Castle in the north of the county

Above: the castle overlooks the great west river. It is on private property and strictly off-limits. To see it you have to wade through a field of stinging nettles and climb up a high bank, all the time hoping no-one is going to come after you.

Castle in the north of the county, built of red brick. 16th century in date. Except that castles were of no use in the 16th century, and bricks were no protection against cannons.

To understand why this "castle" was built, you have to consider the projection into the Tudor and Stuart periods of chivalric culture. The usual line is that "the Renaissance" brought an end to the medieval period, and "the modern period" commenced. While there is a lot of evidence that society had in practice become modern, in mentalite many people, especially knights, thought of themselves in the chivalric terms of the later middle ages.

Thus knights still built themselves castles (of red brick), wore ornamental armour, took part in jousts and duels etc.



Above: illustration (facsimile) from Le Passages d'Outremer in the Bibliotheque National in Paris.

Far from being designs related to their time, castle builders in the 16th century looked back to the triumphs of the high middle ages, particularly the crusades. Huizinga, writing in Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen, said "warlike aristocracies need an ideal form of manly perfection... the aspiration to a pure and beautiful life gives birth to chivalry." This is an example of architecture being used to shape the thoughts of the people who inhabit it.

Obviously I need to add that chivalry was also used to mask exteme violence, self-interest and obsessive erotic fantasies.

I'm very interested in the Boucicaut manuscript that suggests knights often founded their own (very small) orders of knighthood that existed alongside the more famous orders such as the Garter and the Golden Fleece.

Also interesting is the fact that the "sword of Tristram" (an important secular chivalric relic) was being brought to the county when it was lost by King John with the rest of his treasure in the marsh at Walpole Cross Keys.