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Watercolour by William Daniell.
From Adrian Pettifer, English Castles
Quote
DOVER CASTLE rises high above the town and harbour, crowning a mighty hill which terminates abruptly at the White Cliffs. This magnificent site was first fortified in the Iron Age and the medieval castle fills the area defined by the ancient hillfort. The castle is thus of extraordinary size (thirty-five acres) and exceptional strength. It had good reason to be. Matthew Paris, the thirteenth-century chronicler, described it as the 'key of England', and throughout its history it has presented a deterrent to all invaders contemplating the shortest route across the Channel. Largely a creation of the early Plantagenets, the castle remained little changed for centuries. The Napoleonic invasion scare forced an upgrading to cater for the powerful artillery of the day. This has resulted in the mutilation of the medieval defences, but the massive alterations are a fitting testimony to the castle's strategic importance. The outer curtain was reduced in height, along with many of the towers, and backed by an earth rampart to support and withstand artillery. Furthermore the mighty ditch in front of the curtain attained its present depth.
It has been suggested that Dover was one of the small group of castles founded under Norman influence before the Norman Conquest. Hence the future King Harold, making his famous oath during his detention in Normandy, promised to surrender the 'castle' of Dover to Duke William. However, medieval terminology is notoriously vague on such matters. It can only be said that, if Dover was not a castle in the strict sense before the Norman Conquest, it became one when William reached Dover during his invasion march. It is known that a Saxon burgh flourished within the ancient ramparts. The cruciform church of St Mary in Castro, still complete despite a heavy Victorian restoration, was built to serve this community about the year 1000. Beside it is a ruined Roman pharos or lighthouse, which guided the vessels of the Roman fleet into the harbour. Church and lighthouse now stand inside the Horseshoe Earthwork, a massive rampart overlying William the Conqueror's original ringwork.
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Sometime after the Norman Conquest, whether voluntarily or otherwise, the burgesses left their defended hill and migrated to the harbour below. Henry 11 was thus able to extend the area of the castle, constructing his mighty keep and inner curtain to the north-west of the original ringwork. The royal accounts known as the Pipe Rolls tell us that they were built in the years 1180-90 at the enormous cost for those days of £6300. The master mason is given as Maurice the Engineer, who had previously built the keep at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The keep is one of the latest and greatest of the square Norman keeps. It is a mighty cube nearly a hundred feet long in each direction, with square corner turrets and the most elaborate of forebuildings. This forebuilding is an L-shaped structure appended to the main body of the keep,with three projecting turrets of its own. The forebuilding was originally roofless so that assailants would be exposed to projectiles hurled from the parapet. Where the ascent changes direction is an ornate little Romanesque chapel occupying one of the forebuilding turrets.
The staircase leads to a grand entrance portal at second-floor level - one floor higher than usual and another parallel with Newcastle. No doubt this arrangement provided an extra degree of security, but it also means that the forebuilding took the form of a grand staircase communicating directly with the principal apartments, as this floor contained the royal hall and solar. As in other major Norman keeps, this level actually forms a double storey with a mural gallery running most of the way around the upper stage. The precise reason for such galleries is conjectural but, as it lay below the original roof line, its function seems to be residential rather than military. A number of private chambers are contrived within the great thickness of the walls off the hall and solar. One of them contains a well, the shaft of which sinks 350 feet into the underlying chalk. A passage leads to another chapel, even more delicate that the one immediately below it and showing signs of the transition to Gothic architecture. The floor beneath is similar in layout, including the mural chambers. It was probably intended as the constable's residence, while the ground floor was used for storage. Two broad spiral stairs connect all floors. While the keep retains its Norman proportions, many of the doorways and windows date from a remodelling in Edward IV's reign while the brick vaults were inserted during the Napoleonic era to allow the mounting of guns on the roof.
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As a tower keep large enough to contain the chief apartments on a single floor, Dover owes its conception to London's White Tower which is a century older. That keep has the same cross-wall, the same double storey, the same mural gallery. Dover shows progress in its forebuilding and its considerably thicker walls, partly for defence but also to make room for the mural chambers which allowed much more privacy. Nevertheless the keep at Dover is quite conventional when it is recalled that Henry 11 had experimented with new shapes of keep elsewhere. By contrast, the inner curtain which surrounds the keep is one of the earliest to be comprehensively defended by flanking towers. There are fourteen in all, each square-fronted and open-backed though they vary in size and depth. Two pairs of these towers are placed closely together to form twin-towered gatehouses - the earliest in England - known as King's Gate and Palace Gate. There are ruins of a barbican in front of the King's Gate. The inner curtain has lost its battlements and has suffered from refacing. Eighteenth-century barracks in the inner bailey incorporate a lot of walling from Henry Ill's residential buildings.
The outer curtain follows the crest of the Iron Age rampart. A portion of it also dates from Henry ll's time, apparently 1168-74, i.e. before the keep and inner curtain were constructed. His work begins to the east of the inner bailey at the Avranches Tower, blocking the original entrance to the hillfort. Its octagonal plan and the two closely-spaced rows of arrow-slits are remarkable for their date. The next two towers are square and open-backed, like those of the inner curtain. After that there was a pause. Henry 11 erected his keep and inner curtain, while Richard 1 was too preoccupied with his foreign wars and Chateau Gaillard. King John resumed work in 1207 following the loss of Normandy. He continued the curtain around the northern tip of the hillfort as far as Peverel's Tower on the west. As the outer curtain runs parallel to the inner and at no great distance from it, Dover qualifies as the first concentric castle in Britain, though whether by accident or design is debatable. The closely-spaced bastions along this stretch (mostly named after constables of the castle) are mostly semi-circular in accordance with the latest military developments. However, they are still small flankers with a purely defensive role. Godsfoe Tower, the only square one, is a fifteenth-century rebuilding. At the northern apex of the site two bastions were set together to flank the main entrance.
A momentous siege took place in 1216, during the Dauphin Louis' campaign to win the English throne. His men drove a mine beneath King John's gatehouse, causing one of its flanking towers to collapse. The constable, Hubert de Burgh, filled the breach with timber and managed to hold out until John's death resolved the issue. Early in Henry III's reign elaborate measures were taken to make the northern approaches more secure. The undermined tower was rebuilt but John's gateway was blocked forever with a pointed bastion, thus creating the trio known as the Norfolk Towers. An earthwork was dug to the north of them to force an oblique approach, and two new gatehouses were constructed at less accessible points of the outer curtain. The Fitzwilliam Gate with its pointed flanking towers lies on the east wall dose to the junction between Henry II's and King John's work. It is reached via a tunnel through the rampart on the far side of the ditch. On the west wall is the massive Constable's Gate which, as its name suggests, replaced the first floor of the keep as the constable's residence. This gatehouse has suffered many alterations but its outer front is largely as conceived. It has an unusually elongated plan, a duster of four half-round towers of different sizes rising from square bases. One of them contains the gate passage and is fronted by an oval tower. The Constable's Gate could only be approached along the crest of the rampart beyond the ditch, and as a further protective measure a long barbican (of which only the lower walls survive) dosed off this approach.
All this was not the end. As a further protection against attacks from the north a series of underground passages was dug to connect the castle with the earthwork beyond the north curtain. These passages still remain, though enlarged and extended during the Napoleonic period. They would have allowed a strong garrison to emerge behind enemy lines and surprise attackers from the rear. AS a precaution against outsiders getting in by the same method, access to the main passage is controlled by the cylindrical St John's Tower which rises unexpectedly out of the castle ditch.
Henry 111 spent £7500 on the castle, i.e. more than Henry 11 but over a longer period. After strengthening the north side of the castle in the 1220s Henry 111 continued the outer curtain southwards, still with bastions, from Peverel's Tower to the cliff's edge. Peverel's Tower was enlarged into a gatehouse communicating between the northern and southern outer baileys. There was once a corresponding eastern curtain running to the cliff from the Avranches Tower. Henry's last work at Dover was the Horseshoe Earthwork (see above), topped by a curtain now reduced to foundations. This created a fourth, intermediate bailey, reached from the large southern enclosure through the octagonal Colton Gate.
Dover Castle stood aloof from the French raids of the Hundred Years War. A great deal was spent on the town defences during that epoch but nothing is left to show for it.
Access: The precincts, keep and underground passages are open at standard times (EH).
Reference.. Guidebook by R- Alien Brown. HKW(11).
Relations.. The Tower of London and Newcastle. For earlier flanking towers see Framlingham and Windsor. Other castles occupying ancient hillforts are Old Sarum, Elmley and Almondbury.
It has been suggested that Dover was one of the small group of castles founded under Norman influence before the Norman Conquest. Hence the future King Harold, making his famous oath during his detention in Normandy, promised to surrender the 'castle' of Dover to Duke William. However, medieval terminology is notoriously vague on such matters. It can only be said that, if Dover was not a castle in the strict sense before the Norman Conquest, it became one when William reached Dover during his invasion march. It is known that a Saxon burgh flourished within the ancient ramparts. The cruciform church of St Mary in Castro, still complete despite a heavy Victorian restoration, was built to serve this community about the year 1000. Beside it is a ruined Roman pharos or lighthouse, which guided the vessels of the Roman fleet into the harbour. Church and lighthouse now stand inside the Horseshoe Earthwork, a massive rampart overlying William the Conqueror's original ringwork.
attachmentSometime after the Norman Conquest, whether voluntarily or otherwise, the burgesses left their defended hill and migrated to the harbour below. Henry 11 was thus able to extend the area of the castle, constructing his mighty keep and inner curtain to the north-west of the original ringwork. The royal accounts known as the Pipe Rolls tell us that they were built in the years 1180-90 at the enormous cost for those days of £6300. The master mason is given as Maurice the Engineer, who had previously built the keep at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The keep is one of the latest and greatest of the square Norman keeps. It is a mighty cube nearly a hundred feet long in each direction, with square corner turrets and the most elaborate of forebuildings. This forebuilding is an L-shaped structure appended to the main body of the keep,with three projecting turrets of its own. The forebuilding was originally roofless so that assailants would be exposed to projectiles hurled from the parapet. Where the ascent changes direction is an ornate little Romanesque chapel occupying one of the forebuilding turrets.
The staircase leads to a grand entrance portal at second-floor level - one floor higher than usual and another parallel with Newcastle. No doubt this arrangement provided an extra degree of security, but it also means that the forebuilding took the form of a grand staircase communicating directly with the principal apartments, as this floor contained the royal hall and solar. As in other major Norman keeps, this level actually forms a double storey with a mural gallery running most of the way around the upper stage. The precise reason for such galleries is conjectural but, as it lay below the original roof line, its function seems to be residential rather than military. A number of private chambers are contrived within the great thickness of the walls off the hall and solar. One of them contains a well, the shaft of which sinks 350 feet into the underlying chalk. A passage leads to another chapel, even more delicate that the one immediately below it and showing signs of the transition to Gothic architecture. The floor beneath is similar in layout, including the mural chambers. It was probably intended as the constable's residence, while the ground floor was used for storage. Two broad spiral stairs connect all floors. While the keep retains its Norman proportions, many of the doorways and windows date from a remodelling in Edward IV's reign while the brick vaults were inserted during the Napoleonic era to allow the mounting of guns on the roof.
attachmentAs a tower keep large enough to contain the chief apartments on a single floor, Dover owes its conception to London's White Tower which is a century older. That keep has the same cross-wall, the same double storey, the same mural gallery. Dover shows progress in its forebuilding and its considerably thicker walls, partly for defence but also to make room for the mural chambers which allowed much more privacy. Nevertheless the keep at Dover is quite conventional when it is recalled that Henry 11 had experimented with new shapes of keep elsewhere. By contrast, the inner curtain which surrounds the keep is one of the earliest to be comprehensively defended by flanking towers. There are fourteen in all, each square-fronted and open-backed though they vary in size and depth. Two pairs of these towers are placed closely together to form twin-towered gatehouses - the earliest in England - known as King's Gate and Palace Gate. There are ruins of a barbican in front of the King's Gate. The inner curtain has lost its battlements and has suffered from refacing. Eighteenth-century barracks in the inner bailey incorporate a lot of walling from Henry Ill's residential buildings.
The outer curtain follows the crest of the Iron Age rampart. A portion of it also dates from Henry ll's time, apparently 1168-74, i.e. before the keep and inner curtain were constructed. His work begins to the east of the inner bailey at the Avranches Tower, blocking the original entrance to the hillfort. Its octagonal plan and the two closely-spaced rows of arrow-slits are remarkable for their date. The next two towers are square and open-backed, like those of the inner curtain. After that there was a pause. Henry 11 erected his keep and inner curtain, while Richard 1 was too preoccupied with his foreign wars and Chateau Gaillard. King John resumed work in 1207 following the loss of Normandy. He continued the curtain around the northern tip of the hillfort as far as Peverel's Tower on the west. As the outer curtain runs parallel to the inner and at no great distance from it, Dover qualifies as the first concentric castle in Britain, though whether by accident or design is debatable. The closely-spaced bastions along this stretch (mostly named after constables of the castle) are mostly semi-circular in accordance with the latest military developments. However, they are still small flankers with a purely defensive role. Godsfoe Tower, the only square one, is a fifteenth-century rebuilding. At the northern apex of the site two bastions were set together to flank the main entrance.
A momentous siege took place in 1216, during the Dauphin Louis' campaign to win the English throne. His men drove a mine beneath King John's gatehouse, causing one of its flanking towers to collapse. The constable, Hubert de Burgh, filled the breach with timber and managed to hold out until John's death resolved the issue. Early in Henry III's reign elaborate measures were taken to make the northern approaches more secure. The undermined tower was rebuilt but John's gateway was blocked forever with a pointed bastion, thus creating the trio known as the Norfolk Towers. An earthwork was dug to the north of them to force an oblique approach, and two new gatehouses were constructed at less accessible points of the outer curtain. The Fitzwilliam Gate with its pointed flanking towers lies on the east wall dose to the junction between Henry II's and King John's work. It is reached via a tunnel through the rampart on the far side of the ditch. On the west wall is the massive Constable's Gate which, as its name suggests, replaced the first floor of the keep as the constable's residence. This gatehouse has suffered many alterations but its outer front is largely as conceived. It has an unusually elongated plan, a duster of four half-round towers of different sizes rising from square bases. One of them contains the gate passage and is fronted by an oval tower. The Constable's Gate could only be approached along the crest of the rampart beyond the ditch, and as a further protective measure a long barbican (of which only the lower walls survive) dosed off this approach.
All this was not the end. As a further protection against attacks from the north a series of underground passages was dug to connect the castle with the earthwork beyond the north curtain. These passages still remain, though enlarged and extended during the Napoleonic period. They would have allowed a strong garrison to emerge behind enemy lines and surprise attackers from the rear. AS a precaution against outsiders getting in by the same method, access to the main passage is controlled by the cylindrical St John's Tower which rises unexpectedly out of the castle ditch.
Henry 111 spent £7500 on the castle, i.e. more than Henry 11 but over a longer period. After strengthening the north side of the castle in the 1220s Henry 111 continued the outer curtain southwards, still with bastions, from Peverel's Tower to the cliff's edge. Peverel's Tower was enlarged into a gatehouse communicating between the northern and southern outer baileys. There was once a corresponding eastern curtain running to the cliff from the Avranches Tower. Henry's last work at Dover was the Horseshoe Earthwork (see above), topped by a curtain now reduced to foundations. This created a fourth, intermediate bailey, reached from the large southern enclosure through the octagonal Colton Gate.
Dover Castle stood aloof from the French raids of the Hundred Years War. A great deal was spent on the town defences during that epoch but nothing is left to show for it.
Access: The precincts, keep and underground passages are open at standard times (EH).
Reference.. Guidebook by R- Alien Brown. HKW(11).
Relations.. The Tower of London and Newcastle. For earlier flanking towers see Framlingham and Windsor. Other castles occupying ancient hillforts are Old Sarum, Elmley and Almondbury.
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