Behind the Castle Gate

Castles in England at the end of the Middle Ages

Matthew Johnson takes a look at castles in England at the end of the Middle Ages, to discover how they were used, what influenced the way they were built and why were they modified and who did it. Traditional studies of castles have seen them as compromises between the needs of comfort and of defence.

Military decline

They were either statements of wealth or of power or both. Johnson rejects familiar narratives of "military decline" on the one hand or "social display" on the other. Rather he encourages the reader to dig deeper into the history, architecture and physical setting of castles.

People and castles

By so doing we discover that when a castle is viewed in relation to the identities of the people who used them and lived in them a whole new vantage point is uncovered. Castles acted in part as stage-settings - as backdrops against which people played out roles of lord and servant, husband and wife, father and son, soldier and gardener, in both everyday and ceremonial contexts.
The daily raising and lowering of the gate, the passage from one courtyard to another, the views of the surrounding landscape - all this was manipulated by the architecture of the castle and the choice and modification of its landscape setting.

Changing identities of the occupants

We see how the changing identities of the occupants was reflected in radical change in the physical attributes of these castles with the transition from the medieval to the Renaissance eras. Building, rebuilding and living in a castle was every bit as complex a set of experiences as a piece of medieval art or a Renaissance play. This volume brings castles alive as well as the people who lived in, worked on and modified them.