THE SITE IN RELATION TO THE CASTLE
(1) Chepstow Castle was commenced in 1067 and still served a military purpose into the 1690s. It is thus one of the very few castles which illustrate features from all periods of castle building as such, it is an asset too little appreciated in Wales, where castles either more spectacular or with greater historical associations are legion. The importance of Chepstow Castle lies, by comparison, in its continuous military and administrative use throughout six centuries, and the fact that its excellence of situation and evolving design meant that, right up to its bombardment by parliamentary cannon in 1648, it never yielded to force when its garrison had a mind to resist. Quite simply, before the advent of gunpowder, it was impregnable. This was certainly appreciated by all who used and maintained it, and, to the present day, the sharing of this appreciation of its qualities is what gives this splendid castle its special academic, architectural and archaeological value. Anything which detracts from this appreciation decreases the castle’s worth and degrades it to the status of a Disneyland Sideshow for casual tourists.
(1.1) The prime purpose of the cantle was to protect the passaged across the Wye from Gloucestershire into Wales. Smaller castles at St. Briavels and Monmouth served the same purpose but were of lesser importance, given the difficulties of military movements in the hilly areas around them. Chepstow, by contrast, float sea-going vessels, and the easy communications along the northern bank of the Severn. Under its protection, the town throve and was eventually protected with a wall which, as we now see it, dates from the late thirteenth century. The foundations for a slighter wall, or barricade, joining this wall to the counterscarp of the castle’s western barbican, can easily be traced across the valley of the Castle Dell (cf 1, previous section). Defensively, to that extent, the castle and town wall were one, and it is for this reason that the castle ‘faces both ways’, in itself an uncommon feature. The huge ‘Marten’s Tower’ and the twin towers of the eastern gateway guard the Wye and its bridge, whilst the southwest tower and gatehouse of the western barbican make a formidable defense against attack from the Welsh interior – along the ‘Welsh Street’, in fact. It is this guarded the navigable section of a river able to western defensive aspect which concerns us in relation to the site for the proposed school.
(2) By happy accident, the castle is relatively un¬cluttered by development close to it. Thus it is possible to view it much as it was on the completion of its baileys and towers. Its eastern aspect dominates the surrounding open area, including the nearby builders’ supply yard (Lydney & Chepstow Trading Company), making it possible for visitor and student alike to grasp and appreciate the strength of its position and the withering fire which could be unleashed from its walls and embrasures. This would not be so easy if development had crept towards it from the late seventeenth century onwards, causing the walls of the castle to appear to view only after one had made one’s way towards it through a screen of houses. They would stand as they do now, but why they were necessarily built to such a height or what an archer, shooting from their crenellations, could reasonably expect to hit would be obscured, save to a very small public who had made a study of fortifications and who, mentally, could strip away the development. This would diminish the castle’s worth. It could never be argued that such a national monument should be maintained for the benefit of a handful of specialists, capable of undertaking such a mental exercise. Far better is it that the east front of the castle stands exposed to rouse the imagination and inspire in the beholder the thoughts which lead to the questions ‘Why?’, ‘flow?’, ‘What for?’ and so forth, the very basis of learning. As it happens, apart from the removal of a small barbican and the filling of a shallow pond to the rear of ‘The Three Tuns Inn’, the area before the castle’s east front remains much as it did in 1690, so all is well. This essential openness of the castle’s surrounding environment must be preserved for the proper appreciation of the structure itself.
(2.1) At present, all is well in front of the west barbican, which consists of a tower at the southwestern angle of the curtain wall, a short stretch of wall running roughly north to a fortified gateway, and the remainder of the curtain curving back eastwards along the cliffs above the Wye. In front of these walls and the gate, a dry moat is cut through the rock. Originally, this was crossed by a drawbridge from the gateway, and the remains of the masonry footings for this bridge, when lowered, can be seen on the counterscarp of the moat, which forms the boundary to the proposed school site. The site is currently, of course, an open area. The embrasures of the wall, and the gatehouse and tower themselves, rise above the level of this open space and are clearly visible from (the) Welsh Street (cf 1.ii, this section). In the seventeenth century, the castellated tors of both gatehouse and tower were removed, the better to take cannon. Their original state added something in the region of 2m to their height, perhaps slightly more, and it is important to understand why this height was considered so desirable that construction was undertaken on this scale.
(3) The barbican dates from the period 1225 – 1245, and the gatehouse itself from 1270 – 1300. The dates are significant. This was the period of the generally weak and inconsistent rule of Henry III (1216 – 1272), an automatic increase in turbulence amongst his barons (including the rise of Simon de Montfort, parliaments, sporadic civil warfare) and, not unnaturally, an adventurous stirring of the .Welsh princes who delighted in the preoccupations of the English. The Welsh movement culminated in the rise of Prince Llewelyn who, by late 1271, had taken Brecon, nullified Caerphilly, all but isolated Cardiff, and seemed ready to push through Glamorgan and sweep the Anglo-Normans into the Bristol Channel. This was the background to the building of the west barbican at Chepstow. To Earl Roger Bigod III, then holding Chepstow castle, the possibility of hostile Welsh marching from the Usk valley along the line of the present B4235 road, and thus directly into Welsh Street, must have been seen as more likely than not.
(3.1) So what could he do about it? Not a great deal, without a royal army at his back, but he knew that, should the Welsh seek to raid into England, they could not leave a ‘hostile’ Chepstow castle to rip up their communications and send out its troops to attack them in the rear, guerrilla-style, in numberless debilitating and demoralising skirmishes. Thus, if they came, the Welsh would have to take Chepstow castle. A battle-hardened Bigod could conceive ways to make this rather difficult, and he built accordingly, adding a town wall to Chepstow whilst he was so engaged. (The monks at Tintern were probably obliged to do without their masons until he had finished.) The west barbican is the result.
(3.2) What use was the barbican to the defence of the castle? For a start, it added another layer of walls, gateways and ditches, over which an attacking army would’ have to fight. More to the point, though, the high wall and even higher towers could prevent an enemy’s coming close to the walls in the first place. How might this be done? Quite simply, this was achieved by the use of archery and catapults.
(3.3) The longbow was perfected in Wales. An Act of 1542 forbids a man to practice closer to a target than 220 yards. In the hands of a skilled archer, it was lethally accurate at 300 yards or more. He could let lose 12 aimed shafts a minute. Around the western barbican, there are twelve embrasures from which archers could fire accurately into Welsh Street, and beyond, at roughly 150 arrows a minute, each shaft capable of piercing an inch of oak at such a range. An attacker had means of advancing in the face of such fire-power (mantels, sows, saps) but they were slow, cumbersome and susceptible to fire-arrows. Nor could one dig through rock, very close to the surface in this area.
(3.4) Catapults were a science in themselves, but a useful anti-personnel weapon in this class was the springald, essentially a descendant of the torsion-powered Roman cheiroballista. It required two or three men to work it, but they could achieve a firing rate of better than four shots a minute, projecting a heavy dart or bolt over a distance of at least 600 yards, again with aimed accuracy. Employment of a springald by the defense was apt to keep the enemy commander and his staff at a good distance from their own front line, with appropriate effects on the efficiency and morale of the PBI suffering the arrow storm. The barbican tower and gatehouse could have mounted at least one springald apiece. We know Chepstow was so equipped because, after the Welsh rising of 1294/5, the castle received four new ones. They were paid for in 1298! Master Reginald, the ‘engineer’ in charge of them, quite probably drilled his men in their use by firing them from the gatehouse against targets on The Mount, whence the darts would have been easily retrievable.
(3.5) By these means, an attacker would have been kept at a distance and his advance have been made very costly in lives and morale. Two things were necessary for the employment of these weapons, viz., the height to position them where they overlooked the ground, the use of which they were to deny an attacker, and an unobstructed field’ of fire. Thus the tall towers and curtain walls at the east and west fronts of Chepstow castle were essential to achieve the first necessity, and the open ground was the second essential. Both, happily, survive at present.
(4) But what if this open ground were to be interfered with, its contours altered, parts of it covered with buildings? Nothing would happen to the castle, it is true, but would not this result in the situation envisaged in paragraph 2. above? In a case such as this, to detract from a part is to diminish the whole. The scholar or specialist look around, through and or over a school on the proposed Welsh Street site and still view the barbican as it was, using his superior knowledge to provide its proper context. A layman could not do this. He would see a school, added to in course of time, on umpteen different levels, with laid-out tarmac areas, a playing field, fences galore (of necessity, on a cliff-edge site) and, in time, odd sheds and outbuildings run up as they were considered necessary. Possibly a huge library would tower on the slope alongside the school. Somewhere behind all this would be the remains of an old castle, about as much in its context as a farm implement in a museum’s glass case. For the layman, these remains would no longer be able to tell their story. They would mean nothing to him, and nor, perhaps, would others elsewhere as a result. His appreciation would be impoverished, his interest in preserving tangible history would remain basically dormant. This would be to no-one’s benefit.
(4.1) Nor is this fantastic speculation. The levelled areas of the school site will approach to within 61m of the castle, the buildings themselves to within 124m, about half the distance at which competent archery was required.
(4.2) This, quite simply, is too close. Even a bow-shot’s space would be preferable, space in which to view the castle and space in which a defender’s view could be appreciated, looking from the castle itself. The buildings• of the school will all lie within that bow-shot, 154m at their furthest point. They will obscure half the present view of the barbican from Welsh Street and, unless they are of very low profile and very neutral colour, they will dominate the old stonework erected for the express purpose of dominating this area. The context will be ruined and a national monument cheapened. And where it must be asked, will the projected library go; what will that look like?
(4.3) This site should ideally be kept open as a leisure area. At worst, it would be better to cover it with a roughly graded car park than to impose upon it a building to the detriment of the castle. Given its many other unsuitability’s for the purpose, this site should be abandoned as a place for a school, or any building, and another sought. In this way, 900 years of castle may still be appreciated in correct context 900 years hence.