Where is william the conqueror castle

Mon compte. Go back. Return to list. Come and experience history at first hand. Discover the castle in virtual reality with the aid of a touchscreen tablet.

Falaise Castle is a solid stone fortress dating from around Its original gatehouse still survives, and has been judged defensively weak because it was originally entered at ground level. It was built on the highest point in the town, and was separated by a deep ditch and rampart. The notion that castles had little military purpose also requires us to ignore the testimony of contemporary chroniclers.

Such descriptions are borne out by the fact that it took the duke months, and in some cases years, to take them. Yet some scholars are curiously reluctant to allow that castles built after the Conquest served a similar military purpose.

True, it does not bristle with arrowloops, turrets and machicolations — but then no castles did in that period, because the technology of attack was primitive in comparison with what came later. But when the Northumbrians attempted to take the town again in they failed, because they were unable to take its new castle.

One of the remarkable things about the Norman conquest was how quickly the rift between the English and the Normans was healed. Within a generation or two, it is possible to point to castles that did owe more to ideas of peaceful living than military deterrence.

But in the years immediately after , filled as they were with bloody rebellion and even bloodier repression — when a few thousand Normans lived among a population of two million English in the daily fear of violent death — in these circumstances castles have to be regarded first and foremost as military installations, introduced to subdue an unwilling population.

Afterwards it was entrusted to his half-brother Odo of Bayeux. Work on the White Tower started in the s and continued until the early 12th century. Planted in the middle of an Iron Age hillfort, Old Sarum was probably begun before , when the Conqueror went there to dismiss his army after the Harrying of the North.

Almost immediately after his coronation, William began the process of upgrading the castle. The tower was built in Romanesque style , which is characterized by small windows, rounded arches, thick walls, and decorative arcading.

The keep also features buttresses and a first-floor entrance complete with a forebuilding, both distinctive elements of Norman castle architecture. The Tower of London was an essential fortification for William, as the castle was of great strategic importance. Its site by the River Thames defended the entrance to London from the sea, and the imposing newly built keep dominated the English capital. Not only was the fortification militarily effective, but it was also a great statement of prestige, having been built at great expense in the latest European fashions.

In order to defend the capital from attack, a series of motte-and-bailey castles were quickly constructed in a ring around London, each of them a short journey from the adjacent castles to allow these fortifications to mutually support one another.

Not only was Windsor part of this ring of castles, but it was also the site of royal hunting forests that had been used by Saxon monarchs. Furthermore, the close proximity to the River Thames enhanced the strategic importance of Windsor, and the castle has been extensively expanded and used as a royal residence by the English and British royal families since the reign of Henry I.

The first castle was a wooden keep built atop a man-made motte raised on a natural chalk bluff meters above the River Thames. A bailey was also added to the east of the keep, and by the end of the 11 th century, another bailey had been built to the west, giving Windsor a distinctive double-bailey layout that it still has to this day. The earliest incarnation of Windsor castle certainly appears to have been a primarily military construction — William and other Norman kings did not stay there, instead preferring the nearby palace of Edward the Confessor in the village of Windsor.

Early in , William the Conqueror embarked upon an expedition to East Anglia, intending to assert his authority over the region — it seems likely that the foundation of Norwich castle dates from this campaign. Built out of Caen limestone imported from Normandy at great expense a testament to the great wealth of William the Conqueror , the castle was styled according to the latest Romanesque architectural fashions.

Buttressed along all four sides, the keep features small windows, crenelated battlements, and a forebuilding which has since been destroyed which were all hallmarks of Norman castle design. Furthermore, the elaborate blind arcading on the exterior of the castle suggests that this structure was intended as more of a statement piece than a rugged military outpost.

William was born into Norman nobility, a descendant of the Norsemen who had conquered northern France a century earlier under King Rollo. At the age of 7, William became Duke of Normandy in ,. At the time, the Anglo-Saxon King of England, Edward the Confessor, had no children, and this meant that there were several contenders to the Throne of England. William, convinced that the throne was rightfully his, spent the summer of amassing a large fleet and an army.

William still had to bring the English nobility under his control. Unable to take London, he marched his forces around the Kent coast and up to the Chiltern Hills to attack London from the north. It was on this route that he accepted the surrender of the Saxon establishment. Berkhamsted was situated on an important route between London and the Midlands, and the Normans considered it to be a strategically important place for advancing their domination of the land.