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 farleigh hungerford castle
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Jade Member |
posted 07-23-2000 04:10 AM
  
as a gces corsework i have been asked to reserch and expolor farleigh hungerford castle. However i am having troble finding a sours that will state what makes a castle defensive and what dosn't. I can see that faliegh was made to look as if it was defensive at one point but it wasn't i have nothing to compare it to prehaps someone could give me a clearly defensive castle as a comparison. any help would be great thanx
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Philip Davis unregistered |
posted 07-23-2000 12:10 PM
Yes you are quite right that Farleigh Hungerford ( http://www.homeusers.prestel.co.uk/magor/images/farleigh%20castle.htm )was mainly a grand house built for show, but it did have the three most notable defensive features of any castle: Walls wide enough for someone to walk along the top; towers which gave even greater height and add protection to the walls; a gate that is defensible. The many difference between a truely military castle like Dover ( http://www.camelot-intl.com/camelot/heritage/castles/eastern/dover.html ) or Harlech ( http://www.castlewales.com/harlech.html ) is not that they have different defensive features but that they have a lot more of them and that comfort is not allowed to get in the way of security. So, as I recall Farleigh Hungerford, it has relatively low walls (those that survive) and would have be a light and airy place, whereas Harlech has high walls and in the interior courtyard is still pretty gloomy (The walls at Dover castle have been reduced in height). There are some feature that are very military. Dover has postern gates which allow the knights in the castle to sally forth and attack the besiegers. The small gates at Farliegh are really just back doors with no military use. Harlech has platform for military engines (catapults and the like) these aim out to sea are presumably were to destroy ships which where blockading the resupply of the castle. A modern comparison might be between cars. Both a Rolls Royce and an armoured car have a steel shell: The Rolls's will stop a thief getting into the car; the armoured cars will stop a bullet. The Rolls is comfortable and high status but the armoured car will be uncomfortable but just as expensive. ------------------ |
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duncan Senior Member |
posted 07-23-2000 04:45 PM
Farleigh Hungerford This, like Nunney, is a castle of the late fourteenth century: but it was not, like the former, a completely new structure built on a hitherto unoccupied site, but resembles rather Stokesay in Shropshire , in that it represents the already existling domestic buildings of a great manor house turned into a castle under a "licence to crenellate." But the fates of the two have been different: at Stokesay the enceinte has disappeared, but most of the inner buildings survive: at Farleigh it is the inner buildings which have practically perished, only the chapel remaining in good order, while the gate-house and the outer walls make a good show. Farleigh was a manor of the knightly family of Montfort, from whom it was purchased in 1369 by Thomas Hungerford, "citizen and merchant of New Sarum." He was a greater man than this modest designation would suggest, as he was steward to John of Gaunt, and for a short time Speaker of the House of Commons. His father had been bailiff of Salisbury, and his uncle one of the king's Justices in Eyre. But clearly Thomas Hungerford was a "new man" like his contemporary, Michael de la Pole, the son of a citizen and merchant of Hull, who came to be Earl of Suffolk and the king's chief minister. Thomas got himself knighted by John of Gaunt's influence, and in 1383 obtained a licence to crenellate his mansion, which was henceforth known as Farleigh Hungerford instead of Farleigh Montfort: he also purchased other manors in the neighbourhood. His son Wafter, a great fighting man and a comrade of Henry V. at Agincourt and the siege of Rouen, was raised to the peerage in the fourth year of Henry VI. He became a Knight of the Garter, and rose to be Lord High Treasurer before his death at a good old age in I449. This is a good parallel to the similar exaltation of the mercantile family of the De la Poles—and like that of Suffolk, the Hungerford peerage ended by the axe. The third baron, a Lancastrian, as befitted the descendant of a steward of John of Gaunt, was beheaded after Hexham Field, where he had been taken prisoner. The last Hungerford who bore the baronial title was a victim of one of the suspicious fits of Henry VIII., and lost his head in 1541. As is attainder was never reversed, the barony disappeared, but Hungerfords continued to hold Farleigh down to the time of Charles II, when they lost it by the persistent folly of the head of the house. In its prime Farleigh was a square castle of two wards. Leland gave careful observation to it during his Somersetshire tour. He notes the situation "was strong, set on a steep hill, with a stream in a ravine covering its rear." It had a gate-house and "divers pretty towers" in the outer ward, also an ancient chapel, with a new chapel annexed unto it. The inner ward had also a fair gate-house with the arms of Hungerford richly carved in stone, and within a hall and three great chambers, all very stately. Unfortunately there remain to-day only the outer gate-house, part of the enceinte with the stumps of two towers, and the double chapel, the large chapel of St. Lawrence with the chantry of St. Anne built on to it. These are the only buildings of the whole castle which remain intact. They have been made into a sort of museum, containing not only the tombs of the founder and three or four of his successors, but a collection of armour, brought over when the old hall was destroyed in the eighteenth century, some Jacobean woodwork, and fragments of carved stone from the vanished buildings; also some early books and letters in cases. In Tudor times Farleigh saw some domestic tragedies, of which the legend still survives. Lady Agnes, second wife of the Hungerford of 1522, was accused of poisoning her husband, and hung, along with one of her servants, as Stow's chronicle records. Her step-son, the last Lord Hungerford— whom Henry VIII. bcheaded, for keeping a chaplain who called his sovereign a heretic, and casing the royal horoscope—was apparently a domestic tyrant. He kept his wife immured for four years in the tower stil known as the " Lady's Tower," allowing her to see no one but his chaplain, half starving her, and (if she is to be believed in her petition to Secretary Cromwell) twice or thrice attempting to poison her. Local legend has it that he was jealous of attentions paid to her by a well-known local reprobate, "Wild Darrell," of Littlecote— but the dates do not at all tally. When her husband's head fell on Tower Hill, Lady Hungerford emerged, married Sir Robert Throckmorton, and bore him four daughters and two sons. So her health would not appear to have suffered permanent injury from her imprisonment. The Hungerford family was approaching its end when two seventeenth century knights, father and son, were its successive heads. Sir Edward Hungerford was a zealous Puritan, long commander of the Parliamentary levies of Wiltshire, "of eminent zeal for his country," as his tomb of 1648 in the chapel records. Revulsion against parental strifness may, perhaps, account for the lamentable career of his son, the last Sir Edward, best known as " Hungerford the Waster, " who was one of the least worthy members of the court of Charles II. He gave £500 for a wig to which he had taken a particular affection, and gambled away in succession twenty-eight manors —he is said to have paid £30,000 across the green cloth. His last attempt to get money was to turn his house and garden in London into a public market —known ever after as Hungerford Market. After this he lived to a poverty stricken old age, on the one manor— Black Bourton in Oxfordshire— which he had not succeeded in alienating. And with the death of his childless son in 1748 this unlucky house came to an end. The "Waster" sold Farleigh to a Mr. Baynton in 1686, and since then it has passed through many hands. The main authors of its destruction would appearto have been a family named Houlton, who are recorded to have carried off its panelling and carved beams to their other house at Trowbridge. But the bulk of the stones went to build the handsome Farleigh House, in the park outside the castle. Earl Cairns saved the remnant of the buildings from complete destruction, by purchasing them and presenting them to the Board of Works-- and now the Commission for Ancient Mounments takes care of the interesting chapel and gate-house. CASTLES by C. Oman 1926 |
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wurdsmiff unregistered |
posted 07-29-2000 01:29 PM
A series of three photographs appear of this site in the photo archive,go to http://www.castlesontheweb.com/arc hive/sharin.cgi?keys= farleigh+hungerford&category=Any&display=10&sortby=newest&platform=Any&begin=1&end=10 for the links ------------------ Gordon. [This message has been edited by wurdsmiff (edited 07-29-2000).] |
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