Category: History - British

Mediæval Military Architecture in England, Volume 1 (of 2)

The art of construction in Europe from the fall of the Roman empire to the dawn of the Reformation, though of late years much and successfully investigated, has been approached almost exclusively from its ecclesiastical side. This was, for many reasons, to be expected. The ser...

Chapters

12. CHAPTER XII.

Every castle, if more than a solitary tower or peel, and having more than a single line of defence, has more or less of a concentric character, but in most, even of the largest...

8. CHAPTER VIII.

There remain to be enumerated the castles west of the Severn and the Dee up to the Dyke of Offa. To this tract must be added on the one hand the half of Shropshire, which was on...

2. CHAPTER II.

But little is recorded of the internal condition of Britain between the departure of the Legions, A.D. 411, and the arrival of the Northmen in force thirty or forty years later;...

9. CHAPTER IX.

In a preceding chapter an attempt was made to describe the appearance and to give an outline of the history of those earthworks in England and Normandy upon which the Norman and...

6. CHAPTER VI.

However numerous may have been the castles destroyed under the Convention of Wallingford, or during the subsequent reign of Henry II., they seem to have been almost entirely for...

7. CHAPTER VII.

The castles of the shires of Nottingham and Derby, of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Cheshire, complete the tale of the fortresses south of the Tees and Lune. Nottingham, one of the...

3. CHAPTER III.

It has usually been assumed that the rapidity of William’s conquest was due to the absence of strong places in England. There is, however, ground for believing that England, in...

4. CHAPTER IV.

It is rather remarkable that castles should not occupy, even incidentally, a more prominent place in the “Domesday Survey,” as they formed a very important feature in the countr...

1. CHAPTER I.

The art of construction in Europe from the fall of the Roman empire to the dawn of the Reformation, though of late years much and successfully investigated, has been approached...

11. CHAPTER XI.

The transition from the Norman to the Early English style, which in ecclesiastical architecture constitutes a period of great interest, is by no means, at least in England, so s...

10. CHAPTER X.

While of the rectangular keep there remain many, and some very perfect, examples both in England and Normandy, the SHELL KEEP, though once the most common of the two, has rarely...

5. CHAPTER V.

Henry II. was a great builder, and especially of military works. “In muris, in propugnaculis, in munitionibus, in fossatis, ... nullus subtilior, nullus magnificentior, invenitu...