Vol 1: The Bluets - Lackham Countryside Centre

The Bluets 52
centre of administration in the Bramber Rape 209 ,
The Rape was an administrative division of the county of Sussex.
The six Rapes of Arundel, Bramber,, Chichester, , , Hastings, , Lewes,
and Pevensey, were the primary divisions of the county of Sussex,
intermediate between the county and Hundred. In this respect, they
were similar to the Lathes of Kent and the Ridings of Yorkshire and
Lincolnshire.
In other respects, however, they were dissimilar. Each Rape was a
castlery, centred on a castle; each was in the hands of a single tenant-inchief;
and each had
the honour court being usually held there. During the
forfeiture of the rape between 1208 and 1215, and also for a
time afterwards, the castle was in the keeping of a succession
of royal henchmen, including Rowland Bloet (recorded 1210,
1214-15), John of Monmouth (1215), and Robert le Savage
(1217). King John visited the castle in 1209, and in the
following year the castle was extensively repaired.
The Rapes also had an artificial profile, running in roughly parallel strips
between the coast and the northern boundary of the county, each
controlling one corridor of communication between London and the
Channel. The vital routes between England and Normandy were
therefore in the hands of six of the Conqueror's most trusted relatives
or lieutenants; but no one or two of them could block his way.
The Rapes were not a Norman innovation since Domesday Book itself
refers to their existence in 1066. Their characteristic features in 1086,
however, mean that they had certainly been drastically remodelled in the
intervening years, with military considerations uppermost in the minds of
those responsible for the changes, a fact emphasised by the many
references in Domesday Sussex to fragments of manors 'lost' to an
adjacent Rape since 1066. Whoever carved out the new Rapes showed a
cavalier disregard for the manorial structures of Anglo-Saxon England.
This period under the control of Roland Bluet was the only time that it
was outside the ownership of the de Braose family until the line died out
in 1324. It was William de Braose who built Bramber castle in about 1070
to defend an important port on the River Adur
209
An excellent review of the administrative unit of a rape is to be found at
http://domesdaybook.net/helpfiles/hs1070.htm,