Category Archives: Derbyshire

From the unstitched coif via Cresswell Crags towards the motte and bailey constructions of the Anarchy

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Its been a busy week and this is a bit of a different post from my usual one. As some of you are aware I’m taking part in the Unstitched coif project to stitch a 17th century coif. My first official blog on the topic is here: http://blackworkembroidery.org/2023/06/06/getting-started/ for those of you who would like to see my progress to date. Suffice to say I need to speed up. Other participants are blogging as well and its absolutely fascinating to see how one pattern can produce so many different results.

Inevitably I couldn’t help taking a dip into the history of embroidery. Tudors used brass or bronze needles – but steel needles started to be used more widely during the reign of Elizabeth I. They were a Spanish import – not something to be mentioned in the same breath as the Armada perhaps. Clearly they were expensive items. Some needles continued to be made from bone because they could be made at home – which made me think about my recent trip to Cresswell Crags and the Stone Age needle excavated there which I have included at the start of this post. It certainly makes me appreciate the relative cost of needles today and their availability. I would perhaps be taking a different approach to needlework if the instruction began – ‘first make your needle.’

And that just leaves the mottes and baileys. No, nothing to do with embroidery. I’m working my way through the history of Derbyshire having completed most of the first draft. I am now at the end of the reworked Norman section – i.e. the Anarchy between Stephen and Matilda- before handing it over to He Who Is Occasionally Obeyed for proof reading and difficult questions! I’m trying to work out what to include in the text about the Anarchy before moving into the next chapter. The difficulty lies in the fact that adulterine castles from the period often had a limited shelf life, the castle at Bakewell being a case in point. The original castle at Bolsover was a twelfth century creation of the Peveril family, not that a lot remains. (NB there is a lovely 17th century little castle!) Its possible that the castle at Pilsbury dates from the Anarchy but the evidence is inconclusive and I’ve already written about it in the context of the Norman Conquest.

My next castle stop will be a return journey to Peveril, with King Henry II in control, and then its a question of identifying suitable fortified manors for an entry in the medieval section – Codnor Castle has definite appeal being sited on a motte and bailey. Its half way between a castle and a manor and has similarities with Wingfield Manor. Codnor was held by Richard, 2nd Lord Grey and his son John who was a military commander for Edward III. Perhaps a map would help me to decide what to include as I need to have a balance of locations from around the county.

I think I need a new category – covering posts like this…what is the word that means ‘and everything else’?

Norman castles in Derbyshire…

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Peveril Castle

Peveril Castle in Castleton springs to mind as does Duffield Castle which was razed to the ground thanks to an earl of Derby rebelling against King Henry III once too often. Peveril was one of the earliest post conquest castles to be constructed but what stands to day reflects the improvements of King Henry II after the confiscated it from the Peveril family.

No one could accuse Derbyshire of having an important castle within its boundaries, which raises interesting questions about Derby as a Norman administrative centre although it did apparently have some form of early castle as its remains can be found on Speed’s map of 1610 at Cockpit Hill. It has probably got much to do with the fact that the Normans linked Derbyshire to Nottinghamshire, providing only one sheriff for the two counties. William Peveril was the castellan for Nottingham Castle as well as holding the royal forest in the Peak on the king’s behalf.

There was a fortification at Bolsover as well but today we think of the seventeenth century ‘play’ castle built by William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle rather than a motte and bailey castle designed to dominate the locals and control the area. Sir Charles Cavendish, William’s father, began to change the appearance of the old medieval castle in 1608. The so-called ‘Little Castle’ stands on the footprint of the original building.

And then there’s Codnor but that was built at the beginning of the thirteenth century while the motte at Bakewell, which looks more like a pimple on the hillside, is twelfth century dating from the Anarchy when Stephen and Matilda were taking lumps out of one another and the barony were busy turning to brigandage.

Further reading reveals that there are more Norman fortifications in the county than I first realised:

  1. Pilsbury Castle guarding the Dove Valley.
  2. It is suggested that the fortifications at Pilsbury and Hartington, at Banktop, may have been complimentary structures. All that remains at Hartington is a large mound with a flat top.
  3. Crowdecote is just down the road from Hartington and Pilsbury – there’s not much left and quite why the Normans wanted three forts to guard the crossing of the Dove and its associated trackways is another matter entirely. The manors were all in the hands of Henry de Ferrers who may have built a fortification to ensure he kept his territory. It’s also possible that they were thrown up during the troubles of the Anarchy – in which case Hartington and environs must have been rather dangerous to one’s health on occasion. Crowdecote doesn’t get a mention in Domesday but there were some Saxon pottery finds there.
  4. Camp Green at Hathersage, next to the church, was excavated during the 1970s and revealed itself to be a ringwork enclosure however lack of dating evidence means that it was unclear whether the Normans got to work with their shovels or whether earlier inhabitants of the Peak created a defensive position here. Based on analysis of many other similar sites Hodges argues it was the Normans.
  5. Harthill near Youlgrave may be a Norman construction but it’s also been argued that its Iron Age in origin. Certainly, that’s what I always understood it to be!
  6. Hassop Moss near Glossop has similar dating problems and may well be part of a rather grand hunting lodge dating from a later period.
  7. Hope had a Saxon Royal manor which seems to have been fortified.
  8. There’s another platform for a fortification at Stony Middleton on the optimistically named Castle Hill. Dating it is difficult – it could be British, Roman, or Norman and there were pot shards found there dating the for thirteenth and fourteen centuries. Interestingly the site is near to a lead mine which certainly explains the presence of the fortification.
  9. Tissington has a potential ringwork near its church but the problem is that there was rather a lot of earthwork activity during the English Civil War so its difficult to tell whether the remains are a Civil War redoubt or something olde being repurposed.

It may be the case that the Norman ringworks in the Peak District were built quickly to control some very grumpy farmers whose land had just been ‘harried’ by the Normans in the winter of 1069-1070. It has also been suggested that this was land which was agriculturally viable and needed to be protected. Not that it’s always clear who did the building or when it happened – it certainly demonstrates the importance of dating evidence.

Exciting as all this may be, Derbyshire’s castles are hardly on the same scale as the corresponding structures further north or the castles of the marches of Wales but in its turn it demonstrates that in the aftermath of the conquest matters settled themselves down and it was only during times of civil conflict that people felt the need to sling up a conical mound to perch on. There are, of course, many fortified manors in the region – some of them rather lovely, including Haddon Hall but that’s a slightly different story.

Creighton, O. H. Castles and Landscapes

Hodges, R (1980) ‘Excavations at Camp Green Hathersage (1976-77)’ Journal of the Derbyshire Archeological Society, Vol 100, pp25-34

http://www.gatehouse-gazetteer.info/home.html

Bamburgh Castle – red rose or white – its changing ownership in the aftermath of Towton.

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Bamburgh CastleBamburgh Castle perched on the edge of Budle Bay is another of the Percy castles but its history is much longer than that.  It was home to Gospatrick Earl of Northumbria at the time of the Norman Conquest.  He was eventually forced to submit to the Conqueror.  Bamburgh was handed over to the Bishop of Durham.  Sources differ as to whether it was William the Conqueror who built the first castle on the site or the bishop.  Suffice it to say that by the reign of Henry II after several changes of ownership it was in Crown hands – Henry II funded the great keep and it became a venue for a number of Plantagenet visitors.

Now is not the time to discuss the politics of the English East March or the rivalry between the Nevilles and the Percies.  Suffice it to say that Bamburgh was a Lancastrian Castle during the Wars of the Roses. Following the Battle of Towton in 1461 Bamburgh, Alnwick, Warkworth and Dunstanburgh  remained in the hands of the Lancastrians.  This meant that Edward IV was not secure from Scottish incursions or from Lancastrian forces landing along the coast.

Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick , a.k.a. The Kingmaker besieged Bamburgh and it surrendered in July 1462.  Unfortunately for the Yorkists Margaret of Anjou landed with troop in October with french mercenaries – the Yorkist garrison now promptly handed themselves and Bamburgh over to the Lancastrians. Edward IV now came north and Margaret decamped to Scotland leaving Sir Ralph Percy and Henry Beaufort (Duke of Somerset) in charge of the castle.  There was another short siege and in December the castle was once again in Yorkist hands.

Ralph Percy, the garrison commander, was allowed to swear allegiance to Edward IV. Edward wanted the Percy family on his side but by the new year Ralph had concluded that he preferred the Lancastrian cause to that of the Yorkists and the Nevilles who were, after all, long time enemies of the Percies.  In March 1463 Bamburgh was back in the hands of Margaret of Anjou.  In the North East of the country 1463 was a year of sieges and intermittent warfare orchestrated by Margaret and her Scottish allies but by the end of the year the politically savvy Scots had organised a truce with the Yorkists.

It says something that during 1462-1464 Henry VI was at Bamburgh at various times. In 1464 looked as though the Lancastrians might be on firmer ground when the Duke of Somerset changed sides once again.  John Neville, the Kingmaker’s younger brother now came north and a battle was fought at Hedgeley Moor in April 1464 followed dup by the Battle of Hexham the following month.  Neville defeated the Duke of Somerset who was captured and promptly executed. Henry VI left Bywell Castle the day after the Battle of Hexham and went into hiding in the uplands of Northumbria and Cumberland.

The Northumbrian castles that had remained Lancastrian now surrendered but Bamburgh in the hands of Sir Ralph Grey remained obdurate.  In part this was because he had been Yorkist in 1463 and having changed sides permitted the Lancastrians back into Alnwick – making this post feel rather like a game of musical castles.  The Yorkists told him that they would execute him just as soon as they could – oddly enough this did’t encourage him to surrender nor did the information that one man would be executed for every cannon ball fired at the castle –   Nine months, many canon balls and a collapsing tower later Bamburgh had no choice but to capitualte making it the first castle in England to be defeated by the power of artillery.  And it wouldn’t have surrendered even then, had Sir Ralph not been knocked senseless and his second in command taken the opportunity to surrender whilst Sir Ralph was out for the count.

The Earl of Warwick didn’t carry out his threat to execute one man per cannon ball but Grey was executed in July. After the fall of Bamburgh the Yorkists more or less controlled the whole country with the exception of Harlech Castle and a few isolated pockets.

 

 

Peter de Melbourne

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Melbourne_castle_1602Peter de Melbourne was an important part of the Lancaster affinity, serving as the MP for Derbyshire as well as being Constable of Melbourne Castle pictured at the start of this post (don’t go looking for it – there’s only a small section of wall surviving).

Peter’s parents also served in Lancaster’s household. Amy Melbourne knew Katherine Swynford and Philippa Chaucer serving as she did in Constance of Castile’s household. Like Katherine who raised her children alongside the duke’s as part of her terms of employment as the Gaunt governess there is evidence to suggest that Amy fetched her son into Gaunt’s household at an early age and as he grew was retained into the household – again in the way that Katherine Swynford did with her own son- Thomas Swynford. Amy’s links to Katherine are even more defined by the fact that when Katherine was away from her duties as governess it was Amy who stepped into her shoes and that the Duke gave them identical gifts for the care of his children on at least one occasion (Weir: 120).

 

In 1376 Peter was indentured for life to John of Gaunt at a fee of £10 per year; in earlier years it had been £5. He gained the role of Constable of Melbourne Castle as well as keeper of the park at the same time. After Amy’s death, parliamentary information reveals that he kept rents to the value of £66 per year which had formerly been his mother’s. This together with a marriage to one of Sir Simon Handseacre’s coheiresses made him a wealthy man and his fees would continue to grow with the passage of time marking his advancement in Gaunt’s household and then in the household of Henry of Bolingbroke.

In fact Melbourne went with Henry in 1392 to Prussia as part of Bolingbroke’s crusade – against the Lithuanians (it wasn’t a wildly popular event)- and from there accompanied Henry to the Holy Land – a fact which marks him out as being close to Bolingbroke who took only a small party of his closest friends and supporters with him.

Melbourne must have been increasingly concerned that his loyalty to Lancaster led him into conflict with Richard II. Bolingbroke was one of the Lords Appellant and being, apparently, a cautious man Melbourne gained a letter of pardon from the king for his support of Henry and the other Lords Appellant.

 

In 1399 it looked like a very sensible thing to have gained. John of Gaunt was dead and Henry of Bolingbroke in exile while his own son, another Henry, was  effectively hostage in Richard’s custody. Looking at the dry accounts there doesn’t seem much to tell – Melbourne appears to have jumped ship and gone over to Richard – the king confirmed Melbourne’s annuities. Melbourne went to Ireland with Richard that same summer.

 

Except of course – he hadn’t changed sides. Certainly Henry of Bolingbroke on becoming King Henry IV and locking his cousin away in Pontefract promptly granted Melbourne a fee of 100 marks a year and gave him lands in Derbyshire that had once belonged to Thomas Merke, Bishop of Carlisle and vociferous critic of the usurpation. The key to understanding the reward and what Melbourne was doing with Richard comes from recognizing the fact that Melbourne was appointed chamberlain of the household of the newly minted Prince Henry – the eldest son who’d found himself at the court of Richard. Melbourne would appear to have been caring for the Lancaster scion all along – and let’s not forget that he turns up on Henry IV’s wife’s accounts as well, as one of her two esquires. Without a doubt Peter de Melbourne was at the heart of the Lancaster household. In March 1413 when Prince Henry became King Henry V, Melbourne was rewarded by the new king for his lifelong loyal service.

 

Melbourne died in 1418.

 

Weir, Alison (2011) Katherine Swynford – The Story of John of Gaunt and his Scandalous Duchess. London:Vintage

http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1386-1421/member/melbourne-peter-1418

 

 

Pilsbury Castle, Derbyshire

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Pilsbury castle.JPGThe village of Pilsbury in Derbyshire is what experts call a “shrunken Medieval village,” to the rest of us it’s a hamlet. Pilsbury is the start of a new fascination (sorry).  Obviously Derbyshire has Peveril Castle in Hathersage and there’s Haddon Hall which may indeed rejoice in the name ‘manor’ but which looks decidedly castle-ish but where are the rest of Derbyshire’s castles?  They seem to have gone missing.  Apparently there’s a site for a castle in Bakewell but its hardly on the tourist trail. Some ten miles from Bakewell, to the north of Pilsbury along the Dove Valley lies the village of Crowdecote which may have a motte, or large man-made mound upon which to stand a castle. Unlike so many other counties in England the castles of Derbyshire appear to be transient commodities.  Not even the Earl of Shrewsbury’s castle at Sheffield survived the test of time.  So, I’ve added castle spotting to my list of peculiarities.

Pilsbury Castle, which does at least rejoice in the name ‘castle,’ lies between Crowdecote and Pilsbury.  It is inaccessible by road.  You can’t hear any traffic, just the gurgle of the River Dove as it winds around the spur of land on which the earthworks that were once a de Ferrers motte and bailey castle stand.

pilsbury castle 2.JPGThe name Pilsbury gives a clue as to how old the defensive site may be – “pil“ comes from the Celtic, ‘bury,” from the Saxon and “castle” from the Norman – and they all mean much the same thing. Whatever the name of Pilsbury may tell us the archaeology is determinedly Norman with its one wall built into a natural outcrop of rock that was once a reef and its many green banks and mounds that depict a motte and bailey castle – actually its a two bailey castle as the helpful guidance board provided by the Peak District authorities illustrates.

 

dscf2692There are several theories as to how Pilsbury came to be built in the upper Dove Valley. The first is that it came into being during the so-called ‘harrying of the North’ between 1069-1070. The idea is that the Normans having destroyed people’s homes and livelihoods found themselves in a situation where those Saxons who survived took to the hills and turned to outlawry in order to survive. If this was the case it then follows that the Norman landowners had to build defences to keep the Saxons firmly under control especially somewhere like Pilsbury which stands near a ford and a packhorse route and is in terrain ideal for fugitives. It’s not too hard to imagine the dangers of an attack in this isolated spot.

 

There is a problem with this though, as elsewhere in the country.  Hartington and the Dove Valley were in the hands of the de Ferrers’ family. It is unlikely that William the Conqueror would rampage with fire, sword and salt across lands belonging to powerful favourites as the yield from those lands would fall rather drastically as a result making their acquisition somewhat pointless. The same may be said of landholdings, notably in Yorkshire, belonging to Alan the Red for example.

 

So if that theory doesn’t appeal, how about the Normans turfing hardworking Saxons off their lands in order to create a wilderness where they could hunt. The disposed Saxons may well have taken to the hills and caves in the Dove Valley,  again turning to outlawry just to survive. Alternatively maybe the de Ferrers simply wanted to stamp their authority on their land with one of those new fangled castles just to remind the locals who was in charge or to extract “tax” as pack-horses laden with salt and other goods crossed the ford.

A further theory derives from the years of the so-called “Anarchy” when King Stephen and Empress Matilda were slogging it out to see who would rule England. The Rive Dove marks the boundary between lands belonging to the Earl of Derby and lands belonging to the Earl of Chester. Let’s just say that between 1135 and 1153 the pair were not the best of friends with the Earl of Derby backing Stephen and the Earl of Chester backing Matilda. Under those circumstances with a ford just down the valley a fortification becomes rather a sensible idea. Actually come to think of it, the two earls weren’t terribly friendly at other times in history so the castle may simply have been built as part of a neighbourly dispute.

 

The written record after its construction is somewhat vague too. Pilsbury is mentioned in the Doomsday Book but not the castle. Pilsbury is mentioned again in 1262, again the land not the castle, when the Earl of Derby, Robert de Ferrers, granted land to Henry of Shelford. Four years later the Earl of Derby was up to his neck in rebellion and his land was promptly confiscated.  By the thirteenth century the land on both sides of the river was in the hands of the Duchy of Lancaster so there was no need for a defensive structure. And that as they say, is that – though I think we can safely say that the History Jar will be sporadically peppered with images of grassy knolls and hummocks purporting to be Norman mottes.

 

So far as Pilsbury Castle is concerned, it is possible that the castle was used as a hunting lodge during later times but it ceased to be a centre of administration after Hartington received its market charter in 1203 from King John.

DSCF2700.JPG

 

Hart, C.R., 1981, The North Derbyshire Archaeological Survey to AD1500 (Derbyshire Archaeological Trust)

Millward, R. and Robinson, A., 1975, The Peak District (London: Eyre Methuen) p. 115, 121-2