Norman Castles, Garrisons and Frontiers

Norman castles could be defended residences, military bases and seats of local authority. Their functions met in practical ways: a lord’s hall received tenants and held business, while the walls, stores and garrison could secure a road or settlement. Normandy, England, the Welsh Marches and Sicily each developed this relationship within a different political setting.

On this page6 sections

Castles and ducal authority in Normandy

In Normandy, Duke William used a castle to strengthen his own position as well as to support his lords. After defeating a western coalition at Val-ès-Dunes in 1047, he needed a secure base in that part of the duchy. He chose Caen, where work on a great castle began around 1050. A palace inside the castle received William’s travelling court. Caen’s castle, ducal town and abbeys helped turn an emerging settlement into a centre of government; its location at a crossroads and port linked the duke’s authority to movement through the duchy. William later ruled from both Rouen and Caen.

English castles after 1066

After William’s conquest, castles helped secure royal control of England. In a motte-and-bailey castle, a timber tower stood on an earth mound called a motte beside a defended enclosure called a bailey. The enclosure could hold a hall, people, horses and stores as well as defensive works. Earth-and-timber castles could be raised quickly, and some later acquired stone keeps or walls.

At Old Sarum in Wiltshire, William I placed an inner castle inside an existing Iron Age hillfort and surrounded it with a large bailey able to accommodate troops. Towers, halls and apartments housed the royal household. Sheriffs later used the castle as an administrative base, and cathedral clerks assisted with major projects. Early buildings were timber; the oldest surviving stone keep was probably built early in Henry I’s reign. The hilltop combined a military garrison with the household and offices through which royal authority was exercised.

How garrisons were supplied and commanded

A garrison was the armed force assigned to hold a stronghold. In England, castle-guard tied this duty to land: a lord could require a free tenant to guard his castle in return for the estate granted to him. Between 1071 and 1083, Abbot Adelelm of Abingdon had to provide thirty knights for Windsor Castle. He met the obligation by granting manors from the abbey’s lands to kinsmen who supplied the service. The arrangement converted income-producing land into a recurring military presence.

By the twelfth century, the system could organise service in rotating groups. Henry II endowed the constable of Dover and eight associated knights with estates to support the castle’s garrison. By 1211–12, records divide the service into groups of four or five knights, each responsible for four weeks of guard during the year. The castle constable commanded the garrison and oversaw its maintenance and discipline. Over time, some tenants paid money in place of personal duty, allowing a lord to hire soldiers. Thus a castle’s occupants might be household retainers, tenants serving in rotation or paid troops, depending on the place and period.

A castle household at Eynsford

The buildings at Eynsford Castle in Kent show how a garrison’s stronghold also supported a resident household. The well supplied its main water source, and the great kitchen, built between 1150 and 1175, prepared food. A hall on the first floor served for meals and public business; beside it, a solar provided domestic accommodation. Cellars below offered storage, while a separate undercroft formed a residential apartment, perhaps for an important officer such as the castle’s bailiff. Latrines discharged into the moat.

Eynsford had no motte or keep: its main defence was the curtain wall, with entry across a timber drawbridge and through a gatehouse. The wall was first built between 1085 and 1087 and heightened in 1130, when a gate-tower was also added. The surviving wall reaches nine metres in height and is almost two metres wide at its base. After a fire around 1250, repairs included a second kitchen to serve both the hall and private apartments. Its plan therefore records several building phases and the continuing needs of the people living and working inside.

Strongholds on the Welsh border

The Welsh Marches were border districts where English and Welsh rulers contested land and authority. Wigmore Castle, founded near the border in 1067, began as a Norman stronghold of reinforced timber walls on earthworks. The Mortimer family held it from about 1075 and rebuilt it in stone during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. From Wigmore, the family projected power into central Wales. Marcher lords could hold courts, wage war and receive some revenues otherwise due to the English king; a castle anchored these powers at a defensible seat from which a lord and his officers could govern estates and mobilise force.

Palermo and Norman strongholds in Sicily

The conquest of Sicily began in 1061 and continued until 1091. Palermo, the island’s capital, endured a five-month siege before surrendering in January 1072. Norman forces blocked the city by land and sea; sorties and fighting took place outside its walls, while hunger and disease weakened the besieged. The siege demonstrates why control of a fortified town depended on its access to roads and harbour as well as its walls.

After Palermo fell, a garrison was installed and the Norman knight Robert became governor, holding the Arabic title amir. Greek officials later occupied this office until 1154. Roger I and his household developed an apparatus of rule over the island’s largely Muslim population while conquest continued. In politically sensitive areas near Muslim towns, the Normans built new fortifications or strengthened older defences. Some protected walled settlements rather than castles in the familiar sense. At Palermo, then, the garrison secured a conquered capital; across Sicily, strongpoints helped rulers hold places where their authority was still being established.