Osprey - General Military - Knight - The Warrior and ... - Brego-weard

through a powerful symbol of military might and conspicuous consumption, reminding
him how small he was and how great, wealthy and powerful the man he had come to
bother with his request. Those entering the great tower at the castle of Hedingham in
Essex had this experience. Built by the first Earl of Oxford around 1140, it comprised
three stories: a basement, a lower hall which was the main entrance, and a high-
ceilinged upper hall topped with a gallery looking down into it and out over the
courtyard. There are no indications of domestic chambers, such as a pantry, sleeping
quarters or kitchens, and thus it seems to have served a solely ceremonial lunction. The
visitor climbed a staircase to the ornate doorway, and entered the lower chamber,
where perhaps one of the earl's officials, who had control of the door to the upper
room, would have waited to meet him. The staircase that those permitted access would
have climbed was angled so that as they did so the earl, seated next to the large
fireplace, would have steadily come into view, always above the visitor and bathed in
light from the large windows in the gallery above. The gallery would also have allowed
the members of the earl 's household and family to watch these ceremonial occasions,
the witnessing of such events being as important as the events themselves.
Just as not all castles were small and simple defensive strongholds, nor were all castles
only administrative offices and projections of power. They were also aristocratic
residences, the homes of the social elite, who needed places to sleep and eat and areas for
personal privacy. Within the enceinte of the castle wall would have been a wide variety
of domestic buildings: pantries, kitchens and bake houses, stables, lodgings for guests and
the members of the household, dovecots, cisterns and well-rooms for the water supply.
There was a clear distinction between the public space and the private. Initially the
camera, the lord's chamber, containing his private rooms, was likely to be a separate
building entirely, connected to the aula, the hall, by a passage or merely a covered
walk. By the middle of the 13th century, however, it was far more common to see
the two rooms as part of the same building. At the lower end of the hall were the main
entrance and the service rooms — the kitchens, cellar and jperue (the dispensary, which
held the tableware and linen) — these screened off Irom the hall itself by wooden
panelling. The camera was at the upper end of the hall, with access for the lord
and his famiLia. The main chamber of these private rooms was the jolar. It derived its
name not from the Latin jol for the sun, despite the lact that many of these rooms,
particularly in the 14th century, had large windows, but from the word deul or alone'.
It was a withdrawing room where the lord, his family and honoured guests might
retire away from the communal and public area of the great hall.
The grander the castle, the more complex would be the juxtaposition and layout ol
the administrative, ceremonial and private spaces. Royal castles like Portchester Castle
might even have a separate range with the apartments for the royal household's visits.