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Shell keep

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An aerial photograph of Windsor Castle, with three walled areas clearly visible, stretching left to right. Straight roads stretch away in the bottom right of the photograph, and a built-up urban area can be seen outside the castle on the left.
An aerial view of Windsor Castle: with its shell keep (called "The Round Tower") prominent on its motte inside the middle ward (middle baily).

A shell keep is a style of medieval fortification, best described as a stone structure circling the top of a motte.

In English castle morphology, shell keeps are perceived as the successors to motte-and-bailey castles, with the wooden fence around the top of the motte replaced by a stone wall. Castle engineers during the Norman period did not trust the motte to support the enormous weight of a stone keep. A common solution was to replace the palisade with a stone wall then build wooden buildings backing onto the inside of the wall. This construction was lighter than a keep and prevented the walls from being undermined, meaning they could be thinner and lighter.

A gazetteer compiled by archaeologist Robert Higham counted 21 shell keeps in England and Wales.[1] Examples include the Round Tower at Windsor Castle[2][3] and the majority were built in the 11th and 12th centuries.[4]

Surviving English examples of shell keeps include:

Arundel, West Sussex (re-modelled post-medieval)

Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire

Carisbrooke, Isle of Wight

Castle Acre, Norfolk (shell keep around an inner tower)

Clare, Suffolk (part of motte wall only)

Fotheringhay, Northamptonshire (demolished - motte only survives)

Launceston, Cornwall

Lewes, East Sussex, - two shell keeps on same site? One survives

Lincoln, Lincolnshire - two shell keeps on same site? One survives

Oxford, Oxfordshire

Pickering, North Yorkshire

Restormel, Cornwall (excellent example)

Tamworth, Staffordshire

Tonbridge, Kent (foundations on motte only)

Totnes, Devon

Trematon, Cornwall

Warwick, shell demolished and incorporated into bailey wall post-medieval

Windsor, Berkshire (re-modelled post-medieval)

Wiston (Wales)

In addition Farnham and Berkeley castles have stone enclosed mottes which may be interpreted as shell keep variations. At other sites such as Durham, Warkworth, Clifford's Tower (York) and Sandal (Wakefield), shell keeps may have evolved into a tower proper. Clifford's Tower is often interpreted as a shell keep due to explosion damage, in 1684, which removed the roof and central supporting masonry. True shell keeps were a stone wall around the perimeter of the motte top with lean-to buildings against the outer wall and a small courtyard in the middle.

Notes

  1. ^ Higham 2016, p. 63.
  2. ^ Pettifer 2002, p. 7.
  3. ^ Darvill, Stamper & Timby 2002, p. 196.
  4. ^ Hislop 2013, p. 96.

References

  • Darvill, Timothy; Stamper, Paul; Timby, Jane (2002). England: an Oxford archaeological guide to sites from earliest times to AD 1600 (illustrated ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 196. ISBN 0-19-284101-7.
  • Higham, Robert (2016), Shell-keeps revisited: the bailey on the motte? (PDF), Castle Studies Group Open access icon
  • Hislop, Malcolm (2013). How to read castles. London: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781472521613.
  • Pettifer, Adrian (2002). English Castles: A Guide by Counties (illustrated ed.). Boydell & Brewer. p. 7. ISBN 0-85115-782-3.
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