Note 420 — Chapter VII · FROM THE ELECTION OF EADWARD TO THE BANISHMENT OF GODWINE.[1] 1042–1051. (continued 3)

I shall have to speak of this destruction of castles in Normandy when I come to deal with the reign of William in that country. This is the real cause why Normandy contains so few castles earlier than the twelfth century. I can see no reason whatever to believe that the castles of the eleventh century, either in Normandy or in England, were commonly of wood. The temporary wooden towers which were often used in the military art of the time, and which sometimes are called castles, are also sometimes pointedly distinguished from the permanent stone fortresses. Thus in the Angevin Chronicle in Labbé, i. 286, 287, we read how in 1025 Count Odo of Chartres (see vol. i. p. 509, and in the next chapter) besieged the castle which Fulk of Anjou had built as an ἐπιτειχισμός against Tours (contra civitatem Turonicam firmaverat), and “turrem ligneam miræ altitudinis super domgionem ipsius castri erexit.” The donjon itself was surely of stone. We shall find other evidence of the same kind in the next Chapter. Stone was also fast coming into use for domestic as well as for military and ecclesiastical buildings. Avesgaud, Bishop of Le Mans, rebuilt in stone both the episcopal palace and also a hospital; before him they had been of wood—“quæ antea ligneæ fuerat, petrinas ... constituit.” Gest. Ep. Cenom. ap. Mabillon, Vetera Analecta, iii. 300*.