Castle (18 page)

The town walls at Conway

Saillon
.

Arnold Taylor’s hunch had paid off – he had discovered the true identity and origins of Master James, and proved beyond question
that
he was one of the world’s greatest architects. Not only was he responsible for the great royal castles in Wales; he was also the designer of a string of castles in Savoy. When you look at his early handiwork, you can see how Edward I, travelling through the Alps in 1273, must have been impressed, not to say envious. It is always slightly galling when you drop in on relatives and discover that their new house is quite a lot nicer than yours. Sitting in the magnificent chambers of Chillon Castle, gazing at Lake Geneva through the ‘Harlech’ windows, one is tempted to think the unthinkable. Was Edward really driven by necessity and outraged honour, as he would always claim? Or did he just want a lovely new set of fabulous castles in the mountains, like his cousins?

We will never know. What we do know is that when Edward formulated his castle-building plan in 1278, there was only one man for the job. The king summoned Master James and put him in charge of the entire operation. Since the results were Conway, Harlech and Caernarfon, we can say with some certainty that his faith was not misplaced. Edward was clearly delighted with the castles because, as well as paying his architect a handsome salary, he also gave him a wonderful gift. In 1290, he appointed Master James as constable of Harlech castle. What better reward for the architect than to live in the magnificent gatehouse that he himself had created?

Harlech is in some respects Master James’s most striking castle, owing largely to its situation on a great outcrop of rock, with views out to sea to the west and vistas of Mount Snowdon to the east. Impressive as it is, however, the castle was intended to house only a garrison and a resident constable – it would have been a little pressed to accommodate the king and his court. At Conway and Caernarfon, though, the story was different. These were castles built as palaces, where Master James designed and built spectacular suites of rooms for the king, his family and the royal household.

The best place to appreciate the luxury of Master James’s designs is at Conway, since its royal apartments still survive. Domestic comfort has taken several steps forward since the twelfth century and its great towers. Not only do we find plenty of grand fireplaces, but also many more toilets – even the tiny watching-chamber for the king’s chapel is thoughtfully provided with en suite facilities. The biggest advance, however, is in terms of windows. Although the windows on the outside of the castle are few and tiny, the windows on the inner courtyards are large and stately, and would have been fitted throughout with stained glass of many colours.

Soldiers using the crossbow-loops at Caernarfon
.

At Caernarfon, meanwhile, you can appreciate the military sophistication of Master James of St Georges’ design. On the exposed southern side of the castle, two passageways run through the curtain wall for its entire length, one above the other, punctuated at regular intervals with crossbow-loops. The garrison, therefore, with archers and crossbowmen shooting from within the walls as well as behind the battlements on top, had treble the defensive force. On the north side of the castle, the arrangement of the defences is even more ingenious. What from the outside seems to be a bank of five conventional crossbow-loops is revealed on the inside to be a cunning
arrangement
of interlocking slots, with each loop capable of being shared by up to three archers. The result, combined again with the potential number of men shooting from the battlements and the towers, has been justly called ‘one of the most formidable concentrations of “fire-power” to be found in the Middle Ages’.

The best place, however, to stand and admire the military might of Caernarfon Castle is at the main entrance, the so-called King’s Gate. Any would-be attacker trying to get in this way was faced with a daunting set of obstacles. In the first place, there was the great ditch in front of the gate, which could only be crossed by means of the drawbridge. If, by some miracle, the attacker managed to get past that, he was confronted by five sets of sturdy oak doors, alternated with no less than six portcullises. Above his head were holes in the ceiling, called
meutrières
or murder-holes, conventionally believed to have been for boiling oil or rocks, but now generally (and rather boringly) considered to have been water chutes, for use if a fire was started in front of the gates. Even if we grudgingly accept this new hypothesis, we can still draw comfort from the fact that the gatehouse is liberally provided with crossbow loops and flanked by the other mural towers and wall-walks on this side of the castle. Boiling oil or no boiling oil, our would-be assailant was going to have a hard time getting in this way.

The King’s Gate is unquestionably a mighty piece of military thinking, but its functions are not purely practical. Above the doors is a carved statue of a king, which makes Caernarfon the earliest example of a castle with an ornamented gatehouse. As with the forebuildings on our twelfth-century castles, this is an entrance designed to impress the friendly visitor as well as deter the attacker. Some of the military paraphernalia can also be read in this way. One portcullis, for example, is a jolly good idea, and two portcullises might likewise be interpreted as very prudent. But does anyone really need six portcullises or, for that matter, five sets of oak doors? Another way of looking at these barriers is to see them as part of a ceremonial
procession
route. We have to imagine a distinguished visitor entering the castle, and being treated to the spectacle of doors swinging open and portcullises being raised in an intentionally elaborate ballet. It seems clear that a deliberate degree of theatricality has been incorporated into the architect’s design.

The sense of drama at Caernarfon’s King’s Gate in fact extends to the whole castle. The fashion for towers in the thirteenth century, you will recall, was for round rather than square, and indeed we have seen round towers at Caerphilly, Flint, Rhuddlan, Harlech and Conway, as well as at Chillon, La Batiaz and Saillon. Caernarfon’s towers, however, are neither round nor square, but polygonal. Some of them have eight sides, and one has a total of ten. Moreover, in the Middle Ages it was typical to finish the walls of a castle with whitewash. At Conway and Harlech you can still see traces of this original finish (and imagine how different and glorious they would have looked in their heyday). Once again, however, Caernarfon was unusual. Instead of being covered over, the castle’s walls were left bare, in order to expose to the outside world the different coloured bands of stone in the masonry.

Why was Caernarfon Castle so different to all the others? The answer, it seems, lies in Edward’s love of chivalric literature. The king was a big fan of the legendary King Arthur, and on several occasions we can catch him indulging his passion for all things Arthurian. In 1278, despite having plenty of other pressing business, he personally attended the disinterment of two bodies at Glastonbury Abbey, which the monks swore blind were those of Arthur and his queen, Guinevere. After the conquest of Wales in 1283, Edward was ceremonially appeased with a bauble known as ‘Arthur’s Crown’, which he subsequently presented at the high altar of Westminster Abbey. The following year, Edward organized a ‘round-table’ tournament in Wales; and the great round table on display in Winchester Castle has recently been scientifically dated to Edward’s reign. King Arthur, we should note, was
according
to legend not simply a king of England, but the king of a united island of Britain, and this alone would have made him an attractive role model for a conquering king like Edward. When he later wrote to the Pope to justify his right to rule Scotland, it was the historic precedent of Arthur that Edward cited in his defence.

Edward’s enthusiasm for the mythical British past was evidently keenly felt, and without a doubt he had heard an ancient Welsh tale called
The Dream of Macsen Wledig
. It was first written down in the fourteenth century, but had already been current for several hundred years. The story recounts how Macsen (or Maximus), a Roman Emperor, dreamed of travelling from Rome to Wales, until he came to a point where the river met the sea, and saw a great castle, ‘the fairest castle that mortal had ever seen’. The location of this castle, the poet later reveals, was Caernarfon. Edward, therefore, by choosing to build his new castle there, was not only building on top of yet another hall of the Welsh princes; he was making this ancient legend come true by building his own fairy-tale castle, like the one in Macsen’s dream. Macsen’s status as a Roman emperor is reflected in the decoration of Caernarfon’s largest tower, which is topped with stone carvings of imperial eagles, and appropriately called the Eagle Tower.

The cleverest part, however, is the message hidden in the banded masonry and the polygonal towers. According to the same Welsh legends, the Emperor Macsen was the son of the Emperor Constantine, celebrated not only as the first Christian emperor, but also as the founder of the new imperial capital of Constantinople (modern Istanbul). There is no indication that Edward ever visited this city, but someone in his entourage clearly knew what the walls there looked like. They have banded masonry, and polygonal towers. Caernarfon, even though it stands at the opposite end of Europe, is an unmistakable echo of Constantine’s imperial city.

The big question is, of course, who came up with these ideas? It is totally unanswerable and therefore all the more intriguing. We
might
be tempted to ascribe all the invention to Master James, but it was clearly Edward himself and not his master mason who was inspired by King Arthur. We might imagine Master James coming over from Savoy with a set of sketches tucked under his arm, but again this is highly unlikely. At Harlech, Conway and Caernarfon, each castle is built to fit the platform of rock on which it stands, and therefore much of the design had to be worked out on the spot. Moreover, there is no indication from his work in Savoy that Master James had ever designed or built a twin-towered gatehouse before he came to England. The fact that he constructed such gatehouses at Harlech and Rhuddlan suggests he was open to new ideas, or tried hard to incorporate his patron’s wishes. Later, when Edward was at war with the Scots and needed a castle at Linlithgow, he wrote a letter to Master James telling him precisely what kind of design he wanted, specifying (among other things) the depth of the ditch and the number of towers. There is no doubt that Edward had similarly strong views about what he wanted in Wales, and gave equally detailed orders to his master mason.

Polygonal towers and banded masonary: Caernarfon