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Castles

The Offpeak Day Return of the King

30/11/2017 by J D Davies

A bit of an oddity for this week’s second blog.

(And anybody thinking ‘the blogger’s a bit of an oddity anyway’ is toast.)

Last week’s trip to Galloway – see the previous post – provided me with lots of inspiration of all sorts, and, thanks primarily to Wigtown, also provided me with lots more books which now need to be found space on my groaning shelves. But the area where I was staying also provided me with ideas and material to supplement a post from almost exactly four years ago. So the first half or so of what follows is an edited version of that post, with entirely new material in the second part. I’ll do a similar thing with next Monday’s blog, which will also update another very old post, coincidentally again from pretty much exactly this same time of year, albeit five years ago. This might well be connected to the previous point about bookshops and bookshelves!

Bear with me – and if you know the legends of King Arthur at all, you’ll probably know just how terrible a pun ‘bear with me’ is…

***

A confession: I very nearly became an Arthurian.

Before you all run off into the hills, screaming hysterically, bear with me for a few minutes. Remember that I originally come from Carmarthenshire – Caer Myrddin or Caerfyrddin, the fort of Merlin, right? So the Arthurian myths and legends were all around me from pretty much as far back as I can remember. The Sword in the Stone was the first film I ever saw in the cinema, aged about six, and by the time I was eighteen, I’d read Geoffrey of Monmouth and The Once and Future King, been vaguely irritated by the TV series Arthur of the Britons, and wondered why on earth some of my sixth form friends insisted we should go drinking in the King Arthur Hotel on the Gower Peninsula, rather than in the (literally) hundreds of pubs that were nearer.

Kidwelly Castle, my ‘local’ castle when I was growing up, where a big chunk of my love of history was born. Arthurian connection? None- unless you count the fact that it appeared in ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’

Then I went off to Oxford, where my first term studying ‘modern’ history included the Venerable Bede (note: Oxford University has always had difficulty with the concept of ‘modern’) and his ‘back story’ in the writings of Gildas and Nennius. So when it came time for me to choose my options within ‘English One’, the vast English history paper (note: Oxford University has always had difficulty with the concept of ‘British’) that stretched from the fall of Rome to about 1500, it was a no-brainer – like a shot, I was off to what it was then still politically correct to call ‘the Dark Ages’. I decided I’d really impress my tutor by spending the vacation beforehand reading the new, exciting book about the period, namely John Morris’s Age of Arthur.

I was instantly enthralled. Here was a whole new world, a thrilling combination of dramatic narrative and detective story, full of unfamiliar evidence and thought-provoking analysis. I was vaguely aware of the fact that Morris – coincidentally, an alumnus of my own college – had stirred up some controversy, but no matter. It was the newest, biggest book in the field, and I was still of an age when my assessment of history books began and ended with the questions ‘is it new, and is it big?’. Fortunately, my tutor on this course was the ideal man to put me right: James Campbell of Worcester College (who sadly died last year) was a formidably erudite don of the old school, and he alerted me to the devastating critique of Morris penned by David Dumville of the University of Cambridge (note: Oxford University has always had difficulty with the concept of ‘Cambridge’). So off I went to other tomes, such as Leslie Alcock’s Arthur’s Britain, which gave me a very different, archaeological, perspective on the period, and I emerged from the experience a wiser and distinctly more sceptical person, at least when it came to all things Arthurian.

It was also an object lesson in ‘how to do history’ more generally. For example, endless pages of references impress the credulous and are often intended quite deliberately to intimidate the sceptical into submission, but they don’t mean a thing if the references are to sources from long after the period they’re meant to be describing – a particular fault of The Age of Arthur – or are simply cross-referring from one dubious secondary source to another in a vicious circle of obfuscation. These traits are all too common, for example, in the work of many of the more controversial World War II ‘revisionists’, conspiracy theorists, and many of those writing books about such esoterica as the Holy Grail. (For my sins, I read quite a lot of the latter when researching my own venture into the reasonably esoteric, Blood of Kings, and quite a lot of the former when I was trying to steer impressionable GCSE students away from such things in the relatively early days of the Internet.) All too often, those who think they are historians, or even genuine, qualified historians who should know better, ‘prove’ their cases by citing highly dubious ‘sources’ that actually prove nothing whatsoever.

Arthuret church. Nice place, but no sign of kings slumbering for eternity

Four years ago, when the original version of this part of the blog was posted, I was staying at the Landmark Trust’s gloriously eccentric Coop House. This is in the parish of Arthuret, a pretty suggestive name to begin with, and the location of not one but two important battles – one in 573, not long after the time traditionally regarded as ‘the age of Arthur’, and the battle of Solway Moss in 1542. I always like to research an area before going there, so inevitably, I delved into the history of Arthuret. Pretty soon, I was lost in the darker undergrowth of the Arthurian forest (which, of course, is situated next to the Holy Grail sausage factory and the Templar vomitorium), ploughing through books and blogs which made the most astonishing claims. Some even believe that the legendary king himself lies buried beneath Arthuret parish church, and that perhaps the Holy Grail can be found there too… So I made the church my first port of call when I got there, and found it to be a very pleasant spot. But as a candidate for the last resting place of King Arthur, it is no more or less plausible than, say, Glastonbury, where the bones of the ‘king’ (and of Guinevere to boot) were ‘discovered’ in 1191. In the one case, an entire historical theory has been established on the distinctly shaky foundation that the name ‘Arthuret’ might possibly be derived from ‘Arthur’; in the other, the abbey greatly boosted its visitor numbers, and thus its income stream, as a result of the distinctly convenient find.

Glastonbury Abbey: site of the alleged tomb of Arthur and Guinevere. If English Heritage had a sense of humour, they’d erect a shrubbery around it

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with a lot of the ‘Arthur industry’. Much of it can be attributed to attempts by one over-enthusiastic local historian after another to twist the miniscule amount of actual hard historical evidence about Arthur and his times to follow in the footsteps of the 12th century monks of Glastonbury by placing the fabled king within their own particular patch. Thus we have Cornish Arthurs, Somerset Arthurs, Welsh Arthurs, Cumbrian Arthurs, a French Arthur (seriously) and a Scottish Arthur – or rather Scottish Arthurs, with a veritable battle royal taking place a few years ago between clans desperate to claim him as one of their own. The odd thing is that these optimists keep pushing their distinctly ingenious claims, despite the fact that a few years ago, Guy Halsall’s book Worlds of Arthur carried out what seemed to me to be a pretty effective demolition job on the whole business of Arthur myth-making. But then, and before legions of Arthur-loving trolls start laying into me, I should deploy the historian’s great catch-all cop-out, namely ‘it’s not my period’; or at least, it hasn’t been since about 1977. And let’s face it, books which claim that Arthur didn’t exist and didn’t inhabit a part of the country with a reasonably large book-buying population are never going to sell as well as books that say he really was a great warlord and that Camelot was that hill just up the road.

Hang on, though. When I was looking for potential walks, I noticed on the map that only a few miles from Arthuret and the Coop House is the site of a Roman fort named Camboglanna. Hmm. Doesn’t that sound to you a bit like Camlann, the name of King Arthur’s last battle? And lo, Google the two names together and you’ll see plenty of websites which make precisely that connection. Then again, though, I’ve driven up and down the M4 many more times than I care to remember, and have always thought that the hill fort just by Junction 15 at Swindon would have been an obvious candidate for the site of the Battle of Mount Badon…and what’s the name of the place nearest to it? Badbury. At the end of the day, the Arthur myths are remarkably seductive, powerful and abiding, and who am I to argue with that?

***

So that’s what I wrote four years ago. All of those thoughts and themes came back to me in spades last week, when I was staying in another truly unique Landmark, Glenmalloch Lodge. For one thing, Glenmalloch stands on the Cumloden estate, home to the troubled Earls of Galloway, and was originally built as Cumloden School. (Apparently 25 girls and their teacher used to fit in there – and given that it was cosy for just me, I reckon the teacher must have double stacked the wee lassies.) Mmm, though, ‘Cumloden’…doesn’t that sound a bit like ‘Camlann’ to you? OK, yes, I won’t go there.

Remote and peaceful (indeed, probably the quietest and darkest place I’ve ever stayed in), Glenmalloch is, of course, in North Wales, or as some insist on calling it, ‘Scotland’.

Before all my Scottish friends jump down my throat for the second time this week, I should emphasise that we’re not making a territorial claim on your wonderful country. (Unlike with England, of course, where we still want the flat and dry bits back; fifteen hundred years of hurt, etc…) Nevertheless, it’s indisputably true that what’s now southern Scotland was once ‘Welsh’ territory, the Hen Ogledd (‘Old North’) of the annals. The original name for Edinburgh, Dunedin, is Welsh, as are many place names around it – Tranent, for example, is simply an inverted rendering of ‘Trenant’, about as Welsh as a name as you’ll find. During my drive west along the highway to the sun, otherwise known as the A75, I passed the signs to Caerlaverock Castle, semantic twin to Caernarfon, Caerphilly, and, yes, Caerfyrddin, Carmarthen. The great stone of Clach nam Breatann, ‘the rock of the Britons’, at the northern end of Loch Lomond, is said to mark the northern border of the Welsh kingdom of Strathclyde, which had its capital on the rock of Dumbarton. Thus in the humble opinion of this blogger, adding Scots Gaelic versions of placenames to the usual ones on, say, railway station signs, in this part of Scotland, is historically illiterate: provide an alternative to the Anglo-Scots version by all means, but that alternative should surely be in Welsh, the original language of the area.

All of which brings me to Rheged. In the old Welsh annals, this was a mighty but short-lived kingdom in the north, which had a brief period of greatness under King Urien. But historians and archaeologists can’t agree on whether Rheged existed at all, and if it did, on where it was. It’s usually been assumed to have been on one or both sides of the Solway Firth, perhaps extending as far south as Rochdale, the original name of which was Recedham (Note: on behalf of the Welsh people, I can confirm that we aren’t lodging a territorial claim for Rochdale.) But there were plenty of suggestive pointers not a million miles from Glenmalloch Lodge. Not far west, for example, is Dunragit – surely, some have argued, ‘the fort of Rheged’? Not far east is Trusty’s Hill, brooding over Anwoth kirk, which I mentioned in my last post, and overlooking the town of Gatehouse of Fleet. Recent excavations there have revealed what’s been described as a palace complex from the correct period, i.e. around the sixth century; so was this the principal seat, or capital if you prefer, of Rheged? If so, might Arthur have known it, especially if he was a warlord of the Hen Ogledd, not of ‘south’ Wales, Cornwall or Somerset?

Pendragon Castle. Minus any dragons, but plus red squirrels, allegedly

At which point, off we go once again, charging back into the Arthurian forest. I took a detour on my way to Glenmalloch, and stopped off to see Pendragon Castle, on the border of the north Pennines and the Lake District. Despite being a small and nondescript ruin, this has two things going for it. First, it has surely the most awesome castle name of them all; eat your heart out, George R R Martin. Second, it was reputedly the home of Uther Pendragon, father of King Arthur. In fact, the castle wasn’t built until the twelfth century, half a millennium and more after Uther’s time, but its name demonstrates that, just like the ‘grave’ discovered by the monks of Glastonbury, ‘the Arthur industry’ has pretty well always been with us. A key part of that industry is the myth proclaiming that one day, when the nation is in its direst peril, the Once and Future King will rise from his slumber in a forgotten cave, and ride forth to save –

Hang on, there’s someone at the door.

Ah, OK.

Some guy in a suit of armour, wanting to know Boris Johnson’s address.

 

Filed Under: Castles, Historical research, Historical sources, Scottish history, Uncategorized, Welsh history Tagged With: Arthuret, Glastonbury, King Arthur, Landmark Trust, Rheged

The Holy Grail? Somebody Left It on the Throne of Doom

21/02/2015 by J D Davies

We spent last week enjoying some ‘R&R’ at Rosslyn Castle, just outside Edinburgh. This is a Landmark Trust property, and regular readers of this blog will know that I/we are big fans of Landmarks, having notched up fifteen of them to date; indeed, I’ll be off to another one in just a few weeks time, to brainstorm the plot of ‘Quinton 7’ and some exciting new fiction ideas. But Rosslyn Castle is a bit unusual for the Landmark Trust in that they don’t actually own the property. Instead, they manage it on behalf of its owner, the seventh Earl of Rosslyn, who still retains it as a family home – hence the fact that family photos and memorabilia adorn the castle’s splendid (if rather chilly) rooms. These bear witness to the long-standing connections between the St Clair-Erskines of Rosslyn on the one hand and the British royal family on the other. The current Earl’s grandmother, a glamorous Australian described in one of the castle’s artworks as ‘impossible Sheila’, and who eventually ended up married to a Russian prince, was friendly with both the future Kings Edward VIII and George VI. Moreover, the seventh Earl, a career policeman,* was until recently the head of the Royal Protection Squad, and was allegedly ‘the Queen’s favourite policeman’. He’s since taken up a new post as head of the Prince of Wales’ household – an organisation supposedly so full of politicking and back-stabbing that it was recently described as a modern ‘Wolf Hall’, so the appointment might be regarded as something of a poisoned chalice.

Rosslyn Castle, still entered by its original bridge. Note to those who are inclined to drive very large cars at very high speeds: don't go there. Literally.
Rosslyn Castle, still entered by its original bridge. Note to those who are inclined to drive very large cars at very high speeds: don’t go there. Literally.

But then, if anybody ought to know how to deal with a dodgy chalice, it should be a St Clair of Rosslyn. This, after all, is a family that can prove descent from Rognvald the Viking, that went on crusade (taking the heart of King Robert the Bruce along on one occasion), that might or might not have discovered America (of which more anon), and which once possessed royal status themselves, as Princes of Orkney. And, of course, if you believe Dan Brown and any number of the esoteric ‘non-fiction’ tomes about the Holy Grail, the history of Freemasonry and the Knights Templar, this was the family that might have brought the Grail itself, and/or the Ark of the Covenant, and/or the Holy Lance, back to Scotland from the Holy Land, and hid it/them within the astonishing chapel they had built just up the hill from their castle. I’d been to Rosslyn Chapel before, some fifteen years ago, when the whole place was concealed beneath an ugly protective metal structure and the interior was literally green from many years of neglect and rampant damp. It was great to see it in its full glory both externally and internally – or at least, as much of the full glory as hadn’t been destroyed by Cromwell’s men, catastrophically inappropriate 1950s ‘restoration’ techniques, and the various other travails that have beset the chapel over the centuries. It was also good to have missed the height of the chapel’s Da Vinci Code phase, when it was being invaded by four or five times the normal number of visitors per annum, at least a few of whom were taking it all far too seriously – including the one who turned up with an axe, intent on smashing open the famous ‘Apprentice Pillar’ in the belief that this (all too obviously load-bearing) structure was hollow and was actually the hiding place of the Holy Grail.

Rosslyn Chapel: small but perfectly (if peculiarly) formed
Rosslyn Chapel: small but perfectly (if peculiarly) formed

In fact, there’s more than enough mystery at Rosslyn without entering into Dan Brown / Indiana Jones crossover territory and conspiracy theories centred on some of the stranger aspects of Scottish, Masonic and western religious history. (Not that I’m entirely disparaging of any of the latter, given some of the frankly astonishing evidence and connections I came across while writing Blood of Kings.) Why, for example, does this chapel, built in the mid-fifteenth century, perhaps contain both Templar symbolism, when the Templars had been proscribed over a century before, and what might be carvings of maize, made some forty years before Columbus sailed? Legend has it that Henry St Clair, Earl of Orkney, sailed to north America at the end of the fourteenth century and made contact with the Mi’kmaq people. While, for a Welshman, any such tale inevitably sounds suspiciously similar to the story of Prince Madoc’s ‘voyage’, the number of discoveries of pre-Columbian relics in north America probably suggests that such legends shouldn’t necessarily be dismissed out of hand, either.

The interior of Rosslyn Chapel, with the Apprentice Pillar in the left background. Taken in the pre-Dan Brown days when the chapel had mould, relatively few visitors, and no ban on interior photography
The interior of Rosslyn Chapel, with the Apprentice Pillar in the left background. Taken in the pre-Dan Brown days when the chapel had mould, relatively few visitors, no ban on interior photography, and a ghost who kept nudging photographers slightly to the left

It’s easy to see why the crazy symbolism present throughout Rosslyn Chapel gives rise to such stories: when you have portrayals in stone of angels with bagpipes and over a hundred ‘green men’, pretty much anything goes. But to give credit to those currently responsible for the chapel, they make very certain that the building’s true purpose doesn’t get entirely subsumed beneath all the myth. Every day at twelve, visitors are invited to stop, sit, and join in a brief service of prayers. It’s both revealing and sad that, the first time we visited during our recent trip, most of those in the chapel chose to sidle out, somewhat embarrassed, rather than listen to the words for which the entire edifice was built. After all, how dare these nasty believers in some sort of mythical spirituality disturb tourists who’ve paid quite hefty admission fees and are intent on seeing the crypt where Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou uncovered the, umm, fictional truth about, umm, pretty much that exact same mythical spirituality? But that is Rosslyn’s mystery in a nutshell: it’s truly a place where the worlds of history, spirituality, myth and fiction collide, presenting us with the question of where each of those worlds begins, and where it ends.

Finally – ‘the throne of doom’? Well, all Landmark Trust properties have log books, in which each party of visitors can record their experiences or pass on advice to their successors. At Rosslyn Castle, the consistently Arctic downstairs loo has been christened ‘the throne of doom’, and thoroughly deserves the moniker. Trust me – if you ever want first hand experience of what it was like to be in a castle garderobe in winter in the Middle Ages, this is the place to get it.

 

(* There’s a reasonably substantial tradition of aristocrats serving in the police: the ninth Earl Nelson, descendant of the admiral’s brother, also served with the ‘boys in blue’, as have a number of others over the years. So the fictional Earl of Asherton, who’s the hero of the Inspector Lynley Mysteries in print and on TV, isn’t too far removed from the truth.)

Filed Under: Castles, Scottish history, Uncategorized Tagged With: Rosslyn

Castles in the Air, Part 3

05/08/2013 by J D Davies

The third and final instalment from my personal ‘top twenty’ castles…

Corfe CastleCorfe Castle, Dorset – Standing in a glorious location, on a hill adjacent to a picturesque village and a steam railway, Corfe sprawls across the hillside like some deserted ancient city. Dominated by a towering keep, the fortress was once a royal castle, but its finest hour came during the civil war, when it was twice defended by the redoubtable Royalist heroine Lady Mary Bankes – one of my role models for the Dowager Countess of Ravensden in the Quinton novels. Corfe is also at the heart of one of the most intriguing pieces of historical revisionism in recent years, namely Ian Mortimer’s fascinating deconstruction of the famous story of the death of King Edward II – Berkeley Castle, red hot poker, need I say more? – leading to his thesis that Edward did not die at Berkeley in 1327 at all.

KidwellyKidwelly Castle, Carmarthenshire – If Kidwelly was in North Wales, or pretty much anywhere in England, it would be a massive tourist destination. It possesses many of the essential features of the biggest and best ruined castles, including walls and towers that still stand virtually to their full height, wall walks with great views, and one of the best dungeons you’ll find anywhere. As it is, though, it’s tucked away in a corner of West Wales that’s by-passed by the major routes and is a bit tricky to get to, so you can be there even in the height of summer and sometimes have the place virtually to yourself. When I was growing up, though, it was the nearest major castle to where I lived, and after discovering the pleasures of history for the first time at Pembroke, it was frequent visits to Kidwelly that really developed my historical imagination. Much later on, I discovered that a very distant ancestor was probably a man-at-arms in the castle garrison in the fourteenth century, so maybe my connection to it was literally in the blood!

HuntingtowerHuntingtower Castle, Perth – There are plenty of Scottish castles that are larger, more impressive, or more scenically located, but for sheer atmosphere, few can touch Huntingtower. I got to know it well when researching what I refer to, actor-like, as my ‘Scottish book’, Blood of Kings: the Stuarts, the Ruthvens and the Gowrie Conspiracy. This was the seat of the Ruthvens, Earls of Gowrie, and originally consisted of two separate tower houses just a few yards apart, a strange arrangement that probably resulted from a complex family settlement in the fifteenth century. The layout gave rise to the legend of the ‘Maiden’s Leap’, which has a Ruthven daughter fleeing upstairs so her mother won’t catch her in bed with her lover, and then jumping from one tower to the other. Rather more certainly, the castle was the setting for the ‘Raid of Ruthven’ in 1582, when the first Earl of Gowrie imprisoned the young King James VI here. During research visits, I stayed twice in the cottage immediately adjacent to the castle, and the sight of the eerie old fortress in frosty dawns or at autumnal dusks will remain with me always.

Kalmar CastleKalmar Castle, Sweden – When I was researching the fourth Quinton novel, The Lion of Midnight, I stayed for several days in Kalmar, a lovely historic old town in the south-east of the country. My hotel was right next to Kalmar Castle, and as it was a snowy February, the castle was a true picture-postcard sight, with the sea around it frozen over. I didn’t set any of the action directly in Kalmar, but it became the model for one of the central settings of the book; and my other reason for staying in the town was to visit the museum which houses the many artefacts recovered from the wreck of the Kronan, the vast Swedish warship designed by an Englishman, Francis Sheldon, which went down in the Battle of Öland (1676). The castle was a royal seat, so it contains vast halls, a splendid chapel, and many ciphers of Swedish monarchs, notably Gustavus Adolphus and his enigmatic daughter Queen Christina.

Threave Castle, Dumfries and Galloway – There are some castles that you drive to. There are some castles that you walk to. There are even some castles that you can still get to by steam train (i.e. Corfe, above). And then there’s Threave, which you have to be rowed to – yes, rowed. Standing on an island, albeit one that’s considerably larger than when Threave was in its pomp as the seat of the mighty Black Douglases, the enormous tower house simply exudes power and menace. It was even built by someone called Archibald the Grim: let’s face it, Scottish history has all the best names. Alas, though, I can’t post any of my own digital photos of it: I took plenty during my last visit a few years ago, but then committed the cardinal sin of not backing them up before my hard disc died.Threave Castle

And now, at long last, my joint favourites –

Carreg Cennen Castle, Carmarthenshire, and Tantallon Castle, East Lothian –  Carreg Cennen was another castle that I grew up with. Even if we weren’t visiting, it was a prominent landmark on one of the roads going north from my hometown of Llanelli: standing on a vast crag, it dominates the landscape for miles around. Although the buildings themselves are pretty ruinous, it’s all about the location – not to mention the cave, an astonishing feature that wends its way through the cliff beneath the castle. For many years, though, getting to Tantallon was nothing more than a ‘bucket list’ ambition – another of those places that I’d seen a picture of in a book when I was young, and decided that I had to get there one day. Eventually, of course, I did, and was astonished by what I found: Tantallon, once the seat of the Red Douglases, Earls of Angus, consists chiefly of a vast red curtain wall that cuts of a clifftop peninsula. It’s a stunning sight from any angle, and I’ve since been back many, many times; indeed, last year I took a cottage adjacent to the castle while working on the plot construction for the next Quinton book. So Carreg Cennen and Tantallon are jointly top of my list!

Carreg Cennen Castle

Tantallon at Dawn

***

There won’t be a post next week due to the manifold ramifications of a family wedding, so Gentlemen and Tarpaulins will return in two weeks!

Filed Under: Castles, Uncategorized Tagged With: Carreg Cennen, Corfe, Huntingtower, Kalmar, Kidwelly, Tantallon, Threave

Castles in the Air, Part 2

22/07/2013 by J D Davies

Another installment of my personal ‘top twenty’ of castles that I’ve visited. Third and final part to come next week!

Devin and the Danube
Devin and the Danube

Devin Castle, Slovakia – A few years ago, some friends who were living in Bratislava at the time took us to visit Devin, which isn’t far from the city. It’s an evocative relic of the time when this was probably the most important frontier in Europe: the castle stands on a great cliff overlooking the confluence of the Danube and Morava rivers, so this was always a prime strategic position. Unsurprisingly, it changed hands many times, but since the fall of Communism, the castle has been sensitively maintained and various archaeological digs have taken place there.

Fotheringhay
Fotheringhay

Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire – Fotheringhay is something of an exception in this list, as there’s nothing left of it. Well, that’s not strictly true; there’s a mound and some earthworks, and one surviving lump of masonry that’s now preserved behind stone railings. But two plaques on those railings tell you why Fotheringhay Castle deserves a place on any history lover’s ‘bucket list’. One records the birth here, in 1453, of King Richard III; the other remembers the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, in the castle’s great hall in 1587. For those who possess a strong historical imagination, standing on top of the mound, watching the river flow gently by, and then walking the few yards to the great collegiate church where Richard, Duke of York (father of Richard III and his brother Edward IV) and other members of the House of York lie buried, is a very good way to spend an hour or two.

Dolwyddelan
Dolwyddelan

Dolwyddelan Castle, Gwynedd, Wales – As I mentioned last week, I’ve deliberately omitted from this selection the great tourist-trap castles of North Wales – Beaumaris, Caernarfon, Conwy, Harlech and the rest. Architecturally, little Dolwyddelan isn’t in the same league; it’s little more than a square keep on a knoll in a Snowdonia valley. But this was a castle of the Welsh princes, not of the conquering English, and the difference in size  compared with Edward I’s vast fortresses speaks volumes about the relative resources available to the two sides. It also speaks volumes about differing strategic assumptions. Edward’s castles tend to be on the coast, where they could be resupplied by sea in the event of attack by the hostile locals, while Dolwyddelan is in the very heart of Snowdonia, both controlling the area around it and very much at the heart of the community. These days, of course, people go there for the stunning views, at least as good as those surrounding many of its better-known neighbours.

Chateau Gaillard, France – I saw a photograph of Chateau Gaillard in a book when I was quite young, and decided at once that I’d visit it one day. I’ve now been several times, partly because it’s quite close to Rouen, where my great uncle is buried; he was gassed at the end of August 1918 and died in a military hospital in Rouen a few days later, so there have been a number of family pilgrimages to his grave in the vast, immaculate Saint Sever military cemetery. As for Chateau Gaillard, it certainly didn’t disappoint. It dominates the valley of the Seine where the river flows beneath impressive chalk cliffs, and overlooks the town of Les Andelys – which I reference indirectly in the Quinton Journals, where Matthew’s friend Roger holds the title of Comte d’Andelys. Built by King Richard the Lionheart to defend his ancestral homeland of Normandy, the fall of the castle during the reign of his brother John presaged the loss of the duchy.

Chateau Gaillard
Chateau Gaillard
Dunstanburgh
Dunstanburgh

Dunstanburgh Castle, Northumberland – I’ve included Dunstanburgh to represent the other great castles of Northumberland, such as Bamburgh, Warkworth and Alnwick (of Harry Potter fame). It also happens to be the one I’ve visited most recently; we were on holiday in the area a couple of weeks ago, and did the glorious beach walk around Embleton Bay to the castle. Built by Edward II’s cousin, Dunstanburgh was actually something of a white elephant – covering an area so vast that, even in its heyday, most of the ground within its walls was unoccupied, the castle was designed essentially for show, even to the extent that a lake was constructed in the valley below simply to provide stunning reflections of the castle’s towers and pinnacles.

Sinclair Girnigoe
Sinclair Girnigoe

Castle Sinclair Girnigoe, Caithness, Scotland – OK, yes, another clifftop castle. But there are castles on cliffs, and then there are castles that seem to merge into the cliffs or to be in imminent danger of falling off them. The location of Sinclair Girnigoe is simply stunning, in the far north-east of Scotland not far south of John o’Groats. The castle was designed to fit a rocky headland that is very nearly an island, so it must always have seemed almost like a vast ship; and in a winter storm, it must sometimes have felt as though the entire edifice was about to tumble into the seas that lash the rocks. It was the seat of the Clan Sinclair, and perhaps it’s a sign of how slowly things change in that part of the world that a Sinclair is still the local MP!

Llansteffan Castle, Carmarthenshire, Wales – Very much an old haunt! I grew up a few miles from Llansteffan, which stands guard over the estuary of the River Tywi, the scene of one of the largest naval battles in Welsh waters (in 1044). The castle itself is relatively undistinguished and played little part in history, but it’s got a lot of resonance for me. My cousin owns a property almost directly across the estuary from it, the scene of many family get-togethers and barbeques over the years, and on a few days in the summer, the sun goes down directly behind Llansteffan Castle when viewed from the cottage. It’s a view to die for, made extra special by the knowledge that so few people have ever seen it from that location!

Sunset over Llansteffan
Sunset over Llansteffan

Filed Under: Castles, Uncategorized Tagged With: Chateau Gaillard, Devin Castle, Dolwyddelan, Dunstanburgh, fotheringhay, Llansteffan, Sinclair Girnigoe

Castles in the Air, Part 1

15/07/2013 by J D Davies

Castles kicked it all off for me – ‘all’ being the lifelong interest in history, leading ultimately to a career teaching it and a second career writing about it. A visit to Pembroke Castle when I was five years old proved to be the catalyst, and a year or so later, when my parents and I were on a guided tour going round Hartlebury ‘Castle’, the palace of the bishops of Worcester, I apparently gave them one of those ‘wishing the earth would open and swallow them up’ moments when my precocious younger self protested loudly within earshot of the guide, ‘This isn’t a real castle!’. My passion for castles is reflected in Gentleman Captain – although it’s set long after their heyday, I was determined to have a castle at the heart of the action, hence the central role played by ‘Ardverran Castle’, an amalgam of various castles on the west coast of Scotland, including Duart, Mingary, Tioram and Ardvreck.

So for the next three weeks, I’ll give you a personal selection of twenty favourite castles. This list is entirely subjective, is drawn only from the ‘back catalogue’ of ones I’ve visited over the years, and deliberately omits many rather more famous ones, such as the Tower of London, Dover, Windsor, Edinburgh, and Edward I’s mighty castles in north Wales, the likes of Harlech, Conwy, Beaumaris and Caernarfon. (My attitude to the latter is fairly ambivalent in any case, as readers of my new book Britannia’s Dragon will discover!) The list is also in no particular order of preference. However, I do have a couple of joint favourites on my all-time list, so I’ll lead up to those at the end of the third post; but first, the one that started it all off.

Pembroke Castle, where it all started
Pembroke Castle, where it all started

Pembroke Castle, Pembrokeshire, Wales – When you’re five years old, you want very specific things from a castle, and Pembroke provides a lot of them: enormous walls, huge and impressive towers, lots of spiral staircases and dark corners to explore, and, best of all, a vast cavern. When you get a bit older, you want a castle with some major-league historical associations, and Pembroke scores heavily on this front too. After all, not that many castles outside London can lay claim to a king born within their walls – Henry VII, born there in 1457, an event now represented by rather cheesy waxworks of mother and baby in the room where he was born – and not that many were besieged by Oliver Cromwell in person (in 1648). Add the fact that Pembroke is stunningly located, on a headland lapped by the waters of Milford Haven, and lies just a couple of miles from Wales’s principal point of contact with the Royal Navy, the old royal dockyard at Pembroke Dock, and you can see why I’ve been back many times since that momentous first visit!

Dunluce Castle, Northern Ireland, and Dunnottar Castle, Scotland – Castles perched precariously on sea-cliffs really float my boat, as will become increasingly apparent over the course of this personal selection. I’ve paired these two together because in many respects, they’re very similar, as the accompanying photographs show. Dunluce, the former seat of the mighty Macdonnell Earls of Antrim, is on the fabulous stretch of coastline that includes the Giant’s Causeway, while Dunnottar, seat of the Earls Marischal, stands on a promontory a few miles south of Aberdeen. Dunluce has a naval history connection – the Spanish Armada galleass Girona was wrecked nearby – while Dunnottar was the last fortress to hold out for the King in the British civil wars: the Scottish crown jewels, ‘the honours of Scotland’, had to be smuggled out when it fell in 1652, and were then hidden in a nearby church until the Restoration.

Dunluce Castle
Dunluce Castle
Dunnottar Castle
Dunnottar Castle
Tintagel Castle: not much left, but location, location, location!
Tintagel Castle: not much left, but location, location, location!

Tintagel Castle, Cornwall – And if any of my American or Antipodean readers (or English ones, come to that) think I should have put ‘Cornwall, England’, you really haven’t been there. My first teaching job was in Cornwall, and if my three years there taught me anything (apart from the fact that a pint of Guinness and Lucozade is a viable drink), it’s just how ferociously independent the Cornish are; a Cornwall vs Gloucestershire rugby match at, say, Camborne’s tightly packed old ground, is treated essentially as an international, with black and white St Piran’s flags waving everywhere and the strains of the ‘national anthem’, Trelawny, echoing from the terraces. Hence Matthew Quinton’s Cornish crew, an affectionate tribute to my time there. Cornwall also has some splendid castles, but the star attraction has to be Tintagel – another stunning clifftop setting, this time with the added attraction of strong connections to the King Arthur legend thrown in. I used to go there out of season, when it was usually possible to have it largely to oneself, and imagine the Knights of the Round Table in residence. Which they never were, of course, but who am I to spoil a great story?

Kilchurn Castle: not the tourist shot, and no pylons
Kilchurn Castle: not the tourist shot, and no pylons

Kilchurn Castle, Argyll, Scotland – Kilchurn must be one of the most photographed castles in the British Isles. It seems to be a compulsory stopping point for the ‘See Scotland in a Morning’ coach tours, themselves part of the ‘See Britain aka England in a Weekend’ excursions (ok, I probably exaggerate, but not much). The authorities have thoughtfully provided a vast parking space just across Loch Awe, so that the tourists can pour out of their coaches, take the compulsory picture, then pour back into the coaches again before heading for the gift shops in Oban (toy Highland cattle in kilts that play Scotland the Brave when you squeeze them! what’s not to like?). And when the tourists eventually return home, they realise that they need to spend hours carefully photoshopping out the electricity pylons that the authorities have also thoughtfully inserted into the landscape behind the castle. Consequently, hardly any of the people who ‘visit’ Kilchurn ever go up to the castle itself. This is a pity, because the long walk across the narrow strip of land jutting out into Loch Awe, and the view down the loch from what was once the tower house of the Campbells of Breadalbane, makes for a very well spent hour or two.

Krak des Chevaliers, Syria – Visiting Krak, the greatest of the Crusader castles, had been an ambition ever since I was a child, and in November 2010 I was finally able to realise that ambition. It didn’t disappoint: vast towers, impressive halls, and a stunning hilltop location, dominating the country for miles around, all of which made what happened next particularly poignant. The revolt in Syria began not much more than three months after we were there, and many of the sites we visited have been severely damaged during the conflict. The minaret of the Umayyad mosque in Aleppo has been destroyed, while Krak itself, transformed once again into an active fortress – this time for the Syrian rebels – appears to have been targeted by government air strikes. While the real tragedy of Syria is, of course, a human one, the scale of the destruction of irreplaceable, globally important heritage is truly horrific. On the other hand, we were clearly exceptionally fortunate and privileged to be among probably the last westerners to see these sites before the devastation began.

The Hall of the Knights, Krak des Chevaliers, November 2010
The Hall of the Knights, Krak des Chevaliers, November 2010
The strategic position of Krak des Chevaliers, November 2010
The strategic position of Krak des Chevaliers, November 2010

Filed Under: Castles, Heritage preservation, Scottish history, Uncategorized, Welsh history Tagged With: Dunluce Castle, Dunnottar Castle, Kilchurn Castle, Krak des Chevaliers, Pembroke Castle, Tintagel Castle

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