By 1300, a region often referred to as the March of Wales had been created between England and the Principality of Wales. This March consisted of some forty castle-centred lordships extending along the Anglo-Welsh border and also across southern Wales. It took shape over more than two centuries, between the Norman conquest of England (1066) and the English conquest of Wales (1283), and is mentioned in Magna Carta (1215). It was a highly distinctive part of the political geography of Britain for much of the Middle Ages, yet the medieval March has long vanished, and today expressions like 'the marches' are used rather vaguely to refer to the Welsh Borders.What was the medieval March of Wales? How and why was it created? The March of Wales, 1067-1300: A Borderland of Medieval Britain provides comprehensible and concise answers to such questions. With the aid of maps, a list of key dates and source material such as the writings of Gerald of Wales (c.1146-1223), this book also places the March in the context of current academic debates on the frontiers, peoples and countries of the medieval British Isles.
In 1277 Edward I gathered a huge army and marched into Wales to subdue the rebel Welsh princes. A key part of his strategy was to erect a castle wherever his army rested. This title takes a detailed look at the design, development and principles of defence of these Welsh castles, documenting daily life within their walls and the historical events that took place around them. Focusing on key sites, it highlights the varied castle designs ranging from fortifications based on French models to the defences inspired by Constantinople, and is illustrated with eight pages of full-colour illustrations and cutaway artwork.
England, Scotland, and Wales together possess one of the largest and most impressive collections of castles anywhere in the world. Their names--Kenilworth, Edinburgh, Bodiam, Stirling, Tintagel--conjure images of romance, battles and intrigue. Trace each stage of the castles' development from Norman times through Plantagenet and Edwardian expansion, including their role in strengthening the coastline during the Tudor age, the appalling devastation suffered in the Civil War, and the gradual decay of the castle--and its renaissance.
When her family goes into hiding from the fascist Arrow-Cross, she is torn from the "castle" of intimacies shared with her adored and adoring older brother and plunged into a world of incomprehensible deprivation, separation, and loss. Her rage, and her ability to feel devastating sorrow and still to insist on life, will reach every reader at the core.
Presents original maps, plans and archive illustrations alongside hundreds of photographs, showing ruins and surviving castles in their glory. This work includes descriptions of hundreds of special buildings, from remote ruins in isolated settings to imposing piles in towns and cities.
Newbery Honor author of Ella Enchanted Gail Carson Levine weaves a spellbinding tale about a clever heroine, a dragon detective, and a shape-shifting ogre. Newly arrived in the town of Two Castles, Elodie unexpectedly becomes the assistant to a brilliant dragon named Meenore, and together they solve mysteries. Their most important case concerns the town’s shape-shifting ogre, Count Jonty Um: Someone is plotting against him. Elodie must disguise herself to discover the source of the threat amid a cast of characters that includes a greedy king, a giddy princess, and a handsome cat trainer. Readers who loved Ella Enchanted and Fairest will delight in this tale of a spirited heroine who finds friendship where she least expects it and discovers that goodness and evil come in all shapes and sizes.
James of St George has a reputation as one of the most significant castle builders of the Middle Ages. His origins and early career at the heart of Europe, and his subsequent masterminding of Edward I of England's castle-building programmes in Wales and Scotland, bestow upon him an international status afforded to few other master builders retained by the English crown. The works erected under his leadership represent what many consider to be the apogée of castle development in the British Isles, and Malcolm Hislop's absorbing new study of the architecture is the most important reassessment to be published in recent times.His book explores the evolution of the Edwardian castle and James of St George's contribution to it. He gives a fascinating insight into the design, construction and organisation of such large-scale building projects, and the structural, military and domestic characters of the castles themselves. James's work on castles in the medieval duchy of Savoy is revisited, as are the native and foreign influences on the design of those he built for Edward I.Some seventy years after A.J. Taylor began his pioneering research into James of St George and his connection with Wales, the time is ripe for this revaluation of James's impact and of the extent of his influence on the architectural character of the Edwardian castle.
In the Middle Ages, the March between England and Wales was a contested, militarised frontier zone, a 'land of war'. With English kings distracted by affairs in France, English frontier lords were left on their own to organize and run lordships in the manner that was best suited to this often violent borderland. The centrepiece of the frontier society that developed was the feudal honour and its court, and in the March it survived as a functioning entity much longer than in England. However, in the twelfth century, as the growing power of the English crown threatened Marcher honours, their lords asserted their independence from the king's courts, and the March became a land where 'the king's writ did not run'. At the same time, the increased military capability of their Welsh adversaries put the Marcher lordships under enormous military and financial strain. Brock Holden describes how this unusual frontier society developed in reaction to both the challenge of the native Welsh and the power of the English kings. Through a multi-faceted examination-political, economic, social, legal, and military-of the lordships of the Central March of Wales, it examines how the 'feudal matrix' of Marcher power developed over the course of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries.