Castle (9 page)

Amazingly, the records of the Exchequer have survived. The clerks wrote up their accounts on huge parchment rolls, known as ‘pipe rolls’ (for the simple reason that, when rolled up, they looked like pipes). Using these ancient documents, we can find out rough costs for royal castles, and also gauge the length of time it took to build them.

The sad thing is that although Henry I invented the whole accounting system, only one roll survives from his reign. As a result, we are not very well informed about the king’s castle-building activities. In fact, early twelfth-century towers – whether royal ones like Norwich, or baronial ones like Rochester – belong to a mysterious Dark Age, almost entirely unilluminated by written records. Fortunately, in Rochester’s case, we know from a copy of a royal charter that building began in 1127; and a Kentish chronicler noted in passing that the Archbishop of Canterbury began to construct ‘a noble tower’ at this time. But as to how long it took to build the
mighty
keep, and how much it cost, we can only make intelligent guesses by comparing it with examples from later in the century.

From the start of Henry II’s reign, the pipe rolls survive in an almost unbroken series, and we can calculate the cost of some of the king’s keeps. The great tower at Dover, for example, which is shorter than Rochester but bigger at the base, cost around £4,000 and took ten years to build (1180–90). The much smaller keep that Henry built at Orford cost about £1,500 and took just six years to build (1166–72). With these figures in mind, and allowing for a small amount of inflation, the keep at Rochester must have cost at least £3,000, and taken between eight and ten years to construct.

To the modern reader, of course, these sound like castles at knock-down prices. When you look at the contemporary pay packets, however, you begin to realize that would-be castle-owners had to start saving early. In the twelfth century, an unskilled labourer earned a penny a day, while a skilled labourer might take home tuppence. A fully armed knight, risking life and limb and providing his own kit, would expect to receive a shilling (twelve pence) in return for a day’s military service. Only at the top of the scale did things start to improve. The king’s annual income – which was also the government’s annual budget – was somewhere between £10,000 and £20,000 a year. Even for the king, therefore, building a tower like Dover or Rochester would absorb between a quarter and a third of his money for a year, or 3 to 4 per cent of his annual budget spread over a decade. In the twelfth century, then, there were only a handful of people who could afford to build a great tower.

What our records cannot tell us is how these towers were actually built. We have to wait until the thirteenth century before we get really detailed building accounts for castles (see
Chapter Three)
. Occasionally, the pipe rolls will record the name of the architect or mason working on a particular building. Henry II’s favourite builder, responsible for the keeps at Dover and Newcastle, was one Maurice the Engineer. In almost
every
other case, however, the names of the geniuses who designed and erected these wonderful buildings are lost to us.

The towers themselves, however, provide us with some clues as to how they were built. Rochester, for example, was constructed with two types of stone. Most of it is Kentish ragstone, very probably quarried near Maidstone, and shipped from there up the River Medway to Rochester. The fine details, however – the fireplaces, the window arches, and the cornerstones – are fashioned from a softer stone, more suitable for carving. This is Caen stone, which (as the name suggests) had to be transported from Caen in Normandy, a journey of over a hundred miles. Tons and tons of stone, quarried in northern France, ferried hundreds of miles by scores of ships over dozens of voyages – this is the scale of the enterprise we have to imagine to explain how Rochester Castle came to be built.

From the enormous cost of their construction and the many years they took to build, it is evident that keeps like Rochester were not simply thrown up without design or purpose. They are complex structures, built to serve the needs of a great lord and his household. Each room in a tower was built with a specific purpose in mind.

For this reason, there’s a certain sense of disappointment when you step inside the main part of the keep at Rochester, because the interior is open to the sky. At some point after the Middle Ages (it is not known exactly when), a ferocious fire ripped through the tower, destroying the wooden floors and melting the lead roof. If you look closely, you can see the scars left by this inferno on the interior walls. The keep’s present condition, however, does offer certain compensations. In the first place, it allows you once again to appreciate the building’s huge size. The first reaction is to gaze upwards to the roof, but it soon strikes you that you are only observing half the interior space – the tower is divided in two by a cross-wall, which gives the whole structure greater solidity.

The other advantage of this perspective is that it enables you to see all four floors at once, and appreciate their common architectural features. Each principal chamber has a large ornately decorated fireplace, with a chimney flue that curves into the thickness of the wall. Similarly, there are garderobes (toilets) on every floor, and the well that runs up through the centre of the cross-wall is also accessible at every level. In other words, we have a building with mod cons and creature comforts throughout – central heating, lavatories, and water ‘on tap’. As in the forebuilding, the quality of the stonework is an indication that the living here was luxurious. The beautiful rounded Norman arches, with their zigzagged chevrons, tell us that this was once a residence of the first rank.

The great cross-wall that divides Rochester’s keep. At the level of the hall, the wall breaks into columns, allowing passage between the two halves of the tower
.

It does, however, take a considerable feat of imagination to picture the castle in its heyday. In spite of the evidence of quality, the interior of Rochester today has a grim, dark and industrial feel, like
an
abandoned Victorian factory. What must it have been like to wander around these rooms, to walk between the giant pillars, and to stand beside a roaring fireplace? We can get some idea by comparing Rochester to other, better-preserved twelfth-century keeps. Take Hedingham Castle, for example, which stands near the banks of the river Colne in Essex, where the great tower was built at almost exactly the same time as Rochester. Hedingham was begun by Aubrey de Vere, probably after he was promoted to the rank of Earl of Oxford in 1141, and shares many architectural features with its Kentish cousin. From the outside it is slightly less imposing, as it is somewhat smaller and has lost its forebuilding; but it is quite a lot smarter, being finished with expensive blocks of cut stone. The arrangement of the interior is also slightly different, but it nevertheless gives us a very strong sense of what life was like in a twelfth-century tower.

Stepping inside Hedingham’s keep is like stepping back eight hundred and fifty years in time. As at Rochester, the key word is luxury, which is evident everywhere. The difference at Hedingham is that the masonry is in almost perfect condition. Although the castle has lost its roof and floors on several occasions over the centuries (most recently at the start of the previous century, when soldiers stationed on the roof started a fire to keep warm – and got more than they bargained for), the castle’s owners have always replaced them. Consequently, the interior is almost perfectly preserved. At Rochester, all the soft stone used to make windows, archways and fireplaces has been worn away by the wind and the rain, or stolen for use in other buildings. At Hedingham, however, these details look as though they were carved yesterday. Despite the fire, original medieval plaster still clings to the walls, and if we peer closer we can still see traces of paint. What’s more, by looking closely at the whole building, we can begin to understand the actual
purpose
of twelfth-century keeps.

*

Curiously, one of the most important things to understand about castles like Rochester and Hedingham is how little time their owners actually spent in them. The kings and nobles of the twelfth century were constantly on the move. One of Henry II’s courtiers, Peter of Blois, described how the king’s movements were a constant burden to his household:

If the king has said he will remain in a place for a day – and particularly if he has announced his intention publicly by the mouth of a herald – he is sure to upset all the arrangements by departing early in the morning. And you then see men dashing around as if they were mad, beating packhorses, running carts into one another – in short, giving a lively imitation of Hell. If, on the other hand, the king orders an early start, he is sure to change his mind, and you can take it for granted that he will sleep until midday. Then you will see packhorses loaded and waiting, the carts prepared, the courtiers dozing, traders fretting, and everyone grumbling
.

Henry’s constant travelling, however, was not exceptional – it’s just that it would have been nice if he’d made his mind up. (‘I hardly dare say it,’ said Peter, ‘but I believe that in truth he took delight in seeing what a fix he put us in.’) Every medieval king travelled around the country from place to place. So too did their great nobles: earls, bishops and barons. Like the king, these men owned estates that were widely scattered across the country and, like the king, they wanted to visit all of them on a regular basis.

They did this for two reasons. In the first place, as landlords, they wanted to see that their officials were managing their estates properly, and also to remind their tenants who was in charge. Secondly, the economic needs of their households compelled the aristocracy to keep moving around. The household of a medieval magnate was large – it
included
not just the lord and his immediate family, nor just their domestic servants, but a whole host of others. A handful of knights, usually quite young and boisterous, would have been part of the household, and would have accompanied their lord when he was out riding and hunting. A number of clerks were also in constant attendance, in order to perform divine services, and also to write letters and keep records (most aristocrats could read, but they didn’t dirty their hands with quill and ink). In addition, there were cooks and carters, huntsmen and falconers, stable-lads and skivvies. All told, a lord in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries might move around the country with up to fifty people in tow. All these people required food and drink, and also ran up other expenses for things such as fuel, candle wax, and clothing. In a medieval economy, without many big market towns, it was impossible to feed this many people (and, of course, their horses) if they stayed in one place for very long: they would quickly consume all the available food. The simplest solution was to keep the household moving around, gobbling up reserves of food as it went, then moving on to the next place when the cupboard was bare. So twelfth-century lords rarely stayed in one place for more than a few weeks, and would sometimes move on after just a few nights.

Of course, they would not have had a castle at each of their manors. The greatest lord – the king – had many castles dotted around the country, as well as palaces and hunting lodges. Great earls and the greatest barons may have had two or three castles among their many properties. But most noblemen only had the resources to invest in one major castle, and would have contented themselves with timbered lodgings – still luxurious, naturally – on their other manors. So for most of the time, a castle such as Hedingham or Rochester remained almost empty while its owner and his household were away touring the other parts of his estate. In their absence, a skeleton staff would remain attached to the castle, in order to supervise the lands around it, and to guard it in the unlikely event of an attack.

The most important member of this permanent staff was the constable, who was responsible for the building itself. Also important was the lord’s estate steward, who would reside in the castle and use it as an administrative centre. His job was to manage his master’s lands, and this meant holding courts to discipline tenants, as well as collecting monies and rents from them. The first floor of a keep may have been used for such purposes, and may also have been used as accommodation for the steward and the constable. At Hedingham and Rochester the first-floor chambers are comfortable and well appointed, with en suite toilets and large fireplaces. At the same time, they are grand enough for an official like the steward to hold court there when occasion demanded.

All such humdrum business was forgotten when news reached the castle that the lord was on his way. If the constable was lucky, and his master didn’t behave like Henry II, this wouldn’t take him completely by surprise. Either the visit was prearranged, or outriders from the lord’s household arrived a few days in advance to warn the constable to put the castle in a state of readiness. First things first – was there enough food? The cellars had to be checked. Certain types of food and drink could be stockpiled; salted meat, cheeses and barrels of wine would keep for weeks or months. But they had to be quickly supplemented with plenty of fresh food. Fresh meat, especially deer, was either hunted in the parks, or walked into the kitchens in the bailey. Perishables like fish and eggs had to be sourced rapidly, and ale – which also went bad quickly – had to be brewed. Typically, the lord would send his baker in advance of his arrival to ensure that the household had plenty of bread for the duration of its stay.