owners of the castle wanted the great hall to have a palace feel to
it. The hall would have been decorated with carvings and may have been
painted. The floor would have been covered with straw, and the two huge
fireplaces would have been painted and carved.
Leicester’s building was an extension to the castle to bring it up to palace
Standards. It was built in the sixteenth century by Sir Robert
Dudley. The building was decorated to a high standard and was clearly
used for important visitors. The building is built out of stone
and the walls here are extremely thick. At Leicester’s building the walls to
all three floors are non existent but in the middle ages
each floor would have contained a chamber, a small rectangular room and
ornamental fireplaces. I noticed that there were a lot of
holes in the walls and these were probably used for timber to be inserted.
When standing at the bottom of Leicester’s building I could look straight
through to the top of the building, I could also get a feel of the layout of
the building.
Leicester’s gatehouse is one of the only buildings that isn’t a ruin and still
stands proud. The entrance to the gatehouse was decorated
beautifully and the door to the building was extremely wide. The
gatehouse has loads of windows, lots of doors and the walls were
quite thin. One of the main features of the gatehouse is that the
crenulations are still there. When walking around this building it was
clear to see that it was fairly much intact.
Even though the site was a ruin from my visit I managed to get a rough
indication of where things were.
Why it is of use to Historians
In this section I will explain why the castle is of use to historians and
other groups such as reconstructionists, tourists and even
school students.
A brief History of Kenilworth castle
Kenilworth castle was first built in 1125 by Geoffrey de Clinton who was a
Chamberlain to Henry I. It was said that Henry I needed around two
hundred people around him at any one time and for further security
Kenilworth was built. Kenilworth castle was known for it’s great defence
it was built in an oval enclosure and was surrounded by streams to create a
great lake to the south of the castle, the castles keep was rectangular and
made out of stone.
Over the next few years the castle was developed a number of times by a
number of different people, King John spent around £1,000 adding the
gatehouse and a curtain wall which went the whole way around the castle
and then Henry III ( John’s heir) totally transformed the castle more into
how we know it today. He spent a large amount of money altering the
structure and upgrading the royal chambers but his most lavish expense on
the castle was an artificial lake which a thousand people worked on.
John of Gaunt was an extremely flamboyant person who owned the castle
in the late 14th century he began the transformation of the
castle to a palace, John designed a magnificent great hall which was said
to be the largest roof space at that time. The process continued under
Robert Dudley who added Leicester’s building which was a residential block
for important guests.
Kenilworth was one of only five licensed tournament grounds in England
where events such as jousting took place. A reason why there
was probably so few tournament grounds in the country was because these
sort of tournaments were only done by the top 2% of society at the time.
The tournaments at Kenilworth took place at the tiltyard which is still part
of the grounds today.
The Defence of Kenilworth
Kenilworth’s main defensive feature was its keep. Its tall tower meant that any enemies could have been spotted quickly, there was nothing but woodland around Kenilworth in the middle ages. Arrow slits at the top of the keep meant that soldiers were able to battle with the enemy before they reached the castle. The curtain wall which ran around the castle would have helped with the defence of the castle as this wall would have been hard to knock down. Although the castle was a great defensive feature it only came under attack once in what was known as “The siege of Kenilworth” which was a major incident in the Barons’ war, the siege lasted over nine months. The fight was between King Henry III and Simon de Montford. The King gave Simon, Kenilworth as he married his daughter Eleanor but they soon fell out.
The castle also contained three towers,
- Swans Tower
- Lunn’s Tower
- Water Tower
The main feature of these buildings was simply look out towers. These
towers also had crenulations on and had narrow arrow slit windows. The
towers also had walkways, and this helped soldiers to fire arrows a very
long distance because of the height, and they would have been hard to hit
because the crenulations would get in the way, and if they were by a
window, then it would be hard to get an arrow through the narrow windows
to hit them.
A typical day at Kenilworth castle
The day would begin early in the morning for the servants, as they went around the castle making sure fires were lit and meals had begun to be prepared. As soon as the lord and his lady had awoken, chambermaids entered the chambers to sweep, empty chamber pots and wash basins. After breakfast the lord would begin his daily business.
People living within the castle
- The owners and his/her family ( Usually a lord)
- Chambermaids- Looks after the bedrooms
- Ladies-in-waiting- Looked after the lady of the house
- Chamberlain- In charge of the great chamber or hall
- The chaplain- In charge of the wardrobe
- The butler
- The cook
- The chandler- Made candles
- The Marshal- In charge of the stables
- Spinners, weavers and embroiders
- A porter- Tended the main door
All these people and more made up a large community to make the life of a castle extremely busy.
The lady of the castles day was catered for by her ladies-in-waiting, most
of her day was spent supervising sewers and kitchen staff. It was also the
lady’s duty to educate young children which consisted of religion, reading,
music and dance.
From visiting the castle I feel that Kenilworth shows a lot about what
castles were like in the past, from visiting the castle you gain a lot of
knowledge and understanding about castle life. This is why
reconstructionists enjoy visiting the castle, reconstructionists are people
who enjoy visiting the past, they do this by dressing up as people from the
middle ages.
Tourists gain a lot from visiting the castle. Novels are the main reason why
people are drawn to Kenilworth, a number of novelists have written great
stories about the castle with Sir Walter Scott’s novel named “Kenilworth”
being one of the most famous. It is about a romantic affair between Sir
Robert Dudley one of the owners of the castle and Elizabeth I. Tourists
flock to the castle to reunite themselves with history. Tourists enjoy the
feeling of being in the same place of which the people they read about
were in. This clearly shows that even if the castle is today a ruin tourists
still find it a fascinating experience and are quite happy leaving something
for the imagination.
Historians find the castle useful as a historians main purpose is to look
into the past and find out what happened to the particular site, why it
happened and what were it’s consequences. Kenilworth castle answers all
these questions as the castle is physical evidence of the past, historians
can link what they witness at the castle to pieces of documentary and
archaeological evidence to get a clear verification of the castles past.
Conclusion
In conclusion to what I have said Kenilworth castle is an important and justified piece of evidence for any person looking into castles and their past. The fact that it is a ruin is irrelevant firstly because the structural evidence which is there is important and just from that we can see how the castle has changed over different time periods, the structural evidence also shows how the castle was used as a “safe house” we know this because of the great amount of defensive work which has been done to it. When a historian links the structural evidence of the site to different sorts of evidence such as documentary, archaeological and visual we are left with an informative and more then useful insight into the history of Kenilworth castle and all other castles in general.
Assignment 1b
In this section I am going to analyse Ivan Lapper’s drawings of Kenilworth
castle which he drew in 1986 and see if it is a fair interpretation of what
Kenilworth was actually like. Firstly I am going to look at each of the four
images and state what is still left of the images today.
Image 1: Kenilworth castle in c. 1180, by Ivan Lapper
My first impressions of this image is just how small the castle is and how
little developed it is. When looking at the picture the first thing I notice
is the ditch which runs right around the castle, this can still be visible
today especially by Leicester’s building. The ditch is suppose to be part of
the original moat of the castle. The moat would have stopped most
attacks to the castle, from my visit to the castle I realised that the
moat is now non existent.
The picture shows a gatehouse which is no longer present, it stood
adjacent to the keep and was used as the main entrance to the castle
back in the 12th century but from my visit to the castle I noticed that it
was no longer there but I could still see remains of the gatehouse. This
gatehouse would have more than likely been destroyed in the siege of
Kenilworth.
The major building in this interpretation of the castle is the keep, the
picture shows the keep as a large fortress with all crenulations,
windows, walls and floors present but now the keep is no more then a ruin.
The back wall is totally missing and floors are no longer present.
Another dominant feature of this drawing is the chapel. The chapel would
have been built by the Normans who were extremely religious people and a
chapel was never far away from them. After my visit from Kenilworth I
noted that there was absolutely no remains of the chapel. Another feature
was a small hall which was directly opposite from the keep, this also has no
remains whatsoever.
In this picture the stables and kitchen are in the same area. Obviously as
the castle grew in size and became more established these buildings were
obviously moved to more suitable areas of the castle. Viewing this image as
a whole it is clear to say that the castle at this stage wasn’t really
established and it really didn’t have much to it.
Image 2: Kenilworth castle c. 1210, by Ivan Lapper
This image shows that the castle has undergone major development and
this was hugely because of King John who reigned between (1199- 1216). The castle looks much more “Castle like”. The castle now has an outer wall which runs the whole way around the castle site, this was primarily for defence. The outer wall is now slightly damaged in places.
This interpretation shows us a dam which was used to create a huge lake
when I visited the castle I entered the castle through this entrance. The
lake was only shallow and now it is part of fields which surround the castle.
This image shows a number of new buildings which have sprung up under
king Johns reign. The first of which was a new gatehouse which was on the
far north-east outer wall, now there is hardly nothing left of this
gatehouse as it was replaced with another gatehouse later on. Also in this
image three towers have appeared, Swans tower, Lunn’s tower and the
Water tower. The main function of these buildings were look- out towers
but I had noticed from my visit that half of Swans tower had fallen down.
The castle has developed a lot in these images and now has two clear
baileys, an inner court and an outer court.
Image 3: Kenilworth castle in c. 1395, by Ivan Lapper
The castle at this stage was rapidly gaining a palace status due to its
flamboyant owner John of Gaunt, he wanted the castle to look like it had
power and wealth and the drawing shows this. There are several new
buildings in this interpretation which include the strong tower, the
Saintlowe tower, the royal chambers and John of Gaunt’s great hall all
of which still have remains of today. The image also shows us that the
castle has developed a tiltyard which was used for tournaments such as
jousting. This only added to the castles wealth status. When entering the
castle I entered walking along the tiltyard.
Image 4: Kenilworth castle in c. 1575, by Ivan Lapper
At this stage the castle is thriving and is now extremely well developed.
The castle at this point was owned by Robert Dudley. The image shows us
another new gatehouse. This gatehouse was made by Robert Dudley. It
still stands today and is decorated brilliantly and the crenulations are still
there. All this can be seen from this image.
In this image you can clearly see the Tudor gardens. When I visited the
castle the Tudor gardens had been reconstructed to exactly how they
were in the 16th century. The gardens had very little colour and this was
probably what it was like back when this interpretation was related to.
We must clarify how artists such as Ivan Lapper come to the conclusions
of creating images of the past. In this section I will try to answer this. It
is clear to say that Ivan Lapper used a lot of different sources to paint his
image of the castle.
Here is some of the sources where artists may get information from.
- Documentary evidence- Artists will use written evidence to help create the image in which they wish to create. They will use accounts written in the time period, this is quite a reliable source as this is hands on information from a person who would have had plenty of knowledge from that time.
- Site evidence- Visiting the actual place the artist is trying to create is one of the best ways of painting their picture, remains of a site can show you a what could have been image.
- Comparison with similar sites- If an artist can gain a lot more information from a similar site then it could be well worth their while to use this.
- Maps and landscapes- These would be helpful as they would have given a rough indication of the size of the site and it would also help if you was drawing a picture from birds eye view.
- Guess work- Finally a certain amount of guess work goes into an interpretation of a site. Ivan Lapper used trees and grass to fill out his images to make them look more convincing, these fill out the image and makes the image look less plain.
When concluding Ivan Lappers work I feel that it was extremely reliable and his interpretation is probably true of the times. The present castle in it’s state would have been a great help to Ivan when he was creating his images, ruins can give us a good indication of how things were like in the past as you could get a feel of how a big a room is, you can get an obvious view of the layout and where things were and you could probably even make out how well built the buildings were and what they were made out of.
