If you’re a history buff, like keeping track of royals, or saw Braveheart more than a few years ago, you’ll know a bit about Edward I (b. 1239, d. 1307; reigned 1272-1307). Known as Longshanks because of his height or Hammer of the Scots because of his treatment of the Scots, he was pretty much disliked everywhere he went. He mistreated the Welsh too, but didn’t get a nickname for that bit of abuse.
Apparently he was temperamental. Articles about him used words like cranky, intimidating, fierce-tempered. I imagine he was feared by all around him. He went to the crusades, expelled the Jews, and stole Scotland’s coronation stone (the Stone of Destiny). Nice guy, it would seem.
Personality aside, though, Eddie was a busy guy, especially in Wales. The countryside here is littered with castles he built and refurbished. I haven’t managed to get a handle on how many of them in all; some books I’ve read said he built eight castles in Wales, others simply say ‘built and refurbished”, hedge the numbers and don’t differentiate between the categories. Even Wikipedia only refers to him as having built “a series of castles”, so in order not to be wrong, I’m not going to use a number. I’ll simply say that he was busy . . . that castles he had his fingers in are all over Wales.
And when he built them, Edward and his planners either invented or were early adapters of building castles in a series of concentric circles, which made them highly defendable. Important in those nasty times, filled with betrayal, sieges and attacks.
We managed to visit some of Edward’s castles as well as a few other non-Edwardian ones, and now we’re into picking favourites, because they’re all such fun to tour through. And the National Trust has done an amazing job with the castles, the education program, and the booklets about their stories.
All of these castles have been set up as learning centres. And what is amazing to me is that castles that have existed for 1200 (or so) years (such as Pembroke, one of the non-Edward castles) have been set up with scan codes so information can download right into your mobile device, tablet, I-pad etc (that is, of course, assuming that you have been able to make said devices work — which we haven’t — see last year’s blog on technology).
Before I talk about his castles, I have to talk a bit about Edward and his wife Eleanor. Their marriage a political alliance. She was 12 and King Alphonso of Castile’s half-sister; Edward was 14. But apparently, and most unusually, they loved each other and Edward was faithful to her throughout their marriage, and paid tribute to her after her death, until his own, even though he remarried a few years after she died. Nice at home, not so nice on military campaigns it would seem.
Theirs was certainly a prolific marriage: history notes she was pregnant at at least 16 times (!!!), but only one of their four sons survived childhood so the concept of an heir and a spare we talk about today didn’t quite happen. The surviving girls of course all made advantageous marriages being treated as the chattel women were back then, even though Eleanor was strong and independent.
Eleanor was seemingly an astute businesswoman. She is noted as being more educated than most royalty of the time, including men, and set about becoming one of the first self-financing queens. She had a real mind for money, and offered mortgages to broke knights, then in a series of speedy takeovers assumed control of their castles. Not much has changed in the world of high fiinance. Apparently though, said dispossessed knights were given lifetime land grants, had places in her household, and most seemingly welcomed their relief from debt.
History tells us more than Braveheart, a highly romanticized version of history, did. If you are a Braveheart fan, chances are you know how miserably Edward and his agents treated the Scots. What Braveheart doesn’t tell us is that Edward died of dysentry only a few months after Robert the Bruce beat him at the Battle of Loudoun Hill in Ayreshire, but not before doing some very nasty things to Robert the Bruce’s relatives, leaving them in hanging cages outside various castle walls for four or five years. It’s a tempestuous bit of history, filled with spite, intrigue and evil-doings. I personally would not have wanted to live back then, castles and long dresses notwithstanding.
But on to castles that he built/refurbished, whatever. Our current favourite is Beaumaris (Beau Mareys or Castle on the Fair Marsh). This is the last of the castles Edward built, and it is a dandy, even thought he didn’t finish it. By the time he got to Beaumaris, he had built or refurbished 16 castles (I know I said no numbers, but this is in the official literature).
Beaumaris is unique among its contemporary castles because it is built on level ground, so there were no natural constraints to the plans. It’s unusual too because it isn’t on a height of land, or hugely tall and intimidating. I guess the intimidation comes from the 15 or so obstacles you needed to overcome or overwhelm before you won the siege.
Edward built Beaumaris in those concentric circles I mentioned earlier, with four rings of defence. The moat is the outer-most defence, complete with a dock so they could supply the castle from the sea. Then came rings of walls. The 15 obstacles don’t even start until the drawbridge. Gates at weird angles to each other, corkscrew staircases going the “wrong” way so right-handed attackers were at a real disadvantage, holes defenders could throw nasty things down on attackers, like boiling water or oil or other such unpleasant things.
This is the first castle we have been in that allowed us access to the inner passageways and the upper ramparts. Perhaps because Beaumaris is a ruin that has been renovated only for safety and historical preservation, and not a theme park, we were really given an insight into what life would have been like.
The castle was intended to be lavish and regal: there were plans for five separate suites of rooms, each with a full set of public rooms.
What remains is a series of inner hallways, corkscrew stairways that leave you dizzy. gasping for breath (fear mostly) and clutching desperately to the rope bannisters, half blind in the very dim light and hoping that you wouldn’t meet anyone going the opposite direction before you got to a landing. Down is worse than up. Going up you can at least see where your feet will eventually be planted. Down is pure blind luck. I thank my OCD that makes me count every step every time I climb or descend stairs. At least I had an idea when i would be getting to the bottom.
My ski-like feet were not particularly helpful on these skinny steps. Where oh where are my Grandmother’s size three feet now. Certainly not on the ends of my legs.
Walls are three or four feet thick, at least. Windows, small and narrow. Fortunately for women who lived here back then, the huge skirts of the Elizabethan era were not an issue. Heaven knows how they would have made it up and down stairs and through these narrow corridors in some of the clothes I’ve seen from just two centuries later. It wouldn’t have been easy for men in armour either come to think of it. The only advantage I can think of is that people generally were smaller back in the 13th century. Edward Longshanks was 6’2″, so his head was at risk as he went through some of these doorways.
As always I marvel at the skill and determination it took to build edifices like this hundreds of years before cranes and other mechanical aids. I don’t know when the slide rule, calculator or computer came into common use, but i know it wasn’t in the 13th century.
The ubiquitous gift stores sell bows and arrows, wooden swords, costumes of al sorts, and the children we saw at the castles were all trying to shoot their arrows through the arrow slots. They were about the right size to be using the castles’ defensive systems, now that I think about it.
