Notes on "Behind The Castle Gate" by Matthew Johnson

- 1350 to 1660 - talks about English castles: Cooling, Bodiam, Warkworth, Tattershall, and more - Welsh castles mentioned in text: Raglan, Beaumaris, Conway, Caenarfon - mission: “I try to look afresh at what these buildings meant to contemporaries, and how now, as we think and write in the present, archaeologists and architectural historians might best understand or approach them.” Does NOT attempt to reassess individual castle nor calim particular new insights into particular structures more general - “active and complex pieces of landscape and material culture” - castle as stage/backdrop/setting that were manipulated, “As the identities of the protagonists changed, so did the meanings of the physical structures, even where their form remained the same.” - (1) landscape elements “frame” castle (2) “lived experience” how move through building, vantage points, etc (3) New Historicists and Cultural Materialists say 16th century and before that architecture and elite identity/power were interwoven and unstable

Military Perspective

- Royal Archaeological Institute sees castles as military structures, same for Michael Thompson - “a generation of scholars working on castles were military men”  military view not so much wrong as only part of the story - “any meanings that we attach to the castle come from the here and now” -Technology: replacement of passive defense with active defense, evolution of the donjon and towers from vulnerable square forms to circular ones without weak angles, the proliferation of projecting towers providing flanking fire along the walls, the development of systems of concentric defense - Allen Brown claims that after the 14th century at least in military terms the rest is anti-climax and the architectural development of the castle was at an end - 14/15th centuries: military view visibly weakens. Donjon or architectural form like it comes back into fashion, walls get thinner, commanders prefer field battle over castle battle  transitional period between military perfection of Edward I’s Welsh castles and Renaissance house (unfortified house); line becomes blurry castle vs. unfortified house ‘defence against casual violence’, Thompson: “the enemy was at the gate, but ill-armed and ill-equipped; he was not a military enemy to be fought, but to be overawed by fierce-looking buildings”

Social Perspective

- circulation patterns, organization of space, castles reflective of social status, castle as theatre -circulation  Peter Faulkner (Goodrich on Welsh border) increased ‘private’ lodgings and domestic comfort  Conway being on the low end/early, Graham Fairclough’s penetration diagrams, -David Austin: in our urge to classify one castle form against another, we often forget about the castle’s immediate context within an urban or rural landscape (Barnard Castle oriel window)