The commission to carry out a reconstruction drawing of Ruthin Castle came after several years of visits and informal discussions with Will Davies and others, all anxious to bring the castle to greater prominence. Once the Ruthin Castle Conservation Trust had been set up in 2016 to arrest the deterioration of the castle ruins, it became imperative that better researched material, texts and drawings be produced to raise awareness of the castle and the critical condition of the ruins. The Trust accordingly commissioned a reconstruction drawing with grant aid from Castle Studies Trust, Castle Studies Group, and the Cambrian Archaeological Association.
The available documentary sources were scarce. Principal among them was the somewhat hesitant plan drawn by Randle Holme in the 17th century, complete with alterations and amendments, accompanied by two very similar versions of a perspective view, and the inevitable Buck from a century later.
Rick Turner identified a detail in the background of a 17th-century picture of “Orpheus Charming the Animals” housed at Chirk Castle, which he believed represented Ruthin. After several attempts at getting a good look at it, some shots were obtained for me by helpful member of National Trust staff. All this was greatly enhanced by a reasonably good topographical survey of the hotel and gardens prepared some years ago.
I began by creating a very rough block model of the remains of the castle with the hotel in place, to better identify the elements missing completely and those in doubt, with a view to possibly carrying out some minor excavations to resolve some of these issues. Unfortunately this was not to happen within our timescale, so such revelations still await us in the future.
The need to produce a useful image for the Trust rather than a long drawn out programme of investigation resulted in a quick agreement of the general viewpoint, displaying the most dramatic surviving parts of the castle in a completed medieval context, but in such a way that minimised the missing pieces. The result was essentially the Buck and Holm views, but altering some details contained in the latter which did not agree with the surviving remains. A lower vantage point was chosen to conceal the missing details of the buildings in the background.
The model was subtly orientated to provide the optimum view, turned into a line drawing, and then the final colour version was produced.
Ironically, it was at this point that the most heated discussion began, regarding the colour of the walls. The present remains of the outer ward are predominantly of a deep red sandstone, with the inner ward of light grey limestone (with some red quoins). The implications of this were far reaching, but for the purposes of the drawing the issue was simply to render or not to render, and if rendered, what colour? The castle is described in some documentary sources as “Castell Coch”, hence red was taken to be the main colour, so perhaps the inner grey ward was rendered red. In the end the consensus was not to render at all, but to expose the masonry as it presently appears, with the red colour of the outer bailey dominant, giving rise to the name. Even then there was some dissent over the strength of the colour of the natural red sandstone in the final image, but “Castell Coch” won out.
Reconstruction drawing of Ruthin Castle from the south-west as it may have appeared in the late medieval period. Artist: Chris Jones-Jenkins. Copyright: Ruthin Castle Conservation Trust.
The original painting has now been elegantly framed and is hanging in the foyer of the Castle Hotel, available for all to see. It is hoped that the image will go on to stimulate further discussion in the years to come and generate interest in and publicising the work of the Trust in promoting this historic asset.
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The
deadline for grant applications passed on 30th November. We’re going through
the various projects now. Altogether the 13 projects, coming from England,
Ireland, and Scotland are asking for over £88,000. They cover not only a wide
period of history but also a wide range of topics. In a little more detail,
here are the applications we’ve received:
The main aim is to recover evidence for the base natural topography around the approach to the main gate of the once royal castle, from the area of the medieval village, and explore how this was altered, presented and exploited to create a sense of theatre for visitors to the site.
A geoarchaeological auger survey of the moats that surround this former royal castle and palace of Thomas Becket. The survey aims to answer such questions as what were the moats original profiles, when were the moats filled and how do the two moats compare with each other.
To try and understand the date of the construction of the castle owned by the MacDougall clan through various through buildings and materials analysis including radiocarbon dating and mortar analysis.
To try and understand the date of the construction of the former royal castle through various through buildings and materials analysis including radiocarbon dating and mortar analysis.
Hoghton, Lancashire
The aim of the project to continue the work the CST funded in 2019 with excavations and building survey. Further excavations will try and understand the purpose of the structures found in the 2019 excavation season and if they were related to the original great tower.
Holme Pierpont, Nottinghamshire
To build up an understanding of this late medieval great house, never previously researched. The work will include a mixture of desk research, building survey and geophysical survey of the parkland surrounding it. The house is the most complete of the three late medieval brick-built houses in Nottinghamshire.
To develop a reconstruction drawing of the castle as it would have appeared in the second half of the 12th century. Lincoln Castle was founded by William the Conqueror in the late 11th century.
Shrewsbury, Shropshire
To fund a second year of excavation, this time to understand the rampart of the inner bailey. The geophysical survey carried out in the 2019 suggested there could be remains of buildings there, possibly even a late Saxon church. Shrewsbury was a very important border castle up until the 13th century and frequently used as a base for English raids into Wales.
Sowing the Seeds
Hortus conclusus depicted by Meister des Frankfurter Paradiesgärtleins
The aim of the project is to try and understand better everyday life in castles by seeing if there are any surviving plants at four Irish castles that were planted, grown and cared for by medieval people. The research will involve ecological surveys at each location.
Strongholds of Wessex
Photo of Silbury Hill by Greg O’Beirne, licensed CC BY SA 3.0.
The aim of the project is to understand the military organisation of the northern part of Wessex (Wiltshire and West Oxfordshire) from the transition from Saxon to Norman rule between the 9th and 12th centuries. The work will involve documentary research, landscape and place name surveys. Sites examined will include Castle Combe, Cricklade and Silbury Hill.
The Wirk, Orkney
Could the Wirk be a Norse castle? Based on the island of Rousay, this stone tower is situated close to the old parish church and recently discovered Norse Hall. However, no one knows what this tower was used for or even when it was built. The work would involve a geophysical survey of the surrounding area as well as two trial trenches to try and find dating evidence.
Thermal Imaging of Castles
A thermogram of Cirencester Roman amphitheatre by Dr John Wells, licensed CC BY SA 4.0.
To test how useful thermal imaging could be in understanding castles. The thermal survey using a FLIR camera of two castle facades in different climates. within the UK—Caisteal Uisdein, on the coast of Loch Snizort, and a castle farther south and slightly inland, Castle Rising.
Using various forms of geophysical survey to try and understand the subsurface features for the former caput of the Dukes of Northumberland. The survey will focus on the bailey inside the 12th-century curtain wall as well as the strip of land outside but on the early earthwork castle, the motte and field near the entrance to the castle.
The applications have been sent to our expert assessors who will go over them. And if you want to know more about how the assessment process works, we have a brief summary.
Parchmarks, and geophysical survey funded by the Castle Studies Trust in 2016, show that a large building once occupied the outer ward of Pembroke Castle. In outline, it seemed to be a free-standing, winged ‘mansion-house’, of a kind broadly dateable to the fifteenth century – making it a compelling candidate for the location of King Henry VII’s birth in 1457. But further investigation was needed to confirm its form and date.
This began in 2018, with an archaeological evaluation that again was funded by the Castle Studies Trust, and carried out by Dyfed Archaeological Trust with the assistance of dedicated volunteers, and the support of Pembroke Castle Trust and staff. In essence, this was a preliminary scoping exercise: two trial trenches were excavated, representing around 20% of the suspected area of the building. And, as Pembroke Castle is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, the consent needed to carry out the work specified that the bulk of the stratified deposits had to be left in situ. Project objectives had, therefore, to be kept within realistic boundaries, namely to establish the condition, character and extent of the building – and, if possible, its date.
Pembroke Excavations Trench 1
Despite these limitations, we feel that the evidence uncovered does not seriously challenge our interpretation of the building as a winged house. It was shown to have had stone walls, one of which housed a stairway suggesting it had at least one upper floor, and an annexe containing a pit for kitchen waste alongside a possible cess-pit. The dating evidence was not precise, but does not rule out a late-medieval date, while the stair was of a helical form seen in fifteenth-century buildings in Pembrokeshire. Which means that we could still be looking at Henry VII’s birthplace.
And the trenches may confirm our suspicions about the antiquity of the
castle site. It has long been suggested that the medieval remains overlie an
earlier, Iron Age fort, which may have continued to be used throughout the
Roman period – and perhaps even right up until the Norman Conquest. The waste
deposits seemed to slump into an earlier pit or trench, and contained Roman
pottery and charcoal yielding a Roman-period radiocarbon date. Both perhaps
came from disturbance of deposits within the earlier feature.
Future Plans
We feel that further excavation is the only way to fully unlock the
secrets of this intriguing building, as the best clues to its date, status and
function will probably be found in its form and plan. This information may in fact prove even more useful
than the dating evidence provided by finds and radiocarbon samples. This is
because the area around the building was heavily disturbed by excavation in the
1930s, following which soil, containing pottery, seems to have been brought in
from outside the castle for landscaping. In addition, the scheduled monument
consent limits the excavation of the undisturbed deposits.
Further investigations will hopefully begin next year. Another trench in the area of the suspected cess-pit may confirm whether or not it occupies a winged ‘annexe’ housing a suspected second stairway, while a trench in the suggested kitchen wing may show whether it did contain any ovens or fireplaces. It is hoped that, eventually, the entire ground-plan of the building will be revealed. We may then also see how it related to other deposits and features in the outer ward. Excavation can be a cautionary tale, which advises against letting prior assumptions govern interpretation of the results. It is entirely possible that a very different storyline from the one suggested above may yet emerge.
Neil Ludlow – consulting archaeologist on the excavation
To read the full report you can download it here: https://www.castlestudiestrust.org/Pembroke-Castle-2018.html
Summers for me always mean getting together with
friends and family for BBQs and picnics. The simple act of hosting a party
comes with a range of logistics for the host to manage: buying, cooking, and
serving food, providing entertainment, ensuring everyone is enjoying
themselves, along with more practical tasks such as cleaning communal areas
that guests will frequent. The Tudor period did not entail many modern-style
BBQs in the backyard; however, hosting celebrations was a large part of elite
culture. Scholars of hospitality in the medieval and early modern periods have
long recognized its social and cultural significance. Generosity was a
Christian value and was expected from those who could afford to provide it.
Hans Holbein the Younger, ‘Henry VIII dining in the great chamber’ (c. 1548). Photo from the British Museum, licensed CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0.
Hospitality leaves very little trace in architectural remains, so historians must turn to documentary records to investigate how castles were used to host feasts and celebrations. Household Books are one such record that provide a clue into the extravagance and hierarchy of these revels. These documents were created as a sort of ‘how-to-guide’ for management and maintenance of a large residence. Unsurprisingly, households played a main role in the performance of hospitality and therefore, protocols for dining and hosting are a common feature in these records. King Edward IV’s Liber Niger is one of the most used sources for demonstrating the splendour of royal households, and many of the large noble households of the late medieval period take some instruction from the king. For instance, Henry Percy, the fifth earl of Northumberland (1477–1527) kept a detailed Household Book for the year 1512 in which daily ritual and splendour are of the foremost concerns.[1] The Northumberland Household Book (NHB)is specifically for the earl’s main castles of Wressle and Leckonfield in Yorkshire.[2] It gives exact numbers of servants, their role and responsibilities, instructions for dining etiquette, and seeing to the lord and his family. In a theoretical sense, it provides us with an image of the perfectly run noble household.
One of the concerns in the NHB is the procedure for eating. It tells us that the earl of
Northumberland sat at the high table with his wife, Catherine Spencer, and his
son and heir, Henry Percy. Northumberland’s other two sons, Thomas and William,
served the food for the high table.[3] The NHB continues to list a total of sixteen people to attend the needs
of the lord and his family, including ‘the childe of the kechinge that shall
help the saide Yoman or Groome to dresse my Lords Metes and Servyce for the
Howsehold And to be ath the Revercion’.[4] After the list of those
serving the high table, the NHB lists
the people who should sit at each of the tables in the great chamber and
subsequently in the great hall. Controlling where people sat, the food that
they ate, and the order of service was one way for a lord to visually display
and reinforce the social hierarchy on a daily basis.
A section from the Portrait of Sir Henry Unton (c. 1558 – 1596), held at the National Portrait Gallery, London
Some days called for special feasts and the NHB isolates the principal feasts of the
year when the household could expect a ‘great repaire of Straungers’ arriving
at the castle. These days include: Easter, St George’s Day, Whitsun, All
Hallows Eve, and Christmas. These celebrations did not just provide food for
guests, but entertainment as well. For the Twelfth Night celebrations at
Wressle in 1512, the ‘hoole chappell’ was directed to ‘sing wassaill’, a carol
celebrating the service of the wassail drink at the evening banquet.[5] On All Souls Day,
Northumberland’s chapel performed the ‘responde callede Exaudivi at the
Matyns-tyme for xij virgyns’.[6]
In an earlier blog post for the CST, Dr Kate Buchanan explored ideas of a social gathering around Christmas time at Huntly Castle and the sensory experience that those present might have experienced. She demonstrates that hosts could – and oftentimes did – blend business with pleasure when it came to hospitality. This is definitely the picture from other fifteenth- and sixteenth-century household books. Celebratory periods brought family, peers, political allies, and even tenants together under one roof. Castles facilitated the gathering of a community and it was the space in which relationships could be forged.
Hospitality was just one way that castles were used to
promote and uphold the social hierarchy of Tudor England. We must remember that
hospitality was not just an act that the host actively placed on the passive
guest. It was very much a performance with the household servants as many of
the main players. Servants prepared and served the food, attended to guests,
and ensured that everyone adhered to protocol. Castles played a much greater
role than being the theatres on which this performance took place. The great
hall and the household chapel were key areas in the castle that hospitality was
dispensed. These spaces brought everyone in the castle together for
entertainment and allowed for interaction of people across the social and
gender hierarchy. These interactions were of course heavily regulated. Although
castles accommodated people from across the social spectrum, they helped to
ensure, through visual cues, the social order of premodern England by promoting
the owner’s wealth and status through ritual and display.
If you would like to know more my forthcoming book, The Culture of Castles in Tudor England and Wales will be available in September 2019 from Boydell Press.
[1] Henry
Algernon Percy, The Regulations and
Establishment of the Household of Henry Algernon Percy, the fifth Earl of
Northumberland at his Castles of Wressle and Leakenfield in Yorkshire (London,
1905).
As it’s September, we are now accepting grant applications for projects to run next in 2020. Grants are for projects which improve the understanding of castle and cover up to £10,000 and applications close on 28 November. Since we started awarding grants in 2014, we have given a total of £100,000 across 24 projects.
If you’re searching for ideas previous grants have supported fieldwork such as excavations at Shrewsbury and geophysical survey at Tibbers, and interpretative projects such digital reconstructions of Holt and Ruthin and a series of videos by Dig It! TV.
It is always exciting to see the applications come in and learn what people have in mind. Our website has more information on our grants, including the criteria projects are assessed on and the application form. If you have questions about grants or want feedback, please contact Jeremy Cunnington (our Chair) at admin@castlestudiestrust.org
We have the results of the survey at Fotheringhay Castle. You can find out more about what we found in Steve Parry’s excellent blogpost, complete with the earliest depiction of the castle.
The castle is most famous as the place where Mary Queen of Scots was tried and executed. It was thoroughly dismantled in the first half of the 17th century, leaving the motte intact but little else above ground. Thanks to work by the Museum of London Archaeology and funded by the Castle Studies Trust, we now have a better idea of how the castle was arranged.
The investigations funded by the Castle Studies Trust at Shrewsbury Castle, one of the most important castles along the Anglo-Welsh border have now finished. Dr Nigel Baker reveals the preliminary findings of those investigations.
Before the dig began two weeks ago, our geophysics survey showed (with complete accuracy as it turned out) a spread of hard material just under the grass directly opposite the castle hall – possibly the remains of demolished buildings. Almost immediately the turf was off it became apparent that the hard material was not rubble but a low ridge of gravel, curving slightly as it headed south towards the main gate. Cut into this road surface (as we took it to be) were round, flat-bottomed topsoil-filled cuts, probably Victorian and later flower beds.
Excavating
through the gravel immediately revealed further, cleaner gravel, that appeared
to be of natural/geological origin; further testing demonstrated that all the
gravel was natural – the natural/geological top of the hill. It had been
levelled, planed-off horizontally, in the fairly recent past, possibly in 1925-6
when the castle was restored, and any archaeological layers or building remains
above the gravel would have been removed.
However, at the east end of the trench the gravel was found dug away at a 45-degree angle by a single, massive cut, with medieval pottery in the soil within it. The cut was recognised as the edge of the great defensive ditch that formerly encircled the base of the Norman motte. This would have been about 12 metres wide; the geophysics suggests there was probably a bridge over it, just north of the excavation, opposite the present hall entrance. The objects found in the ditch include pottery – cooking pots and glazed jugs – from the period roughly 1100-1400, and a large quantity of animal bone from food waste. There were also two arrow heads or crossbow-bolt heads, both of the ‘bodkin’ type: sharp, square-edged heavy points designed to penetrate armour and clearly for military use rather than hunting.
The principal conclusion of the excavation was that, when the castle was first built by the Normans in or just before 1069, the motte, with its defensive ditch, was enormous, and the inner bailey was tiny – it was little more than an extra layer of fortification wrapped around the approach up to the motte.
This year we’re funding investigations at Shrewsbury Castle, one of the most important castles along the Anglo-Welsh border. Nigel Baker told us how the work has been going.
Phase 1 of the Castle Studies Trust’s Shrewsbury Castle 2019 project is underway. Archaeological research is a long and painstaking process, so instant results are not to be expected – it must have taken a whole three hours to establish for the first time a number of simple but really fundamental facts about the hitherto-unexplored inner bailey.
Work started on Wednesday 8th May with the arrival at the castle of Tiger Geo, specialist geophysical survey contractors. Using ground-penetrating radar and resistivity, the lawns of the inner bailey interior and the slopes of the ramparts were gridded out and surveyed; the geophysicists never stopped, nor did the rain. But two basic conclusions emerged on screen from the raw data.
Tiger Geo doing sterling work despite the weather.
The first is that a ditch did once encircle the base of the motte within the perimeter of the inner bailey. This implies that the flat area within the inner bailey must originally have been a crescent-shaped area less than twenty metres wide from motte ditch to rampart tail.
The second conclusion is that there is, under the grass opposite and parallel to the standing early 13th-century ‘Great Hall’ (which houses a very fine Regimental Museum), another big building range backing onto the motte ditch. Given that the standing first-floor Great Hall was built as a royal chamber block (‘camera’) in the 1230s-40s, there is a possibility that a real Great Hall awaits excavation in the summer. But we’ve already answered one of the project’s main questions, ‘how was the inner bailey planned?’ The answer is there were two main ranges of buildings and no room for anything else.
While Tiger Geo mowed the lawns, the writer was busy in a bush at the base of the motte, freeing-up a manhole cover sealed for a decade. Under, a 20th-century brick inspection chamber gives access to a stone well-shaft alongside. The writer had been shown it surreptitiously by a kind gardener in the 1990s but without the opportunity for much recording. Now it has been photographed (though not with stunning competence), measured at just over seventy feet deep from ground level down to water level, and the masonry identified as probably late medieval – and not something done by Thomas Telford in the 1790s. So – Shrewsbury Castle retains its medieval well.
The medieval well. It’s a dizzying 21m down to water level.
This is an edited version a talk given by Béla Zsolt Szakács gave at the Leeds International Medieval Congress in July 2018 and published in the Castle Studies Group bulletin.
Since the political changes of 1989/90, the countries of East Central Europe have been trying to overcome the century-long lagging behind Western European regions. An important element of the rebuilding of national identities in these territories is the ‘glorious’ medieval past. Understandably the visual expression of this medieval past is a focus of political and cultural interest. Castles are primary objects – so to say, victims – of this interest.
The year 2000 was celebrated in Hungary with a special pomp since it was not only the second millennium of Christianity, but also the 1000- year anniversary of the Hungarian kingdom was established by King Saint Stephen (c.1000–38). As a result of this, there was a great need of memorial sites, however, practically all important royal monuments and residences had been destroyed during the Ottoman wars and the Baroque period.
One of them is the royal castle of Esztergom, the former capital of the Hungarian kingdom and centre of the Catholic Church. Excavations of the surprisingly well-preserved Romanesque castle started in 1934 and the first phase was finished by 1938. By 2000, further elements of the royal (later archiepiscopal) castle had been identified.
Castle Hill in Esztergom in 1955. It was the site of the medieval castle and now the basilica. Photo from Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Following the plans of Tibor Gál, a renowned Hungarian architect, a postmodern reconstruction was carried out at the site. The new building complex incorporated the Romanesque and Gothic remains of the palace with additions designed in a style that recalls, but does not imitate, the medieval past of the site. The courtyard was closed with a gate that never existed in the Middle Ages. Around the courtyard, remains of the Romanesque palace and a Gothic audience hall are standing. Although some of the windows were partially preserved, they were fully reconstructed, in other cases they were imitated by modern steel constructions. The results of the whole work were harshly criticised for being confusing and totally alien to the medieval original.
Esztergom Castle in 2013. Photo by Krystian Cieślik, licensed CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Another historic monument extensively rebuilt in 2000 is the Royal Palace of Visegrád. This romantic site – near to Esztergom and Buda, capitals of the kingdom – was a royal residence in the 14th century and an important hunting lodge of King Matthias (1458–90). It was destroyed during the Ottoman wars, and excavation of the remains began in 1934 and are still continuing. The most spectacular part is the north-eastern palace with its courtyard. The corridors around the courtyard were vaulted, the imprint of which were discovered during the excavations. With the help of the in-situ corbels and the excavated ribs a reconstruction of the east wing was carried out in 1952. This was continued with smaller additions in 1970, resulting in a complicated architectural complex of terraces, ruins and reconstructed building parts. In 2000 the palace was extensively rebuilt incorporating all the previously discovered and reconstructed elements. This was not a full reconstruction as the additions stopped where no information was available.
The Royal Palace of Visegrád in 2013. Photo by Allexkoch, licensed CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Nevertheless, this resulted in a still ruinous palace with many unverifiable details. The whole concept was based on the studies of Gergely Buzás, archaeologist and art historian (later director) of the local museum. His pioneering monograph published in 1990 contained a possible reconstruction. However, while the drawing is a scholarly attempt of a theoretical reconstruction, the building work in 2000 made permanent the understanding of the castle at a particular point in time. The vaulting reconstruction of 1952 has already proved to be erroneous, but has been never corrected. The present, much bigger volume of the reconstructed loggiaa (a covered gallery) is still debated.
The reconstructed loggia. Photo by EtelkaCsilla, licensed CC-BY-SA 3.0.
These actions, in 2000, were strongly connected to the memorial year and were supported generously by the government which needed representative sites for political purposes. They represented different methodologies: the postmodern reconstruction which did not imitate medieval forms but was inspired by them and a scientific reconstruction which claimed to be authentic. Visegrád was the most extensive but was followed by many other examples in the next decades.
One them was the castle of Diósgyőr in Northern Hungary, now part of the modern city of Miskolc. This important site was a royal castle built by King Louis the Great of Hungary (1326–1382) in the second half of the 14th century. Later it became the property of the Hungarian queens who made some modifications during the 15th and 16th centuries. Beside its political significance, this castle is regarded as an outstanding monument of Hungarian secular Gothic architecture.
Since the 18th century the building has been in a ruinous state: only the four towers standing on the four corners have been preserved more-or-less intact (but without the uppermost floors and the roofs), all the palace wings have been destroyed. The state of preservation of the ruins deteriorated during the last decades of the twentieth century.
Shortly after 2000, plans were drawn up by architects in order to preserve the existing walls by new additions, which led to the idea of a radical reconstruction. The reconstruction was partial, keeping one of the towers in its ruinous state, and leaving the western wing unfinished However, many details were totally reconstructed which provoked heated debates.
The castle in 2016. Photo by CivertanS, licensed CC-BY-SA 4.0.
One of the reconstructed rooms is the knights’ hall. The vaulting system is authentic, but the form of supporting piers is not known. The present room has two windows and two portals on the south façade, although according to an 18th-century drawing, there was only one window and one portal. The additional portal is based on a stone-carving, but its shapes were not followed precisely and it fits better to the chapel rather than the knights’ hall. The windows’ shape follows its presumed 14th-century form, consequently the original late-medieval additions were removed. The reconstruction resulted in the destruction of one of the latest original elements of the medieval building in order to return to an earlier phase; unfortunately, the original form of this earlier window is not known: the present form is purely hypothetical.
The Knights’ Hall in 2018. Photo by ArBePa, licensed CC-BY-SA 4.0.
All the other wings were rebuilt with Renaissance windows, again without any archaeological evidence. In other cases original elements were destroyed because in their survived form they were not strong enough to support the modern reconstruction. Modern functions were also destructive, e.g. the royal apartment was replaced by an elevator. The amateurish furnishing of the interiors needs no further criticism.
So far we have seen some example of the recent castle reconstruction from Hungary. Nevertheless, such reconstructions can be found easily all over East Central Europe. I will limit myself to three well-known examples.
The first is from Croatia. The castle of Medvedgrad is situated above Zagreb and is a popular destination. It was probably built by the bishop of Zagreb in the mid-13th century. One of the most spectacular elements of this reconstruction is the chapel. This was totally reconstructed using the original carved stones of the supporting and vaulting system, the rose window and the portal. The lower castle ended in a keepwhich unfortunately collapsed in 1954. Thus the present building is a total reconstruction.
Medvedgrad’s reconstructed chapel (left) and keep (background). Photo by August Dominus, licensed CC-BY-SA 4.0.
The reconstruction works intensified after 1993, in a period when Croatia was fighting for its independence. The castle of Medvedgrad became a national monument, and a memorial was built there for the victims of the war of 1991–95. Although the castle itself never played an important historical or military role, its position above the country’s capital and the national ideology connected to it, predestined it to be the subject of an intensive and controversial reconstruction.
Similar national feelings inspired the reconstruction of the grand ducal palace in Vilnius. It was constructed in the 15th century and rebuilt during the subsequent centuries. During the Russian wars of the 17th century, the castle was heavily damaged and then stood abandoned for more than a century. After Vilnius was incorporated into the Russian Empire, the palace was destroyed in 1801. After long debates, the parliament decided in 2000 to reconstruct the palace as it was before 1801, although precise information was lacking and practically no original part was standing. Parallel to the building campaign, excavations continued which resulted in modifications of the palace project. By 2009 significant parts were ready and the whole complex was finished by 2013. Since then the palace is often used as the site of representative political venues.
The ducal palace of Vilnius in the 18th century, from Wikimedia Commons.
The palace being rebuilt in 2010. Photo by Redaktoriuspsl, licensed CC-BY-SA 4.0.
A third example can be taken from Poznan, Poland. The castle was situated in the north-west corner of the town. Its medieval shape is practically unknown. The earliest depiction of the town is from 1617 and though it shows the town walls and some palaces, but the donjon is not represented. The whole complex was destroyed in 1945. During the years of 1959–64, the post-medieval buildings were partially reconstructed. The idea of reconstructing the medieval part emerged around 2000. Remains of a medieval tower were discovered which served as a basis for the rebuilding which process started in 2010 with the building complex being finished in 2013. During these works a tower was erected which dominates the façade and is connected to wings imitating medieval houses. As the medieval form of the palace is practically unknown, the entire reconstruction is extremely hypothetical. While the rebuilding lacks scientific basis, it evidently inspired political motivation, creating a new visual highlight in contrast to the towers of the cathedral and the town hall.
The reconstruction of Poznan Castle in 2012, close to completion. Photo by Kapsuglan, licensed CC-BY-SA 3.0.
The presented importance of the reconstruction in what is presently one of the most prosperous modern towns of Poland, is far from historical reality. Although Posnan was the early capital of Poland, it never played such a role after 1300. Rebuilding medieval castles is more popular today in East Central Europe than ever, however, motivation and methodology may differ considerably. In some cases the scientific background is more solid, although in all cases scholars needed to accept compromises. In other examples pure fantasy dominates the reconstruction, sometimes combined with modernist or post-modern architectural solutions.
Some of the reconstructors argue that the idea of the medieval castle is more important that its material originality. However, the medieval ideas are usually lost and when modern architects, archaeologists, or art historians try to recreate them, these will be certainly not authentically medieval. What they sell to the visitors is the memory of the medieval past; but this memory is a falsification. Whilst reconstructors usually admit that some parts of their work is uncertain, this is rarely manifested at sites, where visitors will believe that what they see is the real (or at least authentic) Middle Ages. That’s how present day reconstructions falsify our memory creating castles that are more medieval than ever.
In rural Lincolnshire, nearly 30 miles east of Lincoln, stand the remains of a castle once held by royalty. The remaining walls and towers of Bolingbroke Castle are still 3m tall in some parts, and you can make out its distinctive hexagonal shape. The buildings that once crowded together inside the castle have long-since disappeared.
Bolingbroke Castle was founded in the 1220s by Ranulf de Blundeville, Earl of Chester and Lincoln and through marriage it ended up in the ownership of the House of Lancaster. John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, lived here in the 1360s and the castle gave its name to his son Henry Bolingbroke, later crowned King Henry IV, who was born here in 1367. The history of the site is reasonably well documented, especially compared to castles not owned by the Crown, but there remain unanswered questions about its origins and development.
In 2018 we gave Heritage Lincolnshire a grant to delve deeper. They would carry out a geophysical survey to establish if there are buried remains immediately south of the castle and on Dewy Hill, which might be the site of an earlier castle, built before the stone one still visible at Bolingbroke.
Bolingbroke Castle on the left and the rectangular ‘Rout Yard’ on the right. Courtesy of Heritage Lincolnshire.
The plan was to use ‘magnetometry’. It works by measuring how magnetic the soil is and then plotting the results on a map. It allows you cover a large area quickly, and over the course of two days the Heritage Lincolnshire team surveyed more than five hectares (about five times the size of Trafalgar Square).
There is some natural variation in the soil, but typically human activity such as cooking hearths or stone walls have a different magnetic signature to the soil around them as they are made from different materials. Magnetometry can also be used to find filled-in ditches as the fill might contain traces of human occupation.
The first stage was to survey Dewy Hill, sitting 400m north-west of Bolingbroke Castle. It was excavated in the 1960s, and a digital survey of the terrain suggests a rectangular feature still survives. We hoped the geophysical survey would show how extensive the buried remains are, and the shape and size might give us an idea of what it is. Essentially, was it a castle or some other type of important place? There was a slight hitch…
This morning's survey at Old Bolingbroke Castle has unexpectedly been postponed as there were cows in the field. Feel free to send us your best bovine puns to help the team get over their disappointment #cowsstopplaypic.twitter.com/GGbbEKRSSl
— Castle Studies Trust (@CastleStudies) May 29, 2018
But Heritage Lincolnshire did eventually get to take their magnetic gradiometer for a spin! Next, they surveyed the area south of the castle as it might contain an extension of the castle which has since been dismantled. Are there traces of this possible enclosure, or was there perhaps a garden here? In the later Middle Ages it was especially popular to shape the landscape around a castle. Right in the middle of this area is a rectangular piece of ground called the ‘Rout Yard’, but it’s unclear when it was created so the survey aimed to establish how this area relates to the castle.
Understanding the results takes a trained eye, and Heritage Lincolnshire have a highly skilled team of experts. They were able to find a few anomalies, but they either appear to be modern (there may be a concrete slab on Dewy Hill) or natural geological features.
The point of an exploratory project is to find out what lies beneath. Oddly, we expected something to be at Dewy Hill since earlier excavations suggested there might be some activity. The search for a possible bailey suggests that perhaps one did not exist or if it did it may have been insubstantial. That would mean the ruins we see today may represent the extent of the castle at its peak. Interestingly the fashion for having gardens might have passed Bolingbroke by. It was an important place, so may have begun to fall out of use by the time gardens became a common part of high-status medieval landscapes.
Despite the siege of 1643, the survey did not uncover ‘siegeworks’ which would have been built by the Parliamentarians. This might be because the siege was relatively short.
As a result of this work, we know more about how the surroundings of Bolingbroke Castle. Other types of geophysical survey may pick up different pieces of evidence, helping build a fuller picture of the area. Surveys like this are an important tool to understand sites, and Heritage Lincolnshire’s work will inform any future work at the castle.
Thank you to the owners, the Duchy of Lancaster, for allowing us to carry out the survey, to English Heritage who are guardians of the site, and to the volunteers from the local community who helped with the fieldwork. Projects like this really do take a village.
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