As They Weren't

In every country of Europe you will find the ruins of ancient monuments. Perhaps the most attractive type of ruin is the ruined castle. We see a miscellaneous clump of stones in a field and imagine the glamorous world of their former owners. One reason people give for preferring radio to television is that the pictures are better. The same applies to ruined castles. A modern fortress might be interesting but a ruined fortress from a time our problems do not live in has an imaginative power that something complete and contemporary can never possess.

The people who run the ruined castles know the true nature of their appeal. They are always keen to tell the stories of the noble families who owned the castles and provide pictures of what the ruin once looked like. What they will never tell you however is a sad but important truth. Many ruined castles are nothing of the sort. They are not ruined. They were built that way. There were many good reasons for doing this.

Say you were a nobleman with a land holding. You would want a castle to live in so you could express your status and defend yourself and your territory. Right? Not necessarily. If you had a title the other nobles would already know you were a nobleman and your tenants would still be your tenants whether you lived in a castle or a shed. Furthermore you would not wish to be seen to be richer and more powerful than the monarch who was always trying to raise new taxes because they did not have enough money to live on. Robin Hood survived well enough in the forest when his lands were confiscated and never ceased to be a nobleman. The wisest course of action for many nobles would be to keep a low profile and keep their wealth to themselves. They could still enjoy all its benefits when they wanted to and would still have feudal obligations. What they would not have is the constant drain on their resources that castle living would always demand.

Consider the evidence. We believe we know what ruined castles once looked like from plans, bills and eyewitness accounts. If you want to present yourself as a nobleman who has fallen on hard times and is not therefore a threat of course you would produce plans of the castle you once had. You would produce bills for its upkeep too agreed in advance with tradesmen who wished to claim they worked for a nobleman. Eyewitnesses would want to pretend they had seen something grand to enhance their tales and self-importance. Those involved in beseiging a castle would be equally keen to proclaim its great strength and the enormous odds they overcame to do what they did. Everyone has a vested interest in declaring that there was once a mighty castle where a sad ruin now stands. What they cannot do however is demonstrate where the missing stone went. If it is not lying around it must have been taken away and used. If you had part of a castle in your house you would shout it from the rooftops and charge more when you wanted to sell the house. If no one can identify where the extra bits of the castle went it is highly probable that they were never there in the first place.

Kenilworth is an example. A mediaeval castle which once entertained Queen Elizabeth I. Subsequently made uninhabitable by Cromwellian troops during the English Civil War and left to decay. Oh yeah? Queen Elizabeth I made Royal Progresses all round her country in order to bankrupt the nobles who had to entertain her. You would not cease to be noble if you had a title and land but lived in a house not big enough to entertain a queen. Why not scupper the place before she came and tell generations who were not living then that anti-royalists were responsible? Of course Kenilworth had a recorded existence before Elizabeth I and once held King Edward II as a prisoner. Really? As if his captors were ever going to tell you where they really kept such a prisoner! There were issues of national security then just as there are now.

Nobles stayed noble by keeping their money. They also stayed noble by performing military service in flesh and stone. The best way to do both? Build a ruined castle. They had fulfilled their military obligation without having to pay for it more than once. They could keep their revenues and avoid any onerous duties. They could enhance their reputations without doing anything and create picturesque landscapes to attract more paying guests onto their lands. Then they would prepare their descendants for their ultimate destiny as senior local government officers. Look at how they get their jobs and at all the civic schemes which are doomed to fail as soon as they are begun and you will see exactly what I mean.