Southampton Castle

Drum Towers, Gate of Southampton Castle

Within the small medieval town there was a small castle. Nothing is left of it today, save the remains of two gates, a wall and a vault. It stood on the western side of the town on top of an artificial mound. The original castle was probably an early Norman wooden fort within a stockade and a ditch. By the end of the twelfth century the wooden stockade had been replaced by a stone wall. It’s possible that the wooden fort wasn’t replaced until the end of the thirteenth century.

The castle belonged to the king and was run by his governors or constables. It wasn’t a royal residence in the way that Windsor or Eltham were, but it was a handy place for a king to stay if he was about to visit or invade France, for example. Henry V in particular, started most of his expeditions to France from here. In 1415, just before setting out on the campaign that was to take him to Agincourt, he wrote a letter addressed from the castle. Elizabeth I also wrote a letter from there when she was in residence.

In the twelfth century, Henry II and Richard I spent a lot of money on the castle, but John outdid them both. His main building efforts took place from 1204 to 1209, rendered even more urgent when he lost Normandy in 1206 and the threat of invasion from France increased. He also kept a fleet of galleys in Southampton, just in case.

His son Henry III set a levy on wine imported into the town. If a ship was carrying twenty or more tuns of wine, two tuns went into the king’s store in the castle. If the ship carried between ten and twenty tuns, one tun went into the store. In theory, this meant that the king would always have enough wine.

The castle was often allowed to fall into near ruin and it proved useless in assisting the town to defend itself against French raiders in 1338. Although Edward II had ordered repairs towards the end of his reign, he doesn’t appear to have provided the funds to enable them to be carried out. As we shall see when we get on to the walls, the raid, in which much of his property stored in the town was destroyed, focused the attention of his son, Edward III, on the town and its lack of defences. He also neglected the castle, though.

The garrison varied in size over the years, but was usually made up of five knights and their attendant soldiers. In 1369, when Edward III renewed the war with France, there were only eight squires and two archers, which was increased to forty-seven men-at-arms, thirty-nine hobelars and one hundred and seventy-two archers. The town couldn’t really support that many soldiers, though, and the number was quickly reduced again.

By 1378 the keep had disappeared entirely and a new stone one was built by Sir John Arundel, the Keeper of the Castle. It was believed at the time that there was a good chance the French would invade. Richard II was only 12 and the two countries had been at war on and off for forty years. Since 1369 it had been very much on and history had shown that Southampton was very much a target.

The new keep was by all accounts very fine. The castle mound was about 200 feet in diameter. The keep was cylindrical and had four turrets. The castle also had a barbican, two inner gates with portcullises and a twelve-foot ditch. The stone came from Portland, Purbeck and the Isle of Wight, all fairly close by sea. The building work was completed in 1388, just as Richard II’s uncles began to think about negotiating an end to the war.

The earl of Cambridge and Lord Scrope, two of the plotters involved in the Southampton Plot against Henry V in 1415 were kept prisoner in the castle before their trials. Both were found guilty and executed.

The war with France ended and the castle was no longer really necessary. If it had been easy to neglect it when it was needed, it was even easier when it wasn’t needed. By the time James I became king, it was no longer fit to receive royal guests. During the Civil War some of the stones were removed to maintain the town walls. What was left was used to build a castle in the Gothic style in 1804. This was the castle that Jane Austen knew when she lived in Castle Square. It lasted less than fourteen years and the mound itself was removed in 1822. Today there’s modern housing where the castle used to be.

It has left some traces, though. These arches formed the foundations of the northern wall of the bailey. They were mostly buried in an earthen bank and the wall proper started just above the arches. You can see the line where better quality stone was used for the part of the wall that was visible.

Just around the corner are the remains of the drum towers by the main gate into the castle. The towers were built in the late fourteenth century and were over twenty feet high. They were only discovered in 1961.

On the other side of the castle is the Watergate. It opened onto Castle Quay to which goods coming to the castle by water were delivered. Castle Quay belonged to the king and there’s a Norman vault on the other side of the wall where his wines were stored along with weapons for the soldiers in the garrison. Unfortunately, the vault is closed at the moment. There are quite a few medieval vaults in the town and I hope to be able to visit some of them in the summer.

Sources:
Historic Buildings of Southampton by Philip Peberdy
Collected Essays on Southampton edited by J B Morgan and Philip Peberdy
Medieval Southampton by Colin Platt

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

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Anatomy of a Castle – Gates and Gatehouses

Drum Towers, Gate of Southampton Castle

Gates are important places in castles and serve two functions. They keep out people you don’t want inside the castle while simultaneously impressing the people you do want inside the castle.

The picture at the top of the post shows what remains of the drum towers by the gate to Southampton Castle. Drum towers are round towers connected to the walls of a castle. Unsurprisingly, they’re so-named because they look like drums. I hope you’ll forgive a diversion, but the pub you can see at the bottom of the alley is supposed to stand on the location of the house in which Jane Austen stayed during the three years she lived in Southampton.

Old Sarum’s gate was approached over a bridge. You can just see the gatehouse at the top of the bridge. There would be gatekeepers in the gatehouse, waiting to open gates and raise portcullises for residents and welcome visitors.

Gatehouse, Old Sarum

The medieval bridge would have been hinged, allowing it to be ‘broken’ by swinging it up or down when unwelcome visitors arrived. It could not, however, be raised in the way that you might be thinking.

The Gatehouse, Portchester Castle

The gatehouse to Portchester Castel is rather impressive. You can see in the foreground of the photograph to the left and the right the grooves for the portcullis. Through the gate you can see the outer bailey and one of the outer walls. This gate gave access to the castle itself.

Portchester Castle has four gates in the outer walls. They’re all on the sites of the original Roman gates. This is the landgate, dating from the fourteenth century. It connects the outer bailey to the land side of the outside world.

Landgate, Portchester Castle

There’s water on two and a half sides of the castle, so there’s a watergate at the opposite end of the outer bailey, which you can just about see on the right of this photograph. It would allow access by sea.

Ashton’s Tower from the Keep, Portchester Castle

Like the landgate, the watergate is a fourteenth-century replacement of a Roman gate. It also had a portcullis.

Below is the medieval entrance to Kenilworth Castle. It’s less than impressive now, but the towers were once two (or more) storeys high. This allowed the portcullis to be raised and lowered by means of a winch on the first floor.

The Gatehouse at Kenilworth Castle

As well as the main gates, most castles also had postern gates. If, like me, you’ve always thought of postern gates as small and unobtrusive, the one at Old Sarum will surprise you. It was almost as large as a main gate and had a recess by it for a guard. It’s also right next to the keep.

What really bothered me when I was there was that the only place you could go once you were through the gate was into the ditch. That’s a problem when you think that the postern is supposed to be a secret, but there would have been a bridge over the moat and a path leading down to another gate in the outer defences.

Postern Gate, Old Sarum

The postern gate at Portchester Castle is so small that I missed it. In the photograph below it’s the black shadow in the Roman wall on the right of the castle. The Roman fort was laid out in a square and there was another postern gate in the opposite wall.

Portchester Castle and Outer Bailey

Postern gates were most useful during a siege, when soldiers could leave the castle in relative secrecy and attack the besiegers. True to my romantic hopes, they could also be left open to allow the enemy (or the hero, in my case) entrance into the castle.

Sources:

Old Sarum – John McNeill

Kenilworth Castle – Richard K. Morris

Portchester Castle – John Goodall

 

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

Available now:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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