Castle by Marc Morris

Author:Marc Morris [Morris, Marc]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781446492796
Google: r-NqQlanVvIC
Amazon: 0752215361
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2004-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

This gatehouse, on first inspection, has all the paraphernalia of military might that we saw at Caernarfon – oak doors, portcullises (three of them) and murder-holes. What’s more, because it was built a hundred years after Edward’s great Welsh castles, it also has a couple of new tricks up its sleeve. In the first place, there are gun-loops. Guns and gunpowder arrived in western Europe in the fourteenth century, and Bodiam is one of the earliest English castles to make provision for this new type of weapon. The castle’s other up-to-date feature is at the top of the gatehouse. Here the masonry stands proud from the wall, as if the building is wearing a crown. It is a feature known as ‘machicolation’, and is a stone version of the wooden hoardings that were built around the tops of earlier towers. Rather like murder-holes, machicolation offered the defenders another vantage point from which to drop things on to the heads of people standing underneath.

So it seems that full marks go to Bodiam’s architect for making the main gate secure. Or do they? A more careful inspection of this impressive entrance raises all kinds of questions. For example, looking at the gatehouse from outside, you might think the gap between the bridge and the castle was crossed by means of a drawbridge. I certainly assumed as much on my first visit to the castle, because the front of the gatehouse is recessed as if to accommodate a drawbridge in the upright position. Look closely, however, and you discover that there are no holes in the stonework for the all-important drawbridge chains. Look closer still, and you realize that there is no room in the gatehouse to house a drawbridge mechanism. The gap, we are forced to conclude, must have been bridged by something much less elaborate and much weaker – a simple removable wooden gantry.

The drawbridge problem is merely the clearest example of how the gatehouse’s swagger in fact conceals a weak design. Other features are similarly duplicitous. The masonry only allows for thin wooden doors, and provides no means for effectively barring them. The murder-holes look rather too small and mannered to be effective, and would hardly deter a determined intruder. The gun-loops and the machicolation might have offered some protection, but, importantly, they only defend the gatehouse itself – the rest of the castle remains totally unprotected.

What really undermines our confidence in the main gatehouse, however, is its smaller counterpart on the opposite side of the castle. The rear entrance not only shows the same structural weaknesses – no drawbridge, thin doors, and puny murder-holes; it doesn’t even bother with the elaboration of the main gate. The bridge ran directly up to the doorway, there is only room for one portcullis, and there are no gun-loops at all. This is the real clincher – why go to all the trouble of securing the front door if you are going to leave the back door unlocked? We can only conclude that

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