The Great Tower, Dover Castle

WHETHER the Norman Conquest of England was, as maintained by those notable authorities W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman in 1066 And All That, ‘a good thing’ has been much debated by scholars.

- Henry II

What’s not in doubt is that the Normans introduced the castle, a monument type that, in its purest medieval definition as a fortified noble residence, was unknown to the Saxon kingdom.

Within 100 years of the Conquest, according to R. Allen Brown, the great historian of the Norman period, castles ‘stood thick in every county’. In the haste to erect motte-and-bailey castles as quickly as possible, the towers were made of earth and timber,