LEONARD NIMOY: A castle made of wood? The very notion
seems preposterous. Everyone knows that
castles are made of stone. But that wasn't always the case. There was once a time when
the English built castles with wood. These medieval
structures are long gone. Their timbers have either been
replaced with lasting stone, or the wood has simply
disintegrated with all the other ashes of time. [music playing] But for several years
in England's history, from the time of the
Norman conquest in 1066 to the pathetic reign of
Edward II in the 1300s, castles made of timber
were ubiquitous. [music playing] Military necessity
dictated their creation. Social standing dominated
their architecture. Some were modest fortresses
or frontier outposts. Others were of grand design. And many were disguised
to look like stone. Their first purpose
was to protect knights and their horses. But soon, they housed entire
communities, some of which became the cities
of modern England. [music playing] Though they were not
temporary structures, little evidence remains
to chronicle the existence of these majestic
timber castles. Nothing but mounds and
ditches in the countryside. But once upon a time,
lords and ladies lived in castles of wood. [music playing] In 1959, archaeologist
Philip Barker visited a rural farm
near Montgomery, Wales. a village on the English border. The farm itself was
undistinguished, but for a modest
grass covered hill, it was cone shaped at
about 25 feet high. Surrounding it was an
elevated meadow about the size of a large horse corral. The mountain meadow
had been there as long as anyone could remember it. But to the archaeologist,
it was a motte-and-bailey, and the sight was that of a
medieval English earthwork known as Hen Domen,
Welsh for the old mound. Barker came to Hen Domen
to dig for pottery. He knew from
documentary evidence that the location belonged to an
ancient community more than 900 years old. By excavation, he
hoped to find nothing more than a cachet of 11th
and 12th century ceramics. But what he found
at Hen Domen went far beyond his imagination. PHILIP BARKER: The whole
thing was a complete surprise. I mean, I have to tell you that
I was completely inexperienced excavator. And this was a great advantage
because we just took it from the top. We took the grass off and we
trail the uppermost services clean to see what was there. And we found little rings of
stones and little shallow holes and all sorts of things
which we realized could not be accidents. They must represent
something, you see. And we decided that they
must represent timber, structural timbers. LEONARD NIMOY: Evidence
of timber castles exists in many forms-- in art, literature, even
ancient tax records. But seldom has any tangible
archaeological proof uncovered. At Hen Domen, evidence remaining
here beneath the serene Welsh soil was the blueprint of an
ancient motte-and-bailey type castle. [music playing] JOHN KENYON: Motte-and-bailey
is a type of earthwork castle that was introduced by the
Normans into England and Wales at the time the Norman
conquest onwards 1066. And the motte refers to
a large almost Christmas pudding-shaped mound,
like a giant molehill. And the bailey is the
defended courtyard which is set below the motte. So it's two component parts. LEONARD NIMOY: Atop the motte
was a palisade with some form of timber tower
which may have served as the main private
residence of the castle. The bailey contained attendant
buildings such as chapels, stables and kitchens. A motte bridge
connecting the two. It was usually protected
by a guard tower. To find the site of a
motte-and-bailey castle in Great Britain is not unusual. There are hundreds
throughout the United Kingdom but Hen Domen was
unique, untouched by modern civilization. PHILIP BARKER: We found that
very remarkably, the site hadn't been plowed or destroyed
in any way since it was abandoned, which we eventually
found was about 1300. So it was a
beautifully intact site which we were able to dissect
over a period of some 25 years. LEONARD NIMOY: From 1960 until
1985, Barker and his team peeled away the layers of
time, slowly finding pieces to an ancient puzzle. PHILIP BARKER: We stripped off
these layers one after another, rather like taking the
layers of an onion. But more difficult
than doing that. And one of the
things that we found was that as we went down through
the sequence of buildings, more of them were constructed
with posts going deep into the ground, in holes
which we call post holes. LEONARD NIMOY: The dig took
excavators on a journey through time. Hen Domen, they discovered, had
a lifespan of nearly 250 years. What's more? It had evolved through several
different stages of building. Based on their
discoveries, they were able to reconstruct the timeline
for the castle and its domain. Hen Domen, they learned, had
been built by the Normans in the 1070s and remained
inhabited until the 1300s. PHILIP BARKER: There
were hundreds of layers but we divided eventually
into about eight phases of construction, from
the earliest to the last. One of the periods of
buildings which was clearest, mainly because the posts
were in the ground, was phase about 1150. And we got a complete
sequence of buildings over that half of the
bailey for that date. LEONARD NIMOY: Few actual
artifacts remain to be found. One prominent exception was
a wooden seal beam discovered beneath layers of dirt. Barker's team determined
that it had supported the bridge between the
motte-and-bailey which carried a deep moat. Other clues were more subtle. Changes in the color
of the soil indicated where a thick wooden
beams had rotted. Often indicating post holes
and outlined foundations of buildings and walls. From the archeological
evidence, Barker's team was able to make a
blueprint of Hen Domen, and from the blueprint,
they reconstructed an architectural
rendering of the castle-- the drawing. PHILIP BARKER: My colleague,
Peter Scholefield, and I constructed that drawing
from a particular point of view to give the maximum information. And we argued, of
course, all of us among ourselves, as to what
the roof should be like, what they would be covered
with, what would be sensible. I mean, it wouldn't be sensible
in our view to have fetch. You see, it's too
vulnerable to fire. And so on and so on, and
we went all through this. And we came up with the
drawing that you saw. LEONARD NIMOY: From his
drawing, Peter Scholefield build a model. PETER SCHOLEFIELD: What's
interesting is that, and one of the things that
this model doesn't show is that it is the succession of
buildings that was on the site. And this is very much a snapshot
of Hen Domen at a certain time. And the time may have been
a span of, I don't know, littlest is kind
of 10 or 15 years. PHILIP BARKER: Some
of the buildings lasted right through four
or five phases of castle's occupation. It wasn't that it was destroyed,
rebuilt, destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed, rebuilt. Parts of
it were destroyed and rebuilt, you see. And so it came and went just
as we might take our greenhouse away or we might add a bit
to the back of the house. Now, I'm not going to say that
we think we've got the answers right in all cases. I'm sure we haven't. But what I do like to think is
that if boulder into boulder, whoever it was who owned the
castle at the time, came back, he'd recognize it. You see, he wouldn't say
it's a load of rubbish. He'd say, oh yes, that
looks like our castle. I'm sure we got some
of the details wrong. But I think, in general,
we let it right. LEONARD NIMOY: Through
the years of excavation, Barker's team reconstructed
an ancient timber castle. They determined what it had
been and when it had existed. But the soil could not
reveal all the answers. Before Stonehenge,
there was Woodhenge. The ancient tribes
of Southern England built this mysterious altar
during the Bronze Age, more than 1,000 years
before fashioning their timeless monument
of giant stones. Though it holds many
secrets, the very existence of Woodhenge just 3
miles from Stonehenge proves that the English often
built with timber before stone. [music playing] The advent of English
timber castles can probably be traced to the
events of October 14th 1066, about 5 o'clock that afternoon. As the sun drifted beyond
the western horizon, a Norman arrow found
the eye of Harold, the last Anglo-Saxon
king of England. Harold's death was the beginning
of Norman rule in England, and the first dawn of an
empire that still exists today. [music playing] At the
Battle of Hastings, the Saxons fought on foot
with archaic axes and shields, while the Normans used
cavalry, lances, and crossbows. The invaders were led
by the Duke of Normandy, William the Bastard by
birth, William the Conqueror to history. Armed with a papal decree
naming him rightful heir to the English throne, along
with the most advanced army the world had ever seen, William
conquered England that October day. And on Christmas, he was crowned
King William I in Westminster Abbey. [music playing] Very quickly, the Normans
set about defending their conquered island. In a land teeming with oak,
they built timber fortresses atop mounds of earth
surrounded by palisades and imposing ramparts,
motte-and-bailey type castles. One enduring
mystery is where did this motte-and-bailey
design originate. JOHN KENYON: We
still don't really know to how the castle and the
motte-and-bailey originated. It seemed to be probably
in the France area. That's in the 10th
century, early 11th. It has been argued that the
sole Normans didn't build mottes till they came to this country. That isn't generally accepted. PHILIP BARKER: There's a bit
of difficulty about this. We're not quite sure. It's been disputed for some
time whether in fact it was created in Normandy or in
other parts of Northwest Europe and brought to England
after the Norman conquest. [music playing] LEONARD NIMOY: The most
vexing piece of evidence is found in the La Tapisserie
de la Reine Mathilde, the Bayeux Tapestry. This expansive
11th century quilt tells the story of William's
conquest of England and it suggests that the
Normans were building mottes in Normandy before the conquest. BRIAN DAVIDSON: It was designed,
embroidered, probably 10, 15 years after the conquest. Got to remember, it's
a bit of propaganda. It's not an objective
documentary account, the conquest. So I would be very reluctant
to say that the Normans really knew all about motte-and-bailey
build castles at least two years before the conquest
just because they turn up on a tapestry made 10
years after conquest. And one thing's for
sure, if they didn't know about motte-and-bailey
castles, they surely went building them
all over Normandy. They were evolving
their castle building during the actual
years of conquest. Within about five years
from 1066 onwards, they had devised a sort of
castle which none of them had built anywhere else before. Motte-and-bailey castle was
a product of the process of conquering England. LEONARD NIMOY: What is safely
deduced in the evolution of the motte-and-bailey castle
is that the bailey came first. BRIAN DAVIDSON: At the
time of the conquest, a motte isn't much used to. Normans have put their
emphasis, they put their money into their cavalry,
extensively armored knights on expensively trained horses
which must be protected. So the first thing you've got to
put up at the time of conquest is protective horse corrals. Those are the first castles. Simple enclosures within which
a knight can get off his horse and take off his chain
battle in safety. Two or three years after
that, they are absolutely the fashion. They're being built everywhere. Anyone who's got the money
and the license from the king will do it. Then they've got to happen. LEONARD NIMOY: In a land of more
than a million Anglo-Saxons, King William relied on
just a few thousand Normans to rule the country. He did so by embracing the
existing Saxon feudal system of land ownership. But he installed his
own lords and vassals. In theory, all of
England belong to king. He retained a
portion for himself but divided the remainder among
his most important followers. They, in turn, kept the
portion for themselves then parceled out remainders
to their loyal followers. This process often sifted
through three or four stages. The parcel of land was known as
the fife, the donor of the land was the lord, and the
recipient, the vassal. Within this hierarchy, William
I consolidated his claim to all of England and
defended it by giving land based on military service. It, therefore, transpired
that the first English lords after 1066 were the
knights of the conquest. [music playing] PHILIP BARKER: As the Normans
took over the various manors and lands in England and
on the edge of Wales, they built castles
to hold them down. And we believe, we're pretty
certain that our castle at Montgomery was built
about 1070 or 1071, which is within four years
of the conquest, you see. LEONARD NIMOY: Before
1066, Montgomery in Wales did not exist, only the
river severance snaking through an idyllic valley on
the border of England and Wales. It was beautiful,
rich farm country. But it was also an
ancient route of invasion. Fearing Welsh marauders, William
needed to secure the border. PHILIP BARKER: In about
1070, the Welsh border was divided into three
more or less equal areas and given to three of William
the Conqueror's henchmen. And the man who was given the
central portion that is most made earl of Shrewsbury was a
man called Roger de Montgomery, who came from Montgomery in the
Calvados region of Normandy. BRIAN DAVIDSON: Roger Montgomery
was one of the young men who hitched his wagon, as
you like, to the new duke and with one of the group of
perhaps a dozen young men who fought their way into
power a generation before the conquest of England. So when Duke William
came to England, Roger Montgomery came with
him as one of his most trusted friends. LEONARD NIMOY:
Roger de Montgomery was given the important task
of securing the Welsh border, and in doing so, became the
most powerful man in County Shropshire. BRIAN DAVIDSON: When he
comes to the Welsh borders, he builds, amongst other
castles, one earth and timber castle to command a
fort across the seventh where Welsh raiders might come. Something reminds him
of his birthplace, and he gives that castle
the name of Montgomery. LEONARD NIMOY: Montgomery was
one of several timber castles built by Roger de Montgomery,
the earl of Shrewsbury, and one of many on
the Welsh border. As the Normans
entrenched, the Welsh became more belligerent
and Normans' security was threatened. ng] 20 years after he was
crowned King of England, William the Conqueror decided to
survey the wealth of his realm in detail. He wanted to know how many
lords and vassals, peasants and serfs, were living on
his land, how bountiful were his farms, how rich were
his forests, how plentiful his livestock and gain. William did this
for one reason-- taxation. [music playing] For a year, the king's
agents combed the shires of England counting sheep
and sheaves of wheat, recording every
whisker of wealth in abbreviated Latin
on a giant ledger. When the king's counters
arrived in a new town, residents said the day
of judgment had arrived. And so it came to pass. The king's ledger was
named the Domesday Book. [ominous music] MAN: So very narrowly did
he have it investigated, but there was no single
hide, nor yard of land, nor indeed one ox, no one
cow, no one pig which is dare left out and not put
down in his record. Anglo-Saxon chronicles. LEONARD NIMOY: Among other
details in the massive tax records of 1086, Domesday
counted the whereabouts of many Norman
castles in England. There was the White
Tower of London, the ancient hill Fort called
Old Sarum on the Salisury Plain, and imposing earthworks known
as British Camp near Great Malvern. In Staffordshire, there was
this small timber castle with a growing
community around it. And on the Welsh border,
the Castle of Montgomery. In 1086, the timber
castle at Montgomery was a fortified community of
Norman soldiers and villagers who lived very sparse
and rugged lives. PHILIP BARKER: They
were highly intelligent and may have been very
appreciative of things which we can't possibly dig up. We don't know anything
about their poetry or music. They may have in the
evenings after the hunt sang to the lute or some
other similar instrument. They may have recited poetry. We have to be careful
not to see them as nasty, brutish and short. I don't think that's
necessarily the case at all. I think they lived an
outdoor life, very tough. They spent their time hunting. A lot and they were
hunting the wild boar, by the way, not the deer. There were a lot
of wild boar bones. I don't think it was a
sheltered, comfortable life at all. They were just very hardy,
especially on the Welsh border. And they were always
liable to be attacked. They were right out on the edge. LEONARD NIMOY: The hostility of
the Welsh was understandable. Norman invaders had seized their
land so the Welsh fought back. They were fearless warriors
skilled in guerrilla tactics and their threat remained
constant for centuries. PHILIP BARKER: They
raided Hen Domen, and in 1095, they
killed the garrison but they didn't occupy it. They went off again. They just killed the garrison
and went back into the hills. That was the nature
of their warfare. LEONARD NIMOY: Evidence
of the Welsh attack on Hen Domen appeared in
the Anglo-Saxon chronicles. These writings also
detailed many other attacks on other castles. JOHN KENYON: We have lots of
evidence of castles being taken by the Welsh from the
Normans in the 12th century, the 13th century,
being recaptured by the Normans and rebuilt.
Some of them being thoroughly destroyed within a few years. In the north, which has always
been the great stronghold of the Welsh princes, they
pushed the Normans out and North Wales remained
virtually independent of the English crown until
the Edwardian conquests of the 1270s and 1280ss. And so centuries after,
the Battle of Hastings. BRIAN DAVIDSON: The
average attack on a castle would last a few days
probably, not much more. Serious attack might involve
fire if the timber work wasn't adequately protected. If you couldn't set
fire at the place, you would probably have
a go at the main gates for the battering ram, which
is why gate houses become some of the most imposing
structures in castles, whether they're timber
castles or stone castles. They're the weakest point
in the castle defenses, but they're also the threshold
where you enter the lord's domain. LEONARD NIMOY: The
natural consequence of attacks on timber castles was
the improvements of defenses. This often included making a
timber castle look like a stone castle. BRIAN DAVIDSON: In the times
when these castles were going concerns, say, 11th,
12th, early 13th century, you didn't see any earthen. You were lucky if
you saw timber. These are timber structures. The earth is used to infill
them and give them solidity, which a stone wall would have
but a timber wall doesn't. Now, timber has a couple of
disadvantages as a building material. It rots if the rain gets at it. And you can set fire to it
if you want to attack it. So what do you do to
prevent that happening? You coat it. And if you walk around, most
English villages and towns, still today, you can find
timber-framed houses which are coated over with
plaster to protect them. And I reckon that
virtually all the timber work in so-called earthwork
castles was plastered over. I've a feeling that Norman lords
had different sort of castles for different purposes. But it didn't really
matter so much to them what they were made of. They made them of what
they had available. It a stone available,
they were stone. If there isn't,
they'll use timber but they'll disguise
it to look like stone. There was an awful
lot of disguising. LEONARD NIMOY: Disguising timber
castles to look like stone had two vital purposes. The first was
military, to create the look of an impregnable
fortification and deter attack. The second was more social,
relating to the image of wealth and power a lord
hope to project. The proliferation
of timber castles was a phenomenon in Northern
England, but at the same time, other events were shaping the
future of the modern world. By the year 1100, the
colonization of Polynesia had begun as South
American sailors explored the pristine waters
of the South Pacific. In 1103, the first
fireworks appeared in China. And in 1137, the high clerics
of the Holy Roman Empire began building St.
Stephen's Cathedral in the heart of Vienna. [music playing] By the year 1200,
the Normans were building majestically bigger,
if not better, timber castles. Many were imposing structures
build for the vital purpose of defense. But these castles also served
to project the image of wealth and power of the
lord who owned them. And they became prominent
extensions of the noble ego in middle age society. This meant every
medieval lord faced the daunting social specter of
keeping up with the Joneses. BRIAN DAVIDSON: The
castle-building Normans are the wealthiest,
most powerful 200 people in the country. They are concerned
with grandeur, they are concerned with style,
they are immensely competitive. Not just military competitive,
they are socially competitive. They are using their
houses as platforms to display their power,
exercise their power. They're using them
as springboards to acquire more power. So a castle, in a sense,
is just a protective shell around a very grand house. That's what the Norman barons
are really interested in. Not constant fighting, they
want to live very comfortably in great style, in
very impressive houses, inside their defenses. So in a way, we ought to get
too concerned with the outward shell just because that's
what have survived. We've got to keep looking
inwards towards the houses inside and the people
in those houses. LEONARD NIMOY: The
social structure within the limited
realm of a timber castle is not easy to determine. But through archaeology,
some clues remain. The first and most
prominent bits of evidence are found in the
surviving earthworks. From aerial photographs,
archaeologists can readily identify the basic plan of
a motte-and-bailey castle. Most revealing are the contours
of the land showing where deep ditches and high
banks had once been. These, combined with
archaeological findings, give a good picture of
the landscape of the time. [music playing] The earthworks of Stafford
Castle provide a good example. Located to the north of present
day Birmingham in England, Stafford offers archaeologists
and historians a good chance to study the social hierarchy
within a timber castle. Until recently, little
was known about Stafford, other than the fact that it had
a crumbling 19th century manor house on top of its motte. In the 1980s, a small portion
of the site was excavated. [music playing] JOHN KENYON: Stafford
is an important castle. It's just outside the
modern town of Stafford. We're not too
certain what happened on the top of the motte because
that got replaced in, I think, the 14th century by a stone
tower which was later developed into a sort of country house,
I think, in the 19th century. Well, enough was excavated for a
whole series of reconstructions to be made. A lot of it must be hypothetical
because only a small sections of the castle were excavated. Some of the excavations
give some idea of what the defenses
were like in one area and how the town and the
village and the castle fit into the local settlement. LEONARD NIMOY: The diggers
learned that Stafford had once been a massive timber community,
containing an enormous mark and at least three baileys. The innermost bailey housed
the most important people to the lord-- his bishop, his
lieutenants, cooks, wards, and stable attendants. The middle bailey was larger. It housed the craftsmen
of the community, including highly-skilled
carpenters who were paid to build the timber castles. The outer bailey was
the largest of the three comprising the village. It housed peasants and
serfs who were typically forced to build the castles and
work in the farms and forests around the community. Seen together and in context
with a medieval town, the entire structure delineated
the upper, middle, and lower classes of this pocket society. What the excavation of
Stafford could not determine was how these people had dawned
their wooden homes inside and out. Had they carved figures
upon the wooden beams? Did they make elaborate
windows of stained glass? The evidence suggests they did. It is also known that these
timber structures were not considered temporary housing
by their inhabitants. They were built to
last hundreds of years, but still, their
days were numbered. PHILIP BARKER: It's a mistake
to think of timber as being a temporary method
of construction. It is clear that
they thought of them as permanent within their
lifetimes or within them two or three lifetimes. But there is no doubt about it
that stone is more permanent and more prestigious. BRIAN DAVIDSON: There's
a constant interplay between timber and stone. Even where somebody has decided
that he's going to put up a stone castle right
from the start, he's got to have a secure
perimeter where he organizes the supplies coming in, the
stone being dumped, cut, foundations dug. Now, that will take place
behind temporary defenses. There's temporary defenses where
almost certainly being of earth and timber. So even if you're
building a stone castle, you start your stone
castle on day two. But day one, you spend putting
up your temporary defenses almost certainly
in timber motte. So even stone castles have got
that very short lived timber stage. And there were huge numbers
of stone castles in England where all the residential
buildings were made of timber. LEONARD NIMOY: Stafford
was no exception. It didn't take the
excavators long to determine that the
wooden keep upon Stafford's giant motte had been
replaced with a stone keep as early as the 1300s. It was a pattern that became
familiar throughout the English countryside as lords and barons
began to build more impressive castles of stone. For roughly 250 years, the
majestic castles of England evolved from towers of
timber to pillars of stone. It was an evolutionary
period that began with William the
Conqueror, who built a timber fort to top a small motte at
the Battle of Hastings in 1066. And it ended metaphorically
with the reign of Edward II, the ninth Norman king of England
who died a horrible death in 1327 in the dungeon of
Berkeley Castle, a castle built with timber then
rebuilt with stone. Somehow, Edward's
gruesome demise is symbolic of what happened
to all the lost timber castles of England. They couldn't fight fire. [music playing] As a building material, oak
was perfect for timber castles. It was abundant in the
forests of England. Easy to cut when green, pliable
to work, and solid as stone with age. It was handsome when
polished, watertight when maintained, but for all its
inherent beauty and strength, oak was fatally flawed. Ultimately, it was fire or
the fear of fire that failed the timber castles of England. Some actually
burned down, others were abandoned, left to rot, and
many were refitted with stone. By the 1300s, few,
if any, Norman lords were building new
timber castles. The noble structures
at Montgomery in Wales are good examples of the
transition from timber to stone. Sometime in the mid to late
1200s, the lord of Montgomery decided to build a new castle. He chose a better
site on a bigger hill and built a majestic
castle completely of stone. JOHN KENYON: The new Montgomery
castle was built from 1223 to about 1330 that
established a major new stone castle on the ridge
above us, above the town. The surprising thing
was at the castle at Hen Domen, which we thought
would have been totally superseded and abandoned,
there was enough evidence from the archaeology to
show that it continued for another two or
three generations. And it may have been kept up
simply because it did command this fort to overlook this
crossing point which couldn't be seen by the new
castle on the hill above. So it was almost like an advance
outpost to the new castle. LEONARD NIMOY: Successive lords
maintained the first castle at Montgomery for
nearly 250 years. But by the middle of the
1300s, the old timbers sites were abandoned and forgotten. All that remained was the
motte-and-bailey which people began to call Hen Domen,
meaning, the old mound. Other motte-and-bailey
sites were also abandoned. Northeast of Montgomery, there
remains the motte-and-bailey of Pulverbatch, a classic timber
castle from the Middle Ages. BRIAN DAVIDSON: It survived
well, Castle Pulverbatch. Partly because of the
stickiness, if you like, the earth, which was used to
infill presumably the timber castings. And also because it's been less
subjected to cowing and modern degradation. This gives us a much better idea
of what these castles looked like. What we've got to do is add
in our minds, our imagination, the palisades. Pulverbatch is a very nice
site, very instructive. Field archaeologists' dream. LEONARD NIMOY: Other
modern bailey castles grew out of the timber roots. [music playing] PHILIP BARKER: A lot of
motte-and-bailey castles retain their earthworks right
down to the present day. I mean, the most spectacular is
Windsor Castle, which has got a massive motte and terrific
baileys as you know, where they've all been
rebuilt in stone, you see. And there are a lot
of stone castles which retain the
motte-and-bailey type. Berkeley Castle is a good
example of the castle which has gone from the transition
of earth and timber to masonry. We know that it was a
motte-and-bailey castle because the mound
itself has been totally encased by a masonry
curtain wall, totally burying,
encapsulating this mound. Its main claim to fame is
of course, where Edward II, when he was overthrown
by his wife and her lover and where he died and 1327. He was imprisoned at Berkeley
and was killed there. He was said to have a
red-hot poker inserted at one end of it, a
rather gruesome way to go. LEONARD NIMOY:
Some timber castles ceased to be councils at
all, like Ludgershall Castle just north of
Salisbury in Wiltshire. It became a favorite hunting
lodge for King John I, signer of the Magna Carta in 1215. He replaced the wooden
timbers with walls of stone. By the end of the Middle
Ages, England's timber castles had all but disappeared. But the style of castle
architecture they introduced remained fundamentally the
same, motte-and-bailey. Ludlow Castle is
a classic example. JOHN KENYON: That's one of
the finest castles you'll find anywhere in the British Isles. It seems to be masonry
from the start. The normal work seems to
be later, 11th century. It seems had begun as a
stone castle with mural tars. And on the rare
example of a secular Norman nave, the chapel
inside the inner ward. So we see masonry. There, we see
phasing dating really from the late 11th century right
through to the 16th and 17th century, a long chronology,
a very important site indeed. LEONARD NIMOY: Inside these
ancient castles which survived from the timber age,
one might expect to find clues about the
people who live there. But too often, the most
meaningful human evidence has vanished. BRIAN DAVIDSON: You go
to many stone castles, they have an image like a
crab shell on the beach. You walk the beach, you
find the crab shell, and it was complete, except of
the animal that lived inside that made it live,
move, it's gone. It's softened, it's rotted. Now, with a castle, you may
stand outside, its walls appeared complete,
the towers are there, even the battlements may
survive on the top of the walls. You go inside, the family that
lived there was there anymore. All that heart of
the castle is gone. LEONARD NIMOY:
Stafford is typical. Even though the timber keep was
modernized with a massive stone structure, the communities still
drifted away from the hilltop sometime in the 1400s. It remained strategically
important, but socially, it ceased to serve any human
purpose once its timber dwellings were abandoned. The same occurred in
places like Montgomery. Castle denizens eventually left
the safety of the earthworks and formed communities
that comprised the cities of modern England. Same can't be said
of timber castles where nothing but mottes,
ditches and baileys remain. BRIAN DAVIDSON: Probably
the most enduring mystery is where did the people all go? Having putting that
prodigious effort to build a castle
in the first place, having maintained it as a
family home and military base and center administration and
justice for several years, perhaps. They came a day when
they closed the doors, walked away, and left it. LEONARD NIMOY: Oddly
enough, the people who left the castles did
not leave their communities. The best proof of this is
in the familiar relationship between church and castle. For every Norman castle
built in the Middle Ages, there existed a Norman
church or cathedral. The tiles are still on the
roof, the stained glass is still in the windows, and the statues
remain in the great halls which are used today just as they
were hundreds of years ago. But walk 50 yards the other way,
and there is the ancient castle which has been nothing
but a ruin for 500 years. BRIAN DAVIDSON: These ruins
tell you that the world changed, that some enormous
tide of history went out and left these military
work stranded like whales above the water line. That, in a way, is the mystery. It's the most evocative
part of any castle, whether it's a stone castle
which still gives a great clear impression of what it
was like in its grandeur, or whether it's
earthwork castle where you have to work much harder
to visualize the grandeur. They were the family homes
of their Norman lords, and it's trying to pick up
the feeling of family use, standing there in the
metal grub ditches, trying to hear the voices of the
Norman owners and their wives and families, for me
is the real mystery. [music playing] LEONARD NIMOY: While
archaeologists and historians continue to ponder these
timeless questions, modern civilization is content
to put some ancient timber castles to contemporary use. Several miles south of
Montgomery in Wales, there is a centuries old modern
bailey that had been converted to a golf course. Where a wooden tower
once stood on the motte, there is now an
elevated golf tee. And upon the generous
bailey where medieval people used to live, there
are two potting greens. Little could the Norman
lords of the Middle Ages know that their imposing
fortifications would become platforms for modern recreation. [music playing] Lost, beneath it all,
is the human record. The inhabitants of so
many timber castles left us so few clues about
the way they lived and died. But at least we know where they
live and what they lived in. The timbers may be gone, the
mottes eroded, the bailey plowed, the ditches field,
but the romantic history of England's lost
timber castles will linger so long as the sun keeps
rising on the British empire. [music playing]
