The first European castles were massive single towers surrounded by
walls. These towers contained one or two rooms on each floor and included
a basement storage area, a great hall, living rooms, and a chapel.
The great hall, a single large common room, provided space where everyone
lived and ate and slept. At one end on a raised platform was the
lord’s chair and table. Others sat and ate at portable trestle tables and
benches perpendicular to the high table. These simple arrangements
formed the basis of later developments, and continue today in our own
tradition of a “head table” at a banquet. Window embrasures in the thick
walls offered small semiprivate spaces. The service areas were located in
a courtyard called the bailey. Eventually more private chambers were
added and then whole suites of rooms.
Castles had always provided hospitality, but by the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries they required stables for horses, suites of rooms for guests
and travelers, and apartments for retainers who expected to be housed
when they were called on to serve the lord. These apartments became
small versions of the lord’s chambers. Castles also had to house men-atarms
and servants (who formed their own hierarchies). In short, the
arrangements within the castle walls became increasingly complex and
“stratified,” reflecting the society at large.
Chapter 4 looks more closely at how social and symbolic needs took
precedence in the late Middle Ages. The great hall, the center of daily
life in earlier periods, remained the ceremonial center of the castle. There
the lord received guests or supplicants and there he administered justice,
gave orders, and offered hospitality. The architecture provided a setting
for all this activity. To continue and even enhance the effectiveness of
the lord’s position, the design of portals, passages, and waiting rooms carefully
controlled access to him.
With the decline of the military necessities, more attention could be
placed on residential chambers with amenities such as lighter walls, more
windows and fireplaces, private rooms, and pleasure gardens. The buildings
that once filled the castle yard joined to become either a single courtyard
house built around an open yard or a tower house in which rooms
were stacked one above another. By the fifteenth century the courtyard
house had become the norm for the great dwelling, although the tower
house continued in places like Scotland and Ireland. In sophisticated
centers, the great military tower was eliminated altogether, except as a
ceremonial feature or as a reference to past glories, as seen at Kenilworth
(see Figures 10, 27, and 28).
By the fifteenth century, the castle had taken on a symbolic role as a
statement of power and status far beyond its military usefulness. As central
authority became more important, the government and military role
of the castle declined, but the symbolic role increased. The castle’s towers
and high walls became a visual symbol of the owner’s position. The
castle, always a setting for the rituals of life, became a stage on which the
kings and nobles played their roles with increasing theatricality. Castle
architecture always balanced the need for security against the requirements
of daily life, the desire for grandeur and ceremonial moments
against comfort and convenience. The castle changed from a residential
fortress to a fortified palace and finally to a palace whose fortifications
were only decorative and symbolic. Castles became show places, spectacles
themselves—as, for example, many of the castles in the Loire Valley
in France and the halls of Elizabethan England. In the modern world
castles gave way to garrison fortresses like Fort McHenry in Baltimore or
to command centers like the Pentagon in Washington. Today fantasy castles
are still seen in films and amusement parks.
World History
