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The castles are all built from a roughly uniform plan. A massive square tower with a square turret at each of the corners that project slightly.
Each of the main faces of the castle has a flat buttress running up the centre of the wall for extra strength. The only parts that have decoration are usually the main doorway at the entrance and the chapel.
At the centre of the keep are large halls. Some keeps have a dividing wall down the middle. Access to different levels and sections of the castle are by passages and spiral staircases built into the thick walls.
In 1078, William the Conqueror ordered the construction of a huge keep at the castle in London.
Under the direction of Gundulf, a castle builder from Normandy, the tower known as the White Tower or Tower of London was built (pictured above).
The size of the castle must have been greater than any building the citizens of London would have seen before and as William may have hoped probably struck them with awe.
Although generally square in construction the White Tower has a circular turret to the north-east that has a circular staircase inside it and to the south-east there is a semicircular apse that contains a chapel.
The southern side of the castle would of had a small tower at the entrance but this has been removed and not shown in the reconstruction at present.
Colchester Castle, the second of the keep-tower castles in England, was started between 1080 and 1085, again under the direction of Gundulf. After the defence of
London had been provided for, William employed the new method of fortification where it was most needed next. The Danes had sailed up the estuaries of Essex within
striking distance of London only a few years after the Conquest. To counter this threat, a new castle was built at Colchester. The chosen site was an old
Roman fortification that still had substantial remains. The keep is larger than that at London and has walls that are 30 feet thick and foundations just as deep.
Square keeps did have their weaknesses. It was possible to undermine the corners of a square keeps to make them collapse. Enemy minors
would dig tunnels beneath the castle at the corner removing the foundations and replacing them with wooden
props. Once enough of the stone foundations were removed fires would be lit giving the miners enough time to
escape before the wooden props burnt away and the castle above collapsed. The corners were more vunerable as
the corner stones were more likely to fall outwards. To overcome these weaknesses the design of round or multi-sided polyponal
castles evolved. These are described in a later section.
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ne of the most important types of building in the time of William the Conqueror and William Rufus were the Norman keeps.
Although many were rebuilt in the following century there are many good examples still remaining. The White Tower in London (pictured left), Dover and Rochester in the south east, Newcastle, Appleby, Carlisle, Brough, Richmond in the north are all
examples of this type of castle.
Other examples include Portchester, Guilford, Goodrich, Norwich, Castle Rising, Hedingham and Colchester.
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