Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHATTER III THE NORMAN PERIOD Norman Gates and Masonry?Domesday Survey of York? Domesday Account and the Defences?Xorman Military Enginecrs at York; Nigel Fossart, Landric the Carpenter, Odo Balistarius?The City Diteh?The King’s Ways by Land and Water?Castle Mounds?The King’s Fool: the Royal Fishpond of Fosse; its Norman origin; Gardens and Water Mills devastated; early Custodians of the Fishpond; its bounds; its site obliterated; the Mersks, void plots near the Pool; Lcirfordbridge; subsequent History of the Fishpond?York occupied by the Normans?William Kufus repairs the Castle?King Stephen in York?Battle of the Standard?Stephen’s weak Administration? Adulterine
Castles; Whcldrake and Drax Castles suppressed.
How oft in Dust Ihc hapless Town halh lain ? How oft Us walls have chaiig'ii / hoic oft its men ? How oft the Rage of Sword and Fire has inourii’d /
AFTER the many battles and sieges with which York was associated, both before and at the Conquest, its venerable walls must necessarily have been in a shattered, if not in a ruinous, condition. What defences, other than the castles, the Normans executed at York, it is very difficult to decide. In an inspection of the present city walls, through their having undergone so many repairs and patchings, it cannot be accurately stated that they exhibit any masonry attributable to the Normans. Nor can we expect to find any Norman walling left; for the city ditches were widened, and theramparts made higher, at a subsequent date. What mural defences there were then, on the embankments, would be either removed or buried in the execution of the new work. The only stonework that may, with any degree of certainty, be assigned to this period is the older work in the basements of Bootham and Micklegate Bars. With…