The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 234 • Roberta Gilchrist
houses (for the storage of bones), almshouses (hospitals, or residential homes for the poor) or
anchorages (the dwellings of hermits). At Barton-on-Humber, a ninth-century cemetery predated
the church, and burials were systematically cleared in order to begin its construction. The later
Anglo-Saxon cemetery had interments concentrated along the south side and at the east end of
the church, with possible clusters of family groups. By the fifteenth century, burial inside the
church at Barton was becoming more common, especially in front of the chancel and aisle screens
(Rodwell and Rodwell 1982).
Castles
Archaeological excavation has enabled a more rigorous study of the origins of the castle, and has
expanded our knowledge of early timber castles considerably, as for example at Hen Domen,
Montgomeryshire (Figure 13.3). Documentary sources for the construction of the first Norman
castles include the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Domesday Book, which record the destruction
of Saxon settlement in the wake of castle construction (e.g. Wallingford and Shrewsbury). The
major source of information for work at royal castles is the building accounts maintained by the
Exchequer: the Pipe Rolls detailed annual expenditure from 1155–1216, later continued by the
Misae Rolls and Liberate Rolls (Colvin 1963). Further details can be gleaned from chronicles,
charters, feudal documents, Inquisitions and sources such as the Assize Rolls, Liberate and
Memoranda Rolls, Patent Rolls and Curia Regis Rolls.
It is generally agreed that the true castle had not existed in Anglo-Saxon England, and resulted
instead from the process of conquest by the Normans. To some extent this conclusion rests on
the definition of the castle, since the Saxon system of burhs included both fortified towns and
the residences of thegns, where a bank and palisade protected the burgheat (e.g. Goltho,
Lincolnshire). The Norman castle acted as a strategic point for gaining and maintaining control
over a hostile territory; some measure of its success was due to the Norman use of cavalry, since
the Saxons did not use horses for warfare. The earliest forms of the English castle had their
origins in tenth-century France, where two essential components have been traced: the first-floor
hall and the motte. However, in France and Germany, upper halls developed in the mid-tenth
century for the purpose of defence. The classic site for discerning this evolution is Doué la
Fontaine (Maine et Loire), where a ground-floor hall was destroyed by fire c.925–50, and
reconstructed as a first-floor hall. This was later turned into a keep by heaping material around
the ground-floor, in the manner of a motte (Thompson 1995, 45–48).
Castles have been classified into standard types developing from the eleventh to the sixteenth
centuries, although there is a wide degree of fluidity between types and variation between individual
sites. Timber and masonry castles can be distinguished, the former consisting of ringwork and
motte and bailey types, with the latter including a wide variety that developed chronologically from
the tower-keep to the enclosure castle, concentric castle, quadrangular castle, courtyard house and
tower house. In the later Middle Ages, forms of defensive structure were developed that no longer
combined the dual features of residence and fortification that define the true castle. From the later
fourteenth century, block houses were built to house guns and protect gunners on inland waterways
(such as the Cow Tower, Norwich, 1398). From the late fifteenth and particularly the sixteenth
centuries, artillery castles were built mainly at coastal sites to house heavy guns, usually arranged as
multiple tiers of concentric defences (e.g. Dartmouth Castle, Devon, 1481).
At the heart of the castle was the hall: used as a public eating and meeting place, for
administration and for sleeping. Aisles were added to halls from c.1100 to provide additional
space for larger households. A bi-polar arrangement had emerged by the second half of the
thirteenth century, in which the upper end of the hall was screened to provide a private chamber
for the lord’s household, while a lower end fulfilled the need for storage and services. From the