This site aspires to be a comprehensive listing
of the medieval castles, castle sites, fortified houses, urban and
coastal defences and other fortifications of England and Wales built or
in use from 1000 to 1600. It's not a history of castles and users of
the site are expected to have a basic understanding of castles and
medieval England and Wales. The site is a resource for those interested
in castles studies both professional and amateur.
This is an ambitious project and any such list is bound to have omissions and errors. However, it is hoped that by using the flexible and responsive media of the Internet that this list can be as comprehensive and as current as possible. I've taken, as my standard for what is a fortification, that which the various authors I draw my information from consider to be a fortification, although some sites have later been rejected as fortifications and these are noted as such. Sites which consist of entirely passive defences such as moated houses and walled sites without wall walks and parapets are generally excluded. However, as a 'control group', I do list all the royal and episcopal residential houses and hunting lodges of the period (lumped together under the title 'palace'). Some of these were fortified but many were not. Defining 'the castle' is difficult and any definition of a castle, whilst explaining why places of different social status and form are all castles, should also explain why some places of equal social status were not castles.
The site consists of three main sections. The first is the listings of medieval fortifications; the second is a listing of the texts and online sources used in compiling information for these lists, this section also contains details of some other important or useful texts and Internet resources; the third section is a collection of other resources of interest to castle studies such as distribution maps, a list of licences to crenellate and some other transcriptions of primary sources and some lists and discussion of archaeological terminology.
There are relatively few pictures in this site since the information on the site takes up several ten of megabytes of space. I hope the content will make up for the lack of bells and whistles.
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SOURCES |
LISTS OF SITES |
OTHER INFORMATION |
In the web site are over 5000 individual pages for medieval fortified sites. Unfortunately it is not possibly to directly search for an individual site from within the web site (but the county and site indexes are useful). The site is pretty well indexed by Google and use of the Google search engine below should produce full results but see the news section below for latest information as the Google updating of the changes to the site takes some time.
This project has been much assisted by the help and support of many knowledgeable people. My thanks those who have helped.
While I have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the data held within this web site and the associated downloadable databases, it must be appreciated that much of this is compiled from secondary sources and that the information supplied may not be a full or reliable statement of the archaeological resource. I shall not be held liable in respect of any errors or omissions from the listing provided. (i.e. If you use this site for something important check the secondary sources that I give and then the sources they have used.) Please do inform me of any errors you do find.
The site contains some copyrightable material belonging to third parties used
with permission on the bases that this site is not commercial and is provided
as an educational resource. Use of material from this web site for commercial
purposes may breach copyright restrictions and result in prosecution. You will
need to check all given sources to establish the actual copyright holder.
NEWS |
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A new, cleaner, look to the site will, hopefully make using the site a little easier for people with poorer sight. The margin is a picture of herringbone masonry at Tamworth Castle. The 'mash up' with the MultiMap air photo has been changed to their newer, higher resolution site with bigger pictures and a better interface, although slightly less precise location. Location is now at six figure OS -100m accuracy rather than eight figure 10m accuracy. Remember the OS reference should be the south west corner of the square area containing the site so usually the site will be in the upper right part of the air photo. These MultiMap air photos can be very useful, although castles in woodland remain difficult to see. Some areas, mainly in the south of England, also have 'birds eye' oblique aerial views which are particularly nice. The databases have been reposted although alteration are slight (other than the creation of a new field 'sixfigOS' needed for the link to MultiMap.
Some additions to the site bibliographies justify updating and reposting the databases and I've added a few texts to the bibliography. I've added to the welsh database the medieval tower and manorial site at Harold's House, Portskewett, Monmouthshire, where the tower was described as 'fortified' in the TimeTeam programme of the evaluation excavation done in June 2007, where it was nice to see Jeremy Knight.
Research has identified another site given a licence to crenellate. This is 'Brugewaltii' (Bridgwater castle, Somerset) licence granted to William Briwere in June 1200. The statistic on the analysis of licences and the distribution map have been updated.
A new essay "Crenellating the Ego " has been added. This essay explores the psychological factors influencing castle forms and the psychological origin of the distorting bias towards military views of the castle.
I've spent the last month catching up with the online developments that I missed over the summer. Several Historic Environment Records (or Sites and Monuments Records) have come online in various forms. The records held by the Clwyd and Powys Archaeological Trust are now part of the ADS database. This has added over a 100 new records to the Welsh database, although almost all of these a dubious mounds or placenames which can actually be rejected as castle sites. A major new site is Heritage Gateway which is a database combining the National Monument Record (PastScape), the Listed buildings index (Images of England), the NMR Excavation Index and the HER's of Cambridgeshire, Essex and Norfolk. Clearly this intended to expand to include all HER's although searching such a vast database may well prove near impossible - even at the moment it seems to be pushing the boundaries of the server with some very erratic behaviour. New county databases are; British History Online has had a change of looks and has added several more Victoria County History volumes and other texts to which I've added links in the relevant building bibliographies. I've also updated the Journals links page. A notably site is that for the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society which not only has an index of its Transactions but actually has pdf copies online of the full contents of the journals from 1876-1995. See my links page for more details and sites. The online records and downloadable databases have all been updated.
Samuel Lewis's 1849 4th edition of A Topographical Dictionary of Wales added to the monument bibliographies with links to the online edition provided by British History Online. Whilst not an authorative archaeological resource this is useful for descriptions of sites and parishes in the early 19th century generally before industrialisation. A few dubious sites added on the bases of local traditions reported by Lewis; notable is a castle site at Llangynidr. The link to Old Maps, which has been broken for a while because of their change to their site, is repaired for Welsh sites. The English sites web pages will be updated to repair this link in the next week or so.
My health having improved somewhat over the summer I shall continue with this project for the meanwhile, although at a reduce level of activity. For the time being this means just some small additions to the individual monument bibliographies.
Charles Taylor of ecastle.co.uk has kindly offered to host this web site. No more work is being done on the site and it will stop being available at the homepage.mac.com domain in mid October 2007 but will be available at http://www.ecastles.co.uk/philipdavis/index.html. I express my sincere gratitude to Charles for his very kind offer to keep this site online.
Ill health has forced me to end this project. The databases and web site have undergone a final revision. The site will go offline at the end of October 2007. Please feel free to download the databases and any parts of the web site., including pictures and maps, for your own use.
A new essay "Defining the Castle" has been added. This essay attempts to debunk the castle as a military building, arguing the main function was administrative. It also looks at the gatehouse as a symbol of lordship, acknowledging that this aspect of the castle is a pre-Conquest, saxon, tradition. It calls for a greater appreciation of the psychology factors that effect the choice to fortify a building and to describe a building as military.
English and Welsh site pages and indexes again reposted because of more small additions to the bibliographies and the addition of a couple more dubious sites. A slight change to the site page design template should make the site pages a little easier to read.
English and Welsh site pages and indexes reposted mainly because of widespread but relatively small additions to the bibliographies. I'm starting to go through Leland's itinerary and this is producing some interesting results (I suspect that there may have been a medieval castle on the site now occupied by Lullingstone Castle) including a few new possible sites, such as Glasney College. A few other possible English sites entered. A new updated and more detailed distribution map of artillery fortifications posted. Some slight additions to the licences to crenellate listing, most notably Moigne Court which was licenced to be fortified with an uncrenellated wall. This is not a licence to crenellate but an important document if licences to crenellate are to be truly understood as recognition of nobility rather than as some permission to fortify. I've added a link from the page of sites issued licences to crenellate to the details of the licence. I've also reposted the databases and added an excel version of the databases to the downloadable formats. See the download page. The individual site pages and the indexes are being reposted because of;
A distribution map has been added to the article on licences to crenellate.
Three weeks of intense research has updated the list of licences to crenellate. These now have much more information and detail, licences have been added and reference are now given to the PRO translations of the original Patent and Charter Rolls. Some analysis of the details of these licences is added. This research has identified another 18 or so possible fortified manor houses which have been added to the database, the pages have been added and the indexes updated. A direct link to the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service has been added on the individual site pages. This gives a direct look at the 1:25,000 scale map, which is useful for understanding the landscape form.
A reorganisation of site has introduced an 'Other Information' section. I've gradually been adding extra bits to the site such as distribution maps and a list of Licences to Crenellate and these now have their own section and menu link. The latest addition to this section is some contemporary late medieval list of castles and towers in Northumberland.
A slight reorganisation of the bibliography into three sections should make this feature more usable by reducing the length of lists to scroll down. The Bibliography is now split into General Texts, for background information; Gazetteers, my main sources; and Journal web sites.
The major part of my work continues to be expanding the bibliographical references for sites. (Sitting in libraries trawling through books is much less enjoyable than going around the countryside taking photographs. There are quite a few web sites with collections of castle photographs, there are very few with proper bibliographical references.). I've recently moved to Manchester where I have better access to quality libraries so this major part of the project continues with somewhat renewed vigour. A provisional list of Licences to Crenellate is now included and available for download. A short essay on minor Norman earthwork and timber castles has been added under the help section. A section with distribution maps derived from the databases has been added, this is, as yet, in it's early stages and I intend to add many more distribution maps in the future. (The latest addition is a map of early castles, mottes and ringworks. Many sources are still using Renn's map of 1959, and King's map of 1966 so an update of this probably due). Also added to the help section is a short piece on some of the difficulties in classifying medieval fortifications with details of the currently used classification schemes as they apply to medieval fortifications. Click here to view. I'm doing some work on the the various forms of castle mounds and this may result in something. If you have suggestions for what you would like see added to the site please contact me. They tab
delimited ASCII files of the databases from
which these listing are derived are available in the file sharing part
of the web site (Use the Downloads link).
Please feel free to download this listing to use for your own studies. Remember
the site and the database are being continually being updated so please update
your own files as often as you want. The databases were last updated on 15 June
2006. |
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