Great hall
A great hall is the main room of a royal palace, nobleman's castle or a large manor house or hall house in the Middle Ages, continued to be built in the country houses of the 16th and early 17th centuries, although by the family used the great chamber for eating and relaxing. At that time the word "great" meant big, had not acquired its modern connotations of excellence. In the medieval period the room would have been referred to as the "hall", unless the building had a secondary hall, but the term "great hall" has been predominant for surviving rooms of this type for several centuries, to distinguish them from the different type of hall found in post-medieval houses. Great halls were found in France and Scotland, but similar rooms were found in some other European countries. A typical great hall was a rectangular room between one and a half and three times as long as it was wide, higher than it was wide, it was entered through a screens passage at one end, had windows on one of the long sides including a large bay window.
There was a minstrels' gallery above the screens passage. At the other end of the hall was the dais where the high table was situated; the lord's family's more private rooms lay beyond the dais end of the hall, the kitchen and pantry were on the opposite side of the screens passage. Royal and noble residences had few living rooms until late in the Middle Ages, a great hall was a multifunctional room, it was used for receiving guests and it was the place where the household would dine together, including the lord of the house, his gentleman attendants and at least some of the servants. At night some members of the household might sleep on the floor of the great hall; the hall would have had a central hearth, with the smoke rising through the hall to a vent in the roof. The hearth was used for heating and for some of the cooking, although for larger structures a medieval kitchen would customarily lie on a lower level for the bulk of cooking; the fireplace would have an elaborate overmantel with stone or wood carvings or plasterwork which might contain coats of arms, heraldic mottoes, caryatids or other adornment.
In the upper halls of French manor houses, the fireplaces were very large and elaborate. The great hall had the most beautiful decorations in it, as well as on the window frame mouldings on the outer wall. Many French manor houses have beautifully decorated external window frames on the large mullioned windows that light the hall; this decoration marked the window as belonging to the lord's private hall. It was. In Scotland, six common furnishings were present in the sixteenth century hall: the high table and principal seat. In western France, the early manor houses were centered on a central ground-floor hall; the hall reserved for the lord and his high-ranking guests was moved up to the first-floor level. This was called upper hall. In some of the larger three-storey manor houses, the upper hall was as high as second storey roof; the smaller ground-floor hall or salle basse remained but was for receiving guests of any social order. It is common to find these two halls superimposed, one on top of the other, in larger manor houses in Normandy and Brittany.
Access from the ground-floor hall to the upper hall was via an external staircase tower. The upper hall contained the lord's bedroom and living quarters off one end; the great hall would have an early listening device system, allowing conversations to be heard in the lord's bedroom above. In Scotland these devices are called a laird's lug. In many French manor houses there are small peep-holes from which the lord could observe what was happening in the hall; this type of hidden peep-hole is called a judas in French. Many great halls survive. Two large surviving royal halls are Westminster Hall and the Vladislav Hall in Prague Castle. Penshurst Place in Kent, England has a little altered 14th century example. Surviving 16th and early 17th century specimens in England and Scotland are numerous, for example those at Longleat, Burghley House, Bodysgallen Hall, Muchalls Castle and Crathes Castle; the greater centralization of power in royal hands meant that men of good social standing were less inclined to enter the service of a lord to obtain his protection, the size of the inner household shrank.
As the social gap between master and servant grew, the family retreated to the 1st floor, to private rooms. In fact, servants were not allowed to use the same staircases as nobles to access the great hall of larger castles in early times; the other living rooms in country houses became more numerous and important, by the late 17th century the halls of many new houses were vestibules, passed through to get to somewhere else, but not lived in. Other great halls like that at Bank Hall in Lancashire were downsized to create two rooms; the domestic model applied to Collegiate institutions du
William II of England
William II, the third son of William the Conqueror, was King of England from 1087 until 1100, with powers over Normandy, influence in Scotland. He was less successful in extending control into Wales. William is known as William Rufus because of his ruddy appearance or, more due to having red hair as a child that grew out in life. William was a figure of complex temperament, capable of both flamboyance, he did not marry, nor did he father any offspring, which has led to speculations of possible homosexuality by historians. He died under circumstances that remain unclear. Circumstantial evidence in the behaviour of those around him raise strong, but unproven, suspicions of murder, his younger brother Henry I hurriedly succeeded him as king. Barlow says he was "A rumbustious, devil-may-care soldier, without natural dignity or social graces, with no cultivated tastes and little show of conventional religious piety or morality—indeed, according to his critics, addicted to every kind of vice lust and sodomy."
On the other hand, he was a wise ruler and victorious general. Barlow finds that, "His chivalrous achievements were all too obvious, he had maintained good order and satisfactory justice in England and restored good peace to Normandy. He had extended Anglo-Norman rule in Wales, brought Scotland under his lordship, recovered Maine, kept up the pressure on the Vexin." William's exact date of birth is not known, but it was some time between the years 1056 and 1060. He was the third of four sons born to William the Conqueror and Matilda of Flanders, the eldest being Robert Curthose, the second Richard, the youngest Henry. William succeeded to the throne of England on his father's death in 1087, but Robert inherited Normandy. Richard had died around 1075 while hunting in the New Forest. William had six sisters; the existence of sisters Adeliza and Matilda is not certain, but four sisters are more securely attested: Adela, who married the Count of Blois Cecily, who became a nun Agatha, who died unmarried Constance, who married the Duke of Brittany.
Records indicate strained relations between the three surviving sons of William I. William's contemporary, chronicler Orderic Vitalis, wrote about an incident that took place at L'Aigle in Normandy in 1077 or 1078: William and Henry, having grown bored with casting dice, decided to make mischief by emptying a chamber pot onto their brother Robert from an upper gallery, thus infuriating and shaming him. A brawl broke out, their father had to intercede to restore order. According to William of Malmesbury, writing in the 12th century, William Rufus was "well set; the division of William the Conqueror's lands into two parts presented a dilemma for those nobles who held land on both sides of the English Channel. Since the younger William and his brother Robert were natural rivals, these nobles worried that they could not hope to please both of their lords, thus ran the risk of losing the favour of one ruler or the other, or both; the only solution, as they saw it, was to unite Normandy once more under one ruler.
The pursuit of this aim led them to revolt against William in favour of Robert in the Rebellion of 1088, under the leadership of the powerful Bishop Odo of Bayeux, a half-brother of William the Conqueror. As Robert failed to appear in England to rally his supporters, William won the support of the English with silver and promises of better government, defeated the rebellion, thus securing his authority. In 1091 he invaded Normandy, crushing Robert's forces and forcing him to cede a portion of his lands; the two made up their differences and William agreed to help Robert recover lands lost to France, notably Maine. This plan was abandoned, but William continued to pursue a ferociously warlike defence of his French possessions and interests to the end of his life, exemplified by his response to the attempt by Elias de la Flèche, Count of Maine, to take Le Mans in 1099. William Rufus was thus secure in what was the most powerful kingdom in Europe, given the contemporary eclipse of the Salian emperors.
As in Normandy, his bishops and abbots were bound to him by feudal obligations. The king's personal power, through an effective and loyal chancery, penetrated to the local level to an extent unmatched in France; the king's administration and law unified the realm, rendering him impervious to papal condemnation. In 1097 he commenced the original Westminster Hall, which when completed in 1099 was the largest hall in Europe, built "to impress his subjects with the power and majesty of his authority". Less than two years after becoming king, William II lost his father William I's adviser and confidant, the Italian-Norman Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury. After Lanfranc's death in 1089, the king delayed appointing a new archbishop for many years, appropriating ecclesiastical revenues in the interim. In panic, owing to serious illness in 1093, William nominated as archbishop another Norman-Italian, Anselm – considered the greatest theologian of his generation – but this led to a long period of animosity between Church and State, Anselm being a stronger supporter of the Gregorian reforms in the Church than Lanfranc.
William and Anselm disagreed on a range of ecclesiastica
Pembroke, Pembrokeshire
Pembroke was the establishing county town of Pembrokeshire in Wales. Pembroke still features a number of town walls and complexes, it is a community and one of the larger towns in the county with a population of 7,552. Pembroke Castle was the birthplace of Henry Tudor to become Henry VII of England; the town and county derive their names from the Cantref of Penfro: Pen = "head" or "end", bro = "region", "country", "land", interpreted to mean either "Land's End" or "headland". Pembroke Castle, the substantial remains of a stone medieval fortress founded by the Normans in 1093, stands at the Western tip of the peninsular surrounded by water on three sides; the castle was the seat of the powerful Earls of Pembroke and the birthplace of King Henry VII of England. Gerald de Windsor was the first recorded Constable of Pembroke. Pembroke town and castle and its surroundings are linked with the early Christian church. Following the final extension of the Castle about 1254 the town was extended and defensive perimeter walls erected around the edge of the town.
The walls survive on their medieval foundations. A great many of the town's original medieval burgage plots survive and are divided by early stone walls that are of significant national importance. Monkton Priory, sited on a hill across the river from the castle, founded in 1098 by Arnulf de Montgomery and granted by him to the Benedictine order, has early foundations and retains much of the Norman walls of the nave; the choir and sanctuary were renovated in the 19th Century. Monkton Hall, close by the Priory church, is regarded as the oldest domestic building in Pembrokeshire and Wales and is thought to have been the guesthouse for visitors to the Priory; the first stone building in the town was a defensive tower, now known as the Medieval Chapel, at 69a Main Street, built on a cliff edge between 950 AD and 1000 AD. There are the remains of a great hall to the north and filled-in arched cellars; the building was thought to have been used as an early church as the layout is the same as St. Govan's Chapel and was used by John Wesley in 1764 to preach Methodism.
In 1866 it became the brewery for the York Tavern, Oliver Cromwell's headquarters at the end of the Siege of Pembroke during the English Civil War. The town's main bridge across the River Pembroke, which acts as a dam and constrains the millpond; the first bridge was constructed to house a tide mill granted to the Knight's Templar in 1199. The last mill building was destroyed by fire in 1956. On both banks of the Pembroke River to the west of the castle are many remains of early activities; the North Shore Quarries are complete as are the remains of medieval and Elizabethan slipways where wooden vessels were built before the industrial dockyard and admiralty town was built on the grid pattern of Pembroke Dock. There is a early complete graving dock in what was Hancock's Yard. At Pennar Flats there was an early submarine base used for experiments in submarine warfare. Three of the houses on the foreshore, part of the shipyard before the Admiralty Dock Yard was built, are still standing but are altered.
The ferry port of Pembroke Dock is 3 miles to the northwest of Pembroke. It was established in 1814. Pembroke town stands on the South Pembrokeshire limestone peninsula by the estuary of the River Cleddau, flanked on all sides by woodland and arable farmland; the town is 8 miles south of the county town of Haverfordwest. The town is centred on Main Street, the only street, inside the original Pembroke town walls. Outside the walls, residential estates have been built to the north towards Pembroke Dock, to the east towards Lamphey, to the south. To the west of the town lies the village of Monkton, included as part of the community of Pembroke. At the 2001 census, the community had a population of 7,214; the conurbation of Pembroke Dock and Pembroke has a combined population of 15,890 and as such is one of the major population centres of West Wales. The community of Pembroke covers an area of 4.58 square miles and includes the Pembroke St Mary North, St Mary South, St Michael and Monkton wards. The community has its own town council.
For 2013–14, the Mayor is Councillor K Nicholas and the Deputy Lord Mayor is Councillor A Carey. The four wards comprising Pembroke community each elect one councillor to Pembrokeshire County Council. Pembroke was part of the historic county of Pembrokeshire, abolished in 1974, reconstituted as a unitary authority when local government in Wales was reorganised in 1996. Between 1974 and 1996, Pembroke was part of the South Pembrokeshire district of Dyfed. Pembroke is part of the Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire National Assembly for Wales constituency and UK Parliamentary constituency; the local Assembly Member is Angela Burns of the Conservative Party and the local Member of Parliament is Simon Hart a Conservative. Primary and pre-school education in Pembroke is served by two state schools. In Pembroke town, Golden Grove CP School is a dual stream school established in 2002 following the amalgamation of Golden Manor Infants School and Grove Junior School. In Monkton, pupils can attend Monkton Priory CP School.
Secondary education is provided by Pembroke School, a mixed 11–18 comprehensive school of 1,600 pupils with a sixth form of about 200. The school was formed in 1972 as a result of the amalgamation of the former grammar school and secondary modern school; the school takes pupils from the Pembroke family of schools, which as well as Golden Grove and Monkton Priory includes community primary schools in Lamphey, Orielto
Siltstone
Siltstone is a sedimentary rock which has a grain size in the silt range, finer than sandstone and coarser than claystones. Siltstone is a clastic sedimentary rock; as its name implies, it is composed of silt sized particles, defined as grains 2–62 µm or 4 to 8 on the Krumbein phi scale. Siltstones differ from sandstones due to their smaller pores and higher propensity for containing a significant clay fraction. Although mistaken as a shale, siltstone lacks the fissility and laminations which are typical of shale. Siltstones may contain concretions. Unless the siltstone is shaly, stratification is to be obscure and it tends to weather at oblique angles unrelated to bedding. Mudstone or shale are rocks that contain mud, material that has a range of silt and clay. Siltstone is differentiated by having a majority silt, not clay. Cosmetic palette—made exclusively out of siltstone with a few exceptions Folk, R. L. 1965, Petrology of sedimentary rocks PDF version. Austin: Hemphill’s Bookstore. 2nd ed. 1981, ISBN 0-914696-14-9 Williams, Francis J. Turner and Charles M. Gilbert, 1954, Petrography, W. H. Freeman
Defensive wall
A defensive wall is a fortification used to protect a city, town or other settlement from potential aggressors. In ancient to modern times, they were used to enclose settlements; these are referred to as city walls or town walls, although there were walls, such as the Great Wall of China, Walls of Benin, Hadrian's Wall, Anastasian Wall, the Cyclopean Wall Rajgir and the metaphorical Atlantic Wall, which extended far beyond the borders of a city and were used to enclose regions or mark territorial boundaries. In mountainous terrain, defensive walls such as letzis were used in combination with castles to seal valleys from potential attack. Beyond their defensive utility, many walls had important symbolic functions – representing the status and independence of the communities they embraced. Existing ancient walls are always masonry structures, although brick and timber-built variants are known. Depending on the topography of the area surrounding the city or the settlement the wall is intended to protect, elements of the terrain such as rivers or coastlines may be incorporated in order to make the wall more effective.
Walls may only be crossed by entering the appropriate city gate and are supplemented with towers. The practice of building these massive walls, though having its origins in prehistory, was refined during the rise of city-states, energetic wall-building continued into the medieval period and beyond in certain parts of Europe. Simpler defensive walls of earth or stone, thrown up around hillforts, early castles and the like, tend to be referred to as ramparts or banks. From early history to modern times, walls have been a near necessity for every city. Uruk in ancient Sumer is one of the world's oldest known walled cities. Before that, the proto-city of Jericho in the West Bank in Palestine had a wall surrounding it as early as the 8th millennium BC; the Assyrians deployed large labour forces to build new palaces and defensive walls. Some settlements in the Indus Valley Civilization were fortified. By about 3500 BC, hundreds of small farming villages dotted the Indus floodplain. Many of these settlements had planned streets.
The stone and mud brick houses of Kot Diji were clustered behind massive stone flood dykes and defensive walls, for neighboring communities quarreled about the control of prime agricultural land. Mundigak in present-day south-east Afghanistan has defensive walls and square bastions of sun dried bricks. Babylon was one of the most famous cities of the ancient world as a result of the building program of Nebuchadnezzar, who expanded the walls and built the Ishtar Gate. Exceptions were few, but neither ancient Sparta nor ancient Rome had walls for a long time, choosing to rely on their militaries for defense instead; these fortifications were simple constructions of wood and earth, which were replaced by mixed constructions of stones piled on top of each other without mortar. In Central Europe, the Celts built large fortified settlements which the Romans called oppida, whose walls seem influenced by those built in the Mediterranean; the fortifications were continuously improved. In ancient Greece, large stone walls had been built in Mycenaean Greece, such as the ancient site of Mycenae.
In classical era Greece, the city of Athens built a long set of parallel stone walls called the Long Walls that reached their guarded seaport at Piraeus. Large rammed earth walls were built in ancient China since the Shang Dynasty, as the capital at ancient Ao had enormous walls built in this fashion. Although stone walls were built in China during the Warring States, mass conversion to stone architecture did not begin in earnest until the Tang Dynasty. Sections of the Great Wall had been built prior to the Qin Dynasty and subsequently connected and fortified during the Qin dynasty, although its present form was an engineering feat and remodeling of the Ming Dynasty; the large walls of Pingyao serve as one example. The walls of the Forbidden City in Beijing were established in the early 15th century by the Yongle Emperor; the Romans fortified their cities with mortar-bound stone walls. Among these are the extant Aurelian Walls of Rome and the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople, together with partial remains elsewhere.
These are city gates, like the Porta Nigra in Trier or Newport Arch in Lincoln. Apart from these, the early Middle Ages saw the creation of some towns built around castles; these cities were only protected by simple stone walls and more by a combination of both walls and ditches. From the 12th century AD hundreds of settlements of all sizes were founded all across Europe, which often obtained the right of fortification soon afterwards; the founding of urban centers was an important means of territorial expansion and many cities in central and eastern Europe, were founded for this purpose during the period of Eastern settlement. These cities are easy to recognise due to their regular layout and large market spaces; the fortifications of these settlements were continuously improved to reflect the current level of military development. During the Renaissance era, the Venetians raised great walls around cities threatened by the Ottoman Empire. Examples include the walled cities of Nicosia and Famagusta in Cyprus and the fortifications of Candia and Chania in Crete, which still stand.
At its simplest, a defensive wall consists of its gates. For the most part, the top of the walls were accessible, with the outside of the walls ha
Outer bailey
An outer bailey or outer ward is the defended outer enclosure of a castle. It protects the inner bailey and contains those ancillary buildings used for the management of the castle or the supply of its occupants; these domestic buildings could include livestock stalls and stables. In many cases there was a brewery, a bakehouse and a kitchen, if the latter was not located in the hall or palas. An outer bailey was called a base court in England. Depending on topography it could be referred to as a lower bailey or lower ward, the keep being in the upper bailey or ward. Chepstow Castle has lower and upper baileys; the domestic buildings of the continental schloss a stately home or palace, may be referred to as an outer ward. These contained a carriage house or a cavalier house, buildings that were not common in medieval castles. Large castles have more than one bailey. At some larger castles, markets were held in the outer bailey. Outer baileys were enclosed and protected by a ring wall and separated from the actual living area of the castle – the inner ward and keep – by a moat, a wall and a gate.
In lowland castles, the outer bailey is arranged in a half-moon shape around the main castle. In the case of hill castles, the topographic features of the terrain had to be taken account of, with the result that the outer bailey was slightly lower than the inner ward, hence the alternative names of "lower bailey" or "lower ward". Rudelsburg Castle in Saxony-Anhalt is one of the rare cases of a hill castle where both baileys are at the same level. In many cases the main entrance to the inner living quarters led through the outer bailey, which thus formed a kind of defensive buffer and also served as refuge for the villagers who lived outside the castle walls; this explains why the castle chapel was found in the bailey: it served as the parish church for the commoners. Bailey Inner bailey Motte and bailey Horst Wolfgang Böhme, Reinhard Friedrich, Barbara Schock-Werner: Dictionary of castles and fortresses. Reclam, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-15-010547-1, page 255-256. Friedrich-Wilhelm Krahe: Castles and tower houses of the German Middle Ages.
Volume 1 Thorbecke, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-7995-0104-5, page 53-55. Otto Piper: Burgenkunde. Reprint of the edition of 1912. Weltbild, Augsburg 1994, ISBN 3-89350-554-7, pp. 10–11
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