Rochester – Castle Studies Trust Blog

Update from Visualising Canterbury Castle: the importance of the site visit

Project lead of the Canterbury Castle Visualisation project, Dr Katie McGown, gives an update on how the project is progressing.

The Visualising Canterbury Castle project is in the process of producing a new digital reconstruction of Canterbury Castle’s Norman keep. In our last post we discussed the first of a series of co-design sessions we have organised to allow a range of expertise and stakeholders to help us develop and interrogate the model we are producing. However, this is not the only way we are collating information to inform our understanding of the built structure.

Subscribe to our quarterly newsletter

Canterbury Castle has been closed to the public since 2018, and as it is currently being refurbished, the walls are obscured by scaffolding. Because of this, initially we drew heavily on Excavations at Canterbury Castle (Bennet et al, 1982) published by CAT, which features elevation and plan drawings. This helped us map out the size and shape of the building for the early stages of the model. However, over the course of the development of the project, questions have arisen about areas of the building which are no longer extant, and we’ve had to piece together information from other sources, and crucially, by visiting other castles.

After the first co-design session our student interns, Ethan Serfontein and Joseph Seare, and Technical Lead, Mike Farrant, were invited to Rochester Castle by Dr Jeremy Ashbee, Head Properties Curator, English Heritage. Through visiting a similar structure, the team gained greater understanding of both the defining features of a Norman keep, and how we can draw evidence from the building to inform our reconstruction.

Joseph (l) and Ethan (r) from the project team visiting Rochester Castle (copyright Dr Katie McGown)

As we continued to develop the digital reconstruction, questions began to emerge about the structure of the outer staircase and how this would look. This is a difficult question to answer given that the structure no longer exists. However, the team were able to develop a better understanding of how the space might have worked by comparing their observations in Rochester with a visit to Dover Castle. Professor Alan Meades, Dr Cat Cooper, Mike, Joseph and Ethan went down to Dover and spent time discussing the differences between the three Royal Norman castles in Kent, and documenting features like the staircase. Dover Castle also gave the team the opportunity to appreciate the lovely Norman interiors.

Subscribe to our quarterly newsletter

Dover Castle Keep copyright Dr Katie McGown

Christchurch, Canterbury visualising team visiting Dover Castle, copyright Dr Katie McGown

Recently, we were able to visit Canterbury Castle, courtesy of Lian Harter from Purcell and Alison Hargreaves from Canterbury City Council. Dr Katie McGown and Cat donned high vis, hard hats, and steelies to climb the scaffolding. This visit allowed them to think about sight lines around the city, but also observe important details such as this stunning herringbone brickwork in the fireplace. The tour also gave us incredible insight into the refurbishment of the keep, and how that process might be incorporated into the eventual curriculum resource that accompanies the project.

Dr Katie McGown visiting Canterbury Castle refurbishment

Canterbury Castle refurbishment copyright Dr Katie McGown

Herringbone fireplace at Canterbury Castle, copyright Dr Katie McGown

We’ve also been thinking more broadly about how the project might fit into wider activities in development for the 2027 European Year of the Normans. Professor Leonie Hicks, Cat and Katie travelled to Caen Castle to see about possible collaborations for work at the site, and were delighted to have a detailed tour led by Curator Jean-Marie Levesque around the delicate foundations of Caen Castle’s Norman keep. The team also took the opportunity to see the Bayeux Tapestry prior to its voyage to the British Museum.

Canterbury Castle visualisation team with Caen Castle curator Jean-Marie Levesque

Each of these visits informs the development of the digital reconstruction. For example, following the visit to Canterbury Castle, the fireplaces were adjusted to showcase the herringbone brickwork.

Original visualisation of Canterbury Castle fireplace prior to visit. Copyright Canterbury Castle Visualisation

Canterbury Castle Visualisation updated fireplace with herringbone stonework. Copyright Christchurch Canterbury Visualisation

Similarly, being able to see the refurbishment of Canterbury’s Caen stone has informed the exterior of the digital reconstruction.

Refurbishment of Canterbury Castle with new Caen stone, copyright Dr Katie McGown

Canterbury Castle Visualisation updated to include Caen stone noted in the castle restoration, copyright Christchurch Canterbury Visualisation team

The team has one final visit planned to Norwich Castle before the end of the project, and we are looking forward to continuing to develop our understanding and appreciation of Norman keeps.

Subscribe to our quarterly newsletter

What use a gallery?

Dr Katherine Weikert Senior Lecturer in Early Medieval European History at the University of Winchester takes a look at galleries in Anglo-Norman keeps.

At many Anglo-Norman tower-keeps, there is a significant part of the castle which remains generally under-discussed: the gallery. Often circling above a main room or hall space at least one storey above the floor level, a gallery is normally interpreted to the public as a space for musicians, or a passageway, if noticed at all.

Subscribe to our quarterly newsletter

Part of the neglect of the gallery often has much to do with the survival of the building remains. There is considerably reduced size and physicality to these galleries compared to great rooms such as halls and chambers. One of the best-preserved galleries is in the White Tower, London, which has galleries above both the main rooms and the connected St John’s Chapel. Dover Castle (Kent), too, demonstrates this (though you must use your imagination to remove the later brick barrel-vaulted ceiling to envision it!) But many others such as at Rochester remain in a state that make it more difficult to understand. This means that the keep galleries are often neglected not only in scholarship, but in public interpretation.

Rochester Keep Interior copyright Katherine Weikert

But understanding these galleries provides new insight to the performance of prestige at royal courts and high-status halls in the Anglo-Norman period. What comes to light is the importance of seeing, and being seen. Although in most current states of preservation this is difficult to perceive, between keeps which retain their galleries in safe conditions, and studying the galleries from a point of view of pathways and viewsheds, their meanings and use become more transparent.

Bedroom in Dover Castle Keep copyright Katherine Weikert

In castles such as the White Tower, Dover, and Rochester (Kent), the galleries providing viewsheds into the grand rooms below were a part of routes which indicate that the galleries were important parts of the castle’s ‘choreographed’ space. These passageways to and from these galleries were on paths that included ‘prestige’ places such as the hall and chamber. At Dover, the views from the second-floor galleries actually overlooked both the hall and chamber – leading to even more insight to research which indicates that a chamber was not so much ‘private’ as ‘more select.’ At Rochester, the gallery on the third level equally overlooks the main rooms on either side of the spine wall on the second floor. These galleries also provide a route between the two rooms, an alternative to the two doors in the spine wall between them: a more circuitous route no doubt, but one that provided different opportunities to see the whole rooms below, and be seen above them.

Hedingham Castle Gallery Arches, copyright Katherine Weikert

More rarely, castles retain enough fabric to actively see these viewsheds. Hedingham Castle (Essex), where some of our donors enjoyed a special event in 2021, is in superb and even liveable condition. Here, it is possible to see, experience and understand these paths and views from the gallery. At Hedingham, the gallery overlooks both sides of the grand first-floor room which is divided – but not separated – by an impressive two-storey arch. Views from the gallery overlook both sides of the hall below. Although the gallery arches are undecorated – the ground-floor arches below them have chevron patterns – the size of the gallery arches directly echoes the size of the ones below them. These are wide, open arches from which a person could be seen, while they are simultaneously seeing the action in the hall.

Hedingham Castle, view of the great room from gallery, copyright Katherine Weikert

In all of these castles, people in those great rooms below the galleries had also to consider the impact of the visual message that they were sending to those above. This could include regular matters of state or court; ceremonies or feasting at important events; crown-wearing at notable events; the reception of other high-ranking aristocrats and foreign emissaries, and more beyond this. At places such as St John’s Chapel in the White Tower, the liturgical message also needed to be seen and received. Why make such a display at times and places such as these if it couldn’t be seen? Galleries provided an audience space for those watching the enacted scenes below. In some circumstances, depending on how the hall was set for a number of guests, it may have been possible to better see the action from the gallery than from the floor!

These gallery viewing points were also important places to be seen, not just to see. At Dover, the king and queen could sit on their dais and very likely see those in the galleries in front and above them better than they might see who was at the back of the single-levelled floor of the hall itself. Remaining stone decoration of castle gallery arches further helps to understand the visual impact of being seen in these places. For example, the arches in both the great hall and the gallery at Hedingham echo each other with scalloped capital. At Dover, the gallery behind the high end of the hall is large enough for an entire visual tableau to be created, framed and presented to those in the hall below, an opportunity to view and perhaps control the vision of who was being seen in the gallery behind the seated king and queen.

Hedingham Castle, south entrance to the gallery, copyright Katherine Weikert

Further surviving stonework can lend even more to the interpretations of galleries as prestige spaces. At Hedingham, the south entrance to the gallery level has a particularly fancy doorframe with double-shafted columns with a spiral pattern and beading carving. This gallery was no service level or low-status route, but one that announced its importance in stone. As in the interpretations at Conisbrough Castle (South Yorkshire) and its fancy doors leading to high-status spaces, we should envision galleries such as these as controlled spaces, possibly with doormen allowing or denying entry into them, with access routes including a series of checkpoints in order to reach them.

What use a castle gallery then? More attention needs to be paid to these parts of castles. Although no doubt a fluid space that changed use as needed – as were most castle rooms – the galleries of Anglo-Norman keeps need to be realised as places for high-status members of the court and the castle community not only to see proceedings below, but be seen. The need to be noticed in attendance to a lord cannot be underestimated in the middle ages, where status was important, and malleable. There is more to a castle gallery than meets the eye…and the visual element of them is a key part to understanding them.

Subscribe to our quarterly newsletter

Further reading:

Robert Liddiard, Castles in Context (Macclesfield: Windgather Press, 2005).

Katherine Weikert, ‘Creating a Choreographed Space: Anglo-Norman Keeps in the Twelfth Century,’ in Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era, edited by Liz Thomas and Jill Campbell (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2018), 127-40.

Kings, barons, miners and inedible pigs: the great siege of Rochester in 1215 now on video!

Dr Peter Purton FSA, leading expert on medieval siege warfare examines one of the most famous British medieval sieges, that of Rochester in 1215.

The great donjon of Rochester castle (Kent) is still visible from miles around – including from the Eurostar. It stands above a bridge across the tidal waters of the river Medway and that was one reason why it was subject to a famous six- week siege which ended when an entire corner of the great tower was brought crashing to the ground, leading to the fall of the castle on 30 November 1215.

This was the first big battle in the civil war that broke out between King John (1199-1216) and the barons who had forced him to seal Magna Carta in June of that year. The king got the pope to declare it null and both he, in the south, and the barons, based in London, began to gather soldiers. We know a great deal about what happened because contemporary chroniclers, including eyewitnesses and those closely associated with men fighting there, wrote it down; and because some government records survive. We know the names of the nobles and many of the knights on both sides, of the engineers paid to construct the King’s five stone-throwing siege engines, and the master miners from the Forest of Dean who with their team (altogether 13 miners) undermined first the wall of the bailey and then the great tower itself.

The first castle was built after the Norman conquest but the great tower dated from 1127 when it was built for the archbishop of Canterbury, then William of Corbeil, who shared ownership and use with the crown. It is the tallest keep in the British Isles (125 feet, 38 metres) and unusually boasts two floors above the main level and basement below, divided vertically by a spine wall that gave access to the castle well. Richly provided with latrines and comfortable chambers, two spiral staircases, beautifully decorated stonework, it was a place fit to entertain king or archbishop. But in 1215 none of this mattered, archbishop Stephen Langton ignored John’s demand to hand it over and instead allowed rebel baron William de Albini and 60 or 80 knights, their retinues and archers and crossbowmen, to take possession.

Interior of Rochester’s keep showing the rebuilt corner. To the left is the spine wall the defenders fell back to after the sapping

Control of the ancient bridge over the Medway was vital for both sides, and so it became John’s first target once he had gathered an army of several thousand experienced fighters mainly from Flanders, Poitou and Gascony. The defenders resisted every attack for weeks, inflicting many casualties on John’s men. In the end the besiegers turned to their miners, who first broke through the bailey wall (we don’t know where), then, using the grease from 40 slaughtered pigs (‘of the kind not fit for eating’) as an accelerant to burn the props they had used to prop up the masonry while they sapped the south east corner turret of the great tower, brought it crashing down. The defenders retreated behind the spine wall but had run out of food so surrendered. King John wanted to hang them all but was dissuaded by his own captains who didn’t want to meet the same fate if the wheel of fortune should turn against them.

To this day one can see the join on the sides of the donjon where the wall had to be rebuilt after the siege.

In 2015 the Castle Studies Group (www.castlestudiesgroup.org.uk) held a conference there to mark the 800^th anniversary and I presented a short paper analysing the siege. Now, following an invitation from across the Atlantic, an extended and illustrated version of that talk can be viewed at: