Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

A TOWERING MISCONCEPTION? by Peter Morgan Jones When in AD 1233 Hubert de Burgh, lord of Monmouthshire's Three Castles and much else, escaped from his Devizes dungeon, the rescuers he had expected were late and so he staggered to the nearby church. Here he did not slam the door, or climb into its tower, but threw himself before its High Altar, claiming the forty days and nights of sanctuary that were his under Canon Law. It did him little good. Within minutes his former captors had dragged him back to imprisonment although Henry III, terrified by threat of excommunication, was soon forced to have Hubert reinstated. Clearly any refuge provided by the church was spiritual and not physical. Yet, in spite of this there are claims that churches, particularly their towers, were intended to offer refuge tantamount to actual physical defence, and there has arisen a belief in 'defensible church towers'. Church guides themselves are often guilty, and even Pevsner's Herefordshire states that, 'The proximity to Wales called for defences other than castles. Some church towers are so massive it is hard to believe they were not thought of as possible refuges', while Lynn H. Nelson's fine, The Nonnan Invasion of Wales makes much the same claim. Smith and Guy's Ancient Welsh Churches goes further stating of Skenfrith, 'The style (of its tower) places it in that period when the Welsh border was subject to sudden raids and attack and the villagers might have to seek refuge at any time. The walls are five feet thick and there is a massive timber bolt on the West door'. Ergo, Skenfrith tower was designed and equipped to withstand attack. But any serious examination suggests no such 'defensible' church tower exists anywhere on the Welsh March, an area where surely they should be found in some number? Along the whole blood-soaked border of Wales there is nothing faintly resembling the iron-clad doors of Malaucene in Provence, the massive crenellated towers of Les Eyzies, Dordogne, or the machicolated flanking corner turrets of Ecoyeux in Charente. These and many others like them were properly designed defensive structures possessing ability to strike back at any attacker, a defensive prime requisite. In comparison such features are totally lacking in the Welsh borderlands where neither church nor tower appears capable of offering anything but the slightest protection to those who might have sought physical refuge within. For convenience defence may be classed as being either 'active' or 'passive'. Medieval castle architecture is clearly of the former category, with everything, whether killing field, counterscarp, fosse, scarp, batter and berm designed to prevent attackers gaining, and then holding, ground at the base of its walls. That is what military architecture is all about, every crenel, arrow loop, machicolation, hourd