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| © C.Musson |
The earliest castles in Herefordshire are what archaeologists call "motte-and-bailey castles".A motte is a mound made of earth and rubble, on which was built a square timber tower used as a look-out, a place to fire from and for storing weapons. On the top of the mound and surrounding the tower was a palisade made of timber with a platform on the inner side and wooden steps leading up to one side.
Sometimes a bailey is attached – that is an enclosed area which was used for horses and food storage. There are records of over 600 motte castles in England, 83 in Herefordshire alone. Nowadays all that often remains is the motte, the mound, perhaps with trees growing on it.
In Herefordshire, a motte is often called "tump". This is an aerial photograph of Newton Tump. You can see the motte which is covered in trees and the outline of the bailey ditch.
© C.Musson
If you want to find out about castles in Herefordshire, click here.
Many castles made of timber were eventually replaced by stone towers and walls. Many of the castles in Herefordshire are now only ruins.
If you want to find out how castles were built, click here.
Who was responsible for introducing castle-building into England?
The Normans were the first castle builders in England. The Saxons had burghs (towns) with a timber palisade and palisaded farms, but no castles. When the Normans first arrived in Herefordshire they built timber motte and bailey castles because these were relatively easy and quick to build. In time these timber castles were replaced by stone castles. The proto-types for these stone castles already existed in Normandy.
Falaise Castle, which was badly damage during WWII. was renovated over a period of 50 years using modern materials of concrete, glass and steel. Conservationists differ as to the effectiveness of this approach, but the alterations do reflect the military image of power and might of the original of the castle without trying to return it to its original appearance.
The Norman word for "keep" is "donjon", from which we get the word "dungeon", as the earliest Norman prisons were in the castle keep.
The gate house of Caen Castle which was re-built by William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy.
Caen castle is a good example of a Norman Castle built to impress and to control and defend the local population. The castle at Caen has a dry moat
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Why are three of England's earliest castles in Herefordshire? |
Many historians believe that motte-and-bailey castles were built in England only after the Battle of Hastings (1066) by the conquering Normans. Herefordshire is unique in that King Edward (the Confessor) encouraged Normans settle in Herefordshire before 1066. [Note that the street behind All Saints Church in Hereford was called Frenschemanne Lane in the Middle Ages (now Bewell Street)and that the customs governing the townspeople in Hereford recorded in the Herefordshire Domesday Book have been comparied with those of the town of Breteuil in Normandy]. Edward, who had a Norman mother, had spent 25 years in Normandy. The disputed succession to the throne of England can to a large extent be traced to Edward's part-Norman ancestry. He even made his Norman nephew Ralph (the Timid) Earl of Hereford when the Saxon Earl Godwin and his sons were exiled from England during an argument with the King. In response to the defeat of Bishop Ealdred of Worcester by the Welsh in 1049, Ralph and his Norman friends built at least three motte-and-bailey castles in Herefordshire ( Hereford Castle, Ewyas Harold and Richard’s Castle). These would have been the earliest in England because Saxon nobles did not build castles.
If you want to find out more about castles and the conquest, click here.
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Were the Welsh popular in Hereford
in the 11th century? |
Both the Saxons and the Normans fought numerous battles with the Welsh. The following passage from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (an account written by English monks at the time) tells us about something that happened in 1052, 14 years before the Battle of Hastings:
"In the same year Gruffydd, the Welsh king, raided in Herefordshire, so that he came very near to Leominster; and men gathered against him, both local men and French men from the castle. And there were killed very many good men of the English, and also from among the French ".
[Note: The castle near Leominster referred to may be called "Comfort Castle", but the castle itself has been lost. So if anyone has any information about it, please let Hereford Archaeology know. We are in Hereford Town Hall.]
Herefordshire was attacked several times in the 11th Century and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us about another of these attacks in 1055. Gruffydd ap Llewelyn and his men sacked Hereford itself:
"… and then (the Welsh) turned into Hereford market-town and raided it, burned down the famous minster which Bishop Athelstan built, and killed the priests inside the minster, and many others as well, and seized all the treasures in there and led them away with them."
During the episcopacy of Bishop Aethelstan (1012-1056) a stone cathedral was built. The extent of the destruction during the Welsh raid is uncertain.
The present building was begun as a two-storey chapel by the Norman bishop Robert de Losinga (1079-1095) and developed into a cathedral during the episcopate of Bishop Reynhelm (1107-1115).
© Hereford Record Office Gruffydd ap Llewelyn, the leader of the Welsh, may not have been a popular man in Hereford, but if we read another primary source, the Liber Landavensis, the Charter of the Cathedral of Llandaff, we get a different picture of him.
"And not degenerating from the nobility, piety, and liberality of his predecessors, but imitating and excelling them in energy and bravery, as well against the barbarous English on the one part, who always fled on seeing his face in battle, …"
Most primary sources of this period of the early Middle Ages were written in Latin. This is what this quote is in the original Latin:
"Et non degenerans a praedecessorum nobilitate, pietate, et largitate, immo imitans, et praecellens rigore et fortitudine tum contra barbaros Anglos ex una parte, semper fugitivos, visa facie sua in acie belli…"
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What has Harold Godwinson, King of England, got to do with Hereford? |
Harold had been Earl of Hereford and had held large tracts of land in the county. The best way to find out how much land he had held, is to look at the Domesday Book for Herefordshire.
The Domesday Book was a survey taken by King William’s officials in 1085 to gather information on who owned what. This document tells us who held land before the conquest and who then held it after 1066 and how much it was worth.
This portrait of King William the Conqueror taken from a 17th century etching shows him as a proud warrior. Of course we do not know what anyone really looked like at this time, because we don't have pictures of them painted during their lifetime.
After the Battle of Hastings (1066), when King Harold was killed, King William, the new king, distributed Harold's lands. The Domesday Book tells us who the owner in 1085 was.
© Hereford Record Office
William was the illegitimate son of the Duke of Normandy -to this day some Normans still call him William the Bastard- and although his father made his knights swear to uphold William's right to succeed him as the next ruler of Normandy, when the Duke died, some of the barons rebelled and tried to murder the young William. On one such occasion, a knight called Osbern died by having his throat slit whilst trying to defend the boy. It is interesting to note that after the conquest of England, William put his friend William fitz Osbern (fitz means son of ) in charge of Hereford and much of the border area. Osbern would have been pleased that his loyalty and bravery were eventually rewarded. In fact it was William fitz Osbern who, as Earl of Hereford, re-built Hereford Castle.[If you want to read more about this Norman knight see, "William fitz Osbern and the Norman settlement in Herefordshire" by David Walker, Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club, Volume XLV, 1985.]
Many landless knights fought for William at the Battle of Hastings and were rewarded by him with land. Many Saxons lost their land and their homes. William was a shrewd man. So that an individual knight did not get too powerful, the parcels of land were often spread out all over the country. That is one of the reasons important families often had estates in different counties.
Statue of William the Conqueror in Falaise, Normandy. After 1066 there was a lot of destruction because many Saxon nobles rebelled against King William. The Normans used great force to keep the land under their control and often destroyed the farms and manors which had belonged to the rebellious Saxon nobles. This is why many farms were not worth as much just after the conquest as they were before the conquest. In Herefordshire there is the additional problem of recurrent attacks by the Welsh.
Here is what the Domesday Book tells us about some of the land previously held by King Harold in Herefordshire:
"Harold also held Chickward. 1 hide and 3 virgates of land, waste…In Huntington 3 hides…In Rushock 4 hides. Earl Harold held these lands. Now the King has them; they are waste."
"(Much) Marcle. Earl Harold held it. 17 hides which pay tax.
In lordship 4 ploughs;
36 villagers and 10 smallholders with 40 ploughs. These villagers plough and sow with their own seed 80 acres of wheat and as many of oats, except for 9 acres: 6 of these belong to William son of Baderon, 3 to St.Mary’s of Cormeilles.
In this manor is a reeve, 1 Frenchman and 1 riding man; they have 3 ploughs. 8 slaves,
1 ploughman and 6 female slaves.
A mill which pays nothing, except sustenance for its keeper. Woodland which pays 5s which are given to Droitwich for 60 measures of salt…."
…1 hide of this manor is at Turlestane; before 1066 it paid 50 lumps of iron and 6 salmon…
Value before 1066 £30; value now as much." (Domesday Book Herefordshire 1,7)
This is obviously a much richer manor which managed to retain its value. Taxes during this period were usually paid in money, however, there were a number of Welsh communities settled in the southern and western part of the county and these were usually governed by their own traditions. With regard to taxes, for example, they often paid in kind, that means they paid with things they made or grew.
Manors were more or less self-contained. That means that they managed to feed, house and clothe the villagers with things grown or made locally.
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Crime and Punishment |
For some time after the Norman Conquest, Saxon law still applied and if you killed someone you had to pay the dead man’s lord a fine. We know what the fines were in Herefordshire because they were written down in the "Herefordshire Customs", which can be found in the Domesday Book for Herefordshire.
"If anyone kills one of the King’s men or commits house-breaking, he gives the King 20s as payment for the man and 100s in forfeiture. If anyone has killed a thane’s man, he gives 10s to the dead man’s lord."
The law was different for the Welsh, however, who lived in Archenfield, which today is the area around Ross-on-Wye.
"But if a Welshman has killed a Welshman, the relatives of the slain man gather and despoil the killer and his relatives and burn their houses until the body of the dead man is buried the next day about midday. The King has the third part of this plunder, but they have all the rest free."
Archenfield is in the south-west of the county. For a long time the border to Wales was the river Wye, seen here from Symonds Yat. Many placenames in this part of Herefordshire attest to its Welsh origins. (eg. Llanwarne and Llangarron)
To make sure that the Herefordshire men of Welsh descent fought bravely on the side of the English, the men of Ross had to be in the front of the troops when attacking and at the back when retreating:
"When the army advances of the enemy, these men by custom form the vanguard and on their return the rearguard. These were the customs of the Welshmen in Archenfield before 1066."
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The Marcher Lords |
The area between England was Wales was called the Marches. During the Middle Ages this area was ruled by the Marcher Barons, who held more power than lords anywhere else in England. The four most powerful families were the Mortimers, the Clares, the Marshalls (Goodrich Castle for example, was held by William Marshall) and the Bohuns. They were allowed to build castles without the king’s permission and to wage war against the Welsh. In fact they got to keep any land they managed to conquer from the Welsh for themselves.
The Marcher Lords became very wealthy. The Bohuns, for example, hired an Austin Friar (a type of monk) to copy and work on manuscripts for them.
One Herefordshire family, the Mortimers, knew how to play the power game and carved out an important role for itself during the Middle Ages.
To read more about the powerful Mortimer family and Wigmore Castle, click here.Throughout the Middle Ages, when there were troubles in England, as for example when Stephen and Mathilda were fighting for the throne of England, the Welsh rulers took advantage of this and attacked Herefordshire and the Marches. If you look at the distribution map of castles in Herefordshire, you will see that many of them are built in the area of the border with Wales.
Map of Mottes and Castles in Herefordshire
TFM
