Pre hacked defend your castle series#

As the chronicler, Orderic Vitalis explained, 'The fortifications that the Normans called castles were scarcely known in the English provinces, and so the English вЂ“ in spite of their courage and love of fighting вЂ“ could put up only a weak resistance to their enemies.' Over the next 150 years, the Normans covered the country with them, and built around 1,000 in England and Wales.В Castles were something quite new in England. Even before the battle, William the Conqueror built a castle at Hastings, near his landing place. The Norman victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 marked the beginning of the age of the castle in England. Examples of these 'fortresses of the folk' include Lydford Saxon Town and Daws Castle.

Pre hacked defend your castle series#

But from the late 9th century King Alfred and his successors constructed a series of 'burhs' to defend their people from the Vikings. The Anglo-Saxons themselves were not great fortress builders. With thick stone walls often reinforced by projecting towers, they were intended to beat off the Saxon sea-raiders who eventually overwhelmed Roman Britain. From the end of the 3rd century a chain of powerful new-style 'Saxon Shore' forts were built along the south and east coasts, including Pevensey Castle, Portchester Castle and Richborough Roman Fort. You can still see the remains of these at Silchester Roman Town Walls and Roman Wall, St Albans. Many Roman towns were also surrounded by ditches, and later stone walls. Studded with milecastles and turrets, the Wall was backed up by sixteen strong forts, including Birdoswald, Chesters and Housesteads Roman Forts. The best place to see Roman forts is along spectacular Hadrian's Wall, the 73-mile long northern frontier of Roman Britain. The Roman garrisons would have assailed attackers with arrows and javelins, or even mechanical catapults and stone-throwing 'engines'.

Though sometimes built - like Hardknott Roman Fort - in very isolated places, they were always linked by roads.Д®arlier forts were defended by turf and timber ramparts, ditches and wooden towers, although from the 2nd century AD many were rebuilt in stone. Whether large or small, they generally followed a similar playing-card design, with an entrance on each side and a headquarters building at the centre.

They ranged from big 'fortresses' like Chester and York, the permanent bases of a legion, to the much more numerous forts manned by 1,000 or 500 'auxiliaries'. English Heritage cares for eleven of them. There were more Roman forts in Britain than in almost any other part of the Empire. Disciplined and well-armed, the Romans eventually defeated the Britons, and they built forts and fortresses all over the country to provide secure accommodation for their troops. Julius Caesar raided Britain in 55 and 54 BC, but the full-scale Roman conquest of the island didnвЂ™t begin until AD 43. These were demarcated by ditches and ramparts, and thereвЂ™s evidence that they were centres of government, industry and craft specialisation. Around that time larger defended settlements called oppida were being created in lowland areas, including Lexden Earthworks (Colchester) and Stanwick Iron Age Fortifications in North Yorkshire. Most hillforts had been abandoned by 100BC. Their strategic sites were sometimes re-used for fortresses of later periods, as at Beeston Castle and Old Sarum. Sited in dominant positions, hillforts also proclaimed the prestige of the prehistoric people who raised them. Formidable ramparts, ditches, wooden palisades and well-guarded entrances would have made them difficult to attack. ItвЂ™s also likely that they were used as refuges in times of conflict, and there is evidence that life in a hillfort wasnвЂ™t wholly peaceful - hoards of sling-stones have been found at Blackbury Camp, and 20,000 pebbles were found near one of the entrances to Maiden Castle. They provided spaces for people to live, trade and celebrate. They were places to protect grain, cattle and treasure. Hillforts had a wide range of uses, and defence was just one of them. These usually had a single circuit of ramparts, but by around 400BC some hillforts - like spectacular Maiden Castle and Old Oswestry - were being strengthened with multiple rings of defences. The earliest forts were probably built around 900BC, with many constructed between 800 and 700BC. There are over 1200 hillforts in England, and English Heritage cares for six of them. In many parts of the country, hillforts are among the most enduring features of our landscape.