Prehistoric Hillforts

In many parts of the country, hillforts are among the most enduring features of our landscape. There are over 1200 hillforts in England, and English Heritage cares for six of them. The earliest forts were probably built around 900BC, with many constructed between 800 and 700BC. These usually had a single circuit of ramparts, but by around 400BC some hillforts - like spectacular Maiden Castle and Old Oswestry - were being strengthened with multiple rings of defences.

Hillforts had a wide range of uses, and defence was just one of them. They were places to protect grain, cattle and treasure. They provided spaces for people to live, trade and celebrate. It’s also likely that they were used as refuges in times of conflict, and there is evidence that life in a hillfort wasn’t wholly peaceful - hoards of sling-stones have been found at Blackbury Camp, and 20,000 pebbles were found near one of the entrances to Maiden Castle. Formidable ramparts, ditches, wooden palisades and well-guarded entrances would have made them difficult to attack. Sited in dominant positions, hillforts also proclaimed the prestige of the prehistoric people who raised them. Their strategic sites were sometimes re-used for fortresses of later periods, as at Beeston Castle and Old Sarum. Most hillforts had been abandoned by 100BC. Around that time larger defended settlements called oppida were being created in lowland areas, including Lexden Earthworks (Colchester) and Stanwick Iron Age Fortifications in North Yorkshire. These were demarcated by ditches and ramparts, and there’s evidence that they were centres of government, industry and craft specialisation.

The first castles

The Norman victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 marked the beginning of the age of the castle in England. Even before the battle, William the Conqueror built a castle at Hastings, near his landing place. Over the next 150 years, the Normans covered the country with them, and built around 1,000 in England and Wales. Castles were something quite new in England. As the chronicler, Orderic Vitalis explained, 'The fortifications that the Normans called castles were scarcely known in the English provinces, and so the English – in spite of their courage and love of fighting – could put up only a weak resistance to their enemies.'

So what exactly were they?

Ringworks had banks and ditches forming a rough circle with a palisade (wooden fence) on top. Motte and bailey designs were very common, and had a mound (the ‘motte’) topped by a wooden tower or keep and a defended enclosure (the ‘bailey’) alongside. Often (as at Totnes Castle) the wooden defences were later replaced in stone. Elsewhere, as at Eynsford Castle, there was no motte, but simply a strongly walled enclosure. These castles housed Norman nobles and their families, as well as knights and soldiers”. They were built in strategic positions across the country--sometimes on the sites of prehistoric or Roman strongholds-- and enabled the Normans to subjugate the English and successfully control their conquered territories. 

Late 12th and 13th century

From the later 12th century, the focus of castle-building shifted from keeps to outer defences--gatehouses and enclosure walls. Gatehouses, the most vulnerable point of the castle, often became mini-castles in themselves, as at Dunstanburgh Castle, with towers and barbicans guarding their approaches, as at Helmsley Castle.

Walls were made taller to stop missiles being flung over them, and to give extra velocity to missiles aimed at attackers. Towers were built to project from the walls, square at first - as at Framlingham Castle - but later round. These increased the defenders' field of fire and allowed them to shoot down from the towers at attackers on the wall-walks. 

Defenders could also shoot longbows and crossbows through loopholes in the walls, or from behind battlements on the wall-tops. Projecting galleries made of stone or timber might extend over the edges of wall-walks, so that defenders could shoot or drop missiles on attackers immediately below. Moats or even artificial lakes (as at Kenilworth Castle) made it impossible for besiegers to undermine the walls. The most powerful type of medieval stronghold was the 'concentric' castle, which featured two rings of mutually supporting towered walls, one inside the other. Attackers had to take them section by section and tower by tower, and even then had a second set of defences to overcome. Dover Castle, as developed in the 13th century, is the earliest and foremost English example of a concentric fortress. 

Tudors and Stuarts

Under the strong centralised rule of the Tudors, baronial castle-building ceased. But Henry VIII adopted the new artillery technology for a chain of revolutionary coastal 'gun forts' - the first co-ordinated system of national defence since Roman times. Built to resist threatened invasion by Catholic Spain and France, their squat, rounded form was intended to minimise the effect of incoming shot, while providing all-round fire-power from as many as 140 heavy guns, as well as smaller hand-guns for close-quarter defence.

We care for nearly all of them, including Deal Castle, Pendennis Castle, Portland Castle, St Mawes Castle, Walmer Castle and Yarmouth Castle. 

But fortresses still had an important role to play in the defence of the nation. The prospect of  Dutch raids in the 1660s prompted the development of the Royal Citadel, Plymouth and impressive Tilbury Fort, and the Jacobite Risings of 1715 and 1745-6 (when Carlisle Castle was the last English stronghold ever to be besieged) provoked the reinforcement of many northern fortresses. Many castles slipped into decline as their owners moved into country houses, but others like Kenilworth continued to be updated where a magnificent garden was added next to the great tower. During the English Civil War, long abandoned castles in England and Wales were readied for war. Even against cannon which they were never designed to defend against many survived long sieges. However, many were demolished (slighted) during the conflict, like Kenilworth, Scarborough, and Helmsley, leaving them as ruined shells. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Romanticism appreciated the ruins for their history and beauty.