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 CHEPSTOW A TOWN with the
Saxon name of Chepstow grew up under the shadow of a castle built by the
Normans on the Welsh bank of the Wye, and was called by them Ystreigl or
Striguil. There was a time when the great merchants of Europe could talk of the
lordship of Striguil as a great centre of commerce. It held one of the gates to
Wales; it contained a large part of the Wye valley, and the Wye valley boasted
Tintern, an abbey under the patronage of the successive lords of Striguil,
where the wool trade was carefully fostered by the monks. A book of history
might not tell us more. First, the purely military outpost of the Normans is
set up in 1067 as a bridgehead for further advances into Wales. The Norman
scribe, true to the racial instinct for adaptation, copies down the barbarous
Welsh name of the locality as it strikes his ear. Then the merchants come, and
the English town of Chepstow (which means literally a place of trade, a market)
grows great under the protection of the feudal magnates, outlives them, and
finally extends its own name to the ruined walls of Striguil. It is the
emergence of England, made possible by an infusion of Norman strength. The
powerless dragon of Wessex goes down in defeat at Hastings, and a few centuries
later the battle cry of Agincourt is “St. George for Merry England.” The point
illustrated at Chepstow could be easily proved: that the battle of Hastings was
the decisive blow for the English conquest of England; it was the final defeat
of the Northmen. The name of
Striguil is probably derived from a Welsh verb meaning to wander, in reference
to the winding course of the river. But a most interesting theory was once
built up to show that the origin of the name lay in the Welsh Ystrad Iwl; that
Chepstow was a Roman station to protect the river-crossing of the Strata Julia.
Unfortunately there was never a Roman station at Chepstow, the Strata Julia was
in another part of the country, and the Roman road to Caerleon and Caerwent
passed over the Wye some little way up stream. The first military use of the
site was undoubtedly made by William Fitz Osborn, Seneschal of Normandy, Earl
of Hereford, who was made joint Justiciar of the kingdom with Odo of Bayeux,
with instructions to build castles in suitable positions while William the
Conqueror was visiting Normandy in 1067. Chepstow (as the
castle will be called to avoid confusion) was built upon an ideal river-side
position which it would have been folly to neglect. The old bridge of the Roman
road was near enough to be afforded military protection, and as the town grew
up a new bridge was thrown across the Wye a little below the castle. The castle
was built upon a long and narrow platform along the Wye. On one side sheer
limestone cliffs rose from the waters of the river, and on the other side was a
steep gully or ravine running parallel to the stream. The town, a walled
enclosure, grew up by the side of the ravine, affording additional protection,
if it was needed, from that direction. The walls of the town are fairly well
preserved, and Chepstow is a rare example of a castle associated with the
fortifications of a town but lying entirely outside the town walls; a
disposition partly due to the nature of the site and partly to the fact that
the castle was the original settlement. The platform of rock, some 250 yards in
length, and in breadth varying from 30 to 70 yards, rises towards the centre
where the original Norman castle was erected. Chepstow is long
and narrow, consisting of four adjacent wards, occupying the whole length of
the tongue of land. On such a site the concentric form was impossible, but
attack was only to be feared from east and west. The original castle probably
took the form of a ward near the western end of the platform. A deep ditch was
excavated from the ravine to the cliff on the west to protect an elongated
enclosure with a massive and defensible hall at its eastern end. Probably there
were also domestic quarters in wood, which have disappeared. The first
addition, in the twelfth century, was a large ward to the east of this, and in
the next hundred years a barbican was built at the western end of the castle,
and the strongest ward of all, with living quarters, gatehouse, and a strong
tower, was added in the east. The strength of the
castle is at once obvious to the visitor. The barbican, not a narrow passage
but an enclosed courtyard, is fronted by a ditch, crossed by a drawbridge.
Within the barbican, against the wall of the second court, is the old ditch of
the Norman castle. The entrance of the barbican is protected by an imposing
gatehouse with rectangular towers in two stories and the usual apparatus of
gate and portcullis, battlement and loop. At the south-west angle is a round
tower which was formerly connected with the enceinte of the town by a wall
across the ravine of no great strength. Having taken the well-protected
barbican by assault an enemy would find himself confronted by the ditch and
drawbridge protecting the second cross wall. The most imposing
feature of the whole castle, and indeed one of the most remarkable buildings in
any English castle, is the hall or keep at the end of this second ward from the
western end. It is of the same class as the fine hall at Richmond, of early
Norman work with twelfth and thirteenth century additions. Probably (and here
as usual the experts differ) it was built immediately after the Conquest, to
judge by the style of architecture, and the irregularities of its plan and
construction. The ordinary visitor may leave on one side the alternative and
equally attractive theories that a hall was converted into a keep and that a
keep was converted into a hall. It may be considered a hall capable of defence
like the similar buildings at Richmond and Durham. The building
occupies the end of the ward, leaving a narrow gallery on the side of the
river, closed by gates at either end, to connect the second and third wards.
The basement of the building was used for stores, and its walls are pierced
with loops to command the gallery. The Norman aula
in the upper story is now entered by a vice in the thickness of the wall. The
fireplace must have been in the centre of the floor with an opening in the roof
to allow of the escape of smoke. The hall shows its continued use, for the
ornamentation is mostly Decorated. Norman windows have been blocked out and
windows of the thirteenth century inserted in their stead, and a line of
Decorated windows takes the place of a triforium in the Norman hall. At one end
an arch has been built up dividing the hall into two unequal parts. This
provided a solar for the lord and his friends, and the line of Decorated
windows above the string course provided light for a broad wooden gallery
running around the hall. The third ward from
the west has no outstanding features, except a watch tower in the southern
curtain projecting towards the ravine. From the top of this tower signals could
formerly be received from a similar tower on a high hill across the river. By
this means ships entering the mouth of the Wye could be seen long before they
reached Chepstow, where the lord had the right to exact toll from them. The
other tower still stands on Twt Hill —
which means look-out hill. There is a Twt Hill above Carnarvon, and the name
remains in some English villages, such as Toot Baldon in Oxfordshire. In the fourth or
lower ward the thirteenth-century builders erected their most elaborate
buildings and their strongest fortifications. The buildings have been allowed
to fall into disrepair, and we can only see from their range and variety, from
an occasional room or window, that they must once have been of considerable
magnificence. They included a hall, an oratory, kitchens, and dwelling rooms,
running along the cliff top over the Wye. The most interesting of the surviving
portions is the vaulted cellar with a groined roof excavated below the hall. A
door in the floor opens above a creek or recess in the cliff, and an iron ring
shows that use was made of this unusual postern to draw up provisions,
messages, and spies. The Royalists besieged in this castle are recorded to have
let a boat down to the river in preparation for escape; but a Roundhead soldier
swam across the Wye with a knife in his mouth, cut the rope, and brought away
the boat. The landward walls
of this court are of immense thickness, even for their period. They are built
up of an outer and an inner wall, with a filling of earth between, making a
thickness of 20 ft. in places. The splendid
gatehouse is in the north-east angle of the ward near the river. Two drum
towers of unequal size defended a gateway with two portcullises, and a
projecting archway above commanded the space before the gate. Then, to protect
the angle of the ward a strong tower of great strength was built, comparable
with the Eagle tower at Carnarvon. It flanked the gatehouse on its left, and
the ravine along the line of the south curtain, and to increase its flanking
properties stone spurs were built up along its base in the form of
demi-pyramids dying away in the face of the tower. Its name is the Marten’s
tower — so-called because Henry Marten, one of the regicides, having been
spared the death penalty, was condemned to an easy imprisonment there after the
Restoration. The entrance to
Marten’s tower is from the ground level in the ward, protected by its own gate
and portcullis. Besides an underground chamber there are three floors,
containing one room each, connected by a spiral staircase in the wall. Where
the ram part wall communicates with the tower there is another door and
portcullis. Jutting from the tower and rising above the level of the ramparts
there is a square projection containing a small oratory. Marten’s tower was
primarily a flanking tower, but it also served as the nearest approach to a
keep that was ever attained in the concentric type of castle. Chepstow belonged
to men who made their name in England, Wales, and Ireland. It soon passed out
of the hands of the FitzOsborns. William was killed in Flanders, and his son,
Roger of Breteuil, was deprived of his estates for conspiracy. The castle was
granted to the founder of Tintern Abbey, Walter FitzRichard, of the family of
Clare, and thence it descended to Gilbert and Richard Strongbow, the powerful
Earls of Pembroke. For a time Thomas
de Brotherton, a son of Edward I, held the castle, regranting it for life to
the younger Despenser. To this period may be assigned the reconstruction of the
hall, and parts of the lower ward. Subsequently the castle passed through the
hands of Mowbrays, Herberts, and Somersets. The Dukes of Beaufort are the
present owners. In the Civil Wars
Chepstow was taken by assault, after a cannonade, by the Parliamentarians. A
breach was made in the walls, and some forty of the garrison were slain, but it
does not appear that very considerable damage was done to the old walls of the
castle, which will last for many years to come. |
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