Welsh Journals

Bronze Age burial-the ring cairn-and this is present in Glamorgan. The final two sections deal with standing stones and cooking mounds. The latter are familiar in the archaeology of Ireland (as filacht fiadh) and the Northern Isles. There they appear to span a great period of time as probably do the Glamorgan examples. This volume brings together the well-known, but it also shows the way in which the achaeologist is opening up new aspects of prehistory. ERIC TALBOT Glasgow ENGLISH CASTLES. By R. Allen Brown. 3rd ed., Batsford, 1976. Pp. 240. £ 6.95. This is the third edition of a book published in 1954 and revised in 1962. Like its predecessors, it provides an excellent general survey, introducing the reader not only to the problems of the castle's architectural development, but also to those of its construction and its role in medieval society, both at peace and at war. The first half of the book has, however, been almost completely rewritten to take account of new work on the continental origins of the castle and on the Norman and Angevin periods. As Professor Brown admits, intensive work in progress on castle studies means that some of his comments and conclusions can only be very provisional. Nevertheless, so much has been achieved already that this new summary is extremely welcome, especially as the author has taken a great deal of trouble to incorporate new material. His conclusions are, however, very often conservative ones: the motte and bailey, for example, was French in origin and was the normal type of castle from the earliest days of the Conquest. Professor Brown may be thought at times to over-simplify the arguments: that the motte existed in Normandy before 1066 does not prove that it was the normal type of fortification there. The praiseworthy and stimulating attempt to place the castle's origins in a general historical context can raise anxieties. For historians, the author's by now well-known views on feudalism may seem over-general. Both socially and architecturally the retreat behind ramparts was a more subtle one than the process described here. The book can give the unfortunate impression that the castle appeared ex nihilo. Interestingly, both the crucial Dou6-la- Fontaine and the enceinte at Le Plessis-Grimoult developed easily out of previously unfortified sites, while there is good literary evidence for the addition of towers to palaces at Laon and Compiègne during the tenth century. Continental scholarship hardly receives its due on this subject. It is also debatable whether "Bastard feudalism" may seem remarkably like the real thing' (p. 128). In contrast to the freshness of the revised initial three chapters, the sections on the castle from c. 1200 now seem rather conventional and des- criptive. One wishes, for example, that the same kind of comparisons which the author makes between Chepstow and Langeais could be done for, say, Caerphilly and the north Welsh castles. This is not, however, the author's fault; that the material at present in print seems deficient only serves to emphasise the increasing sharpness of enquiry.