Parliamentarians. Some castles were refortified but some were deliberately damaged to prevent the enemy from occupying them. Examples of this destruction to foil the enemy occur at Goodrich Castle, which had been occupied by both Parliamentarians and Royalists, and Croft Castle, which was slighted by Irish levies employed by Royalists.

Unfortunately the slighting of the castles meant that there was now a good supply of building stone available for other buildings. This has made the identification and study of castles very difficult. The most preserved castles often survive in places where the surrounding town decayed once the castle lost its purpose and the lord no longer lived there, (e.g. Clifford and Goodrich). In flourishing towns such as Hereford the stone from the castle was reused for buildings (such as the Vicar’s Choral) and other works and the castle all but disappeared.

At the time of the Domesday Survey in 1086 seven castles were mentioned in Herefordshire, but it is not stretching the imagination to think that the actual number may have been far greater than this. The Domesday Survey was concerned with recording income and value not expenditure, which castles were often classed as. In the years following 1066 Herefordshire would have had ‘castles’ scattered across the region. These would have ranged from small mounds with simple timber towers to stone motte and bailey castles and fortified manor houses, not identified as castles until they had been given a licence to crenellate (build battlements) by the King.

As stone defences became more common the wooden palisades, or fences round the tops of mottes were sometimes replaced with stone walls for added strength. These structures are now called shell keeps.

In Herefordshire stone castles were most notably built during the 13^th century with castles being constructed at Snodhill, Longtown, Lyonshall, Huntington and Goodrich.

The biggest problem with rectangular stone keep towers was that the enemy could undermine them quite easily. Tunnels could be dug under the corner, filled with wood and set alight causing the foundation to give way and the tower to partially collapse. Many of the rectangular castle keeps were eventually replaced with circular ones as these were less vulnerable to undermining and damage by the enemy. The best example of a circular keep is the one at Ewyas Lacy, but there are further examples at Longtown and Lyonshall.

Longtown Tower

In the earlier timber castles the gateway had been little more than a gap in the timber wall, but in the more sophisticated stone castles it became an important part of the castle’s defensive system. The entrance to the castle evolved into a passage running through a tower within the curtain wall. Some castles, such as at Brampton Bryan had twin towers with the gatehouse passage running between them. This tower and passage system created an area for surveillance and enabled control of entry into the castle via the barbican and portcullis gates.

The gatehouse was not the only defensive system that occurred as a result of building in stone. Improvements were also made to the curtain wall. Corner towers were often added as well as towers in the sides of the curtain wall such as at Wigmore Castle. These towers would give the castle a better defensive advantage over the enemy.

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