Over about 150 years the Normans built around 1,000 castles in England and Wales, and castles were something quite new in England. Castle design changed to put a new emphasis on multi-towered enclosing walls and strong gatehouses instead of keeps. Framlingham Castle in Suffolk, among the first built in the new style, has 13 towers studding its walls but no keep at all. The style reached a high point in Wales, where Edward I had a hand in creating at least 17 castles.
The concentric principle, reinforced by powerful gatehouses acting as keeps, was used for the chain of castles including Harlech and Beaumaris that Edward I built between 1277 and 1294 to control north Wales, and these castles represent the high point of castle building in medieval Britain. Beaumaris was a concentric castle with a water-filled moat as an extra line of defence. Master James of St George was the architect of Edward I's Welsh castles.
Not every site allowed a double wall. Conwy and Caernarfon stand on rocky, narrow pieces of land with no space for a double wall, so these castles had extra towers and large gatehouses that could house small groups of soldiers instead. Towers that stuck out from the wall gave defenders a better view and a wider field of fire. Edward spared no expense to use the locations he believed were the best strategically: for example, he had workers reroute a river when he built his castle at Conwy.
The castles were meant to be handsome as well as strong. Edward had the masonry at Caernarfon copied from masonry in Constantinople, and the designers also made the proportions visually pleasing as well as strategically sound. New walled towns were built next to castles such as Caernarfon and Conwy. Conwy Castle took four and a half years to complete and cost about £15,000.
Building them took a crowd. In the summer of 1286, the busiest time at Harlech, nearly 950 men were employed: 227 masons, 115 quarriers, 30 smiths, 22 carpenters and 546 labourers. Beaumaris, Caernarfon, Conwy and Harlech were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986.
Words to know
- concentric: rings inside rings
- strategically: by military planning
- masonry: cut stonework
- quarriers: stone diggers
