ABSTRACT
Such fortifications were centres of resistance designed 'to shelter all the folk'. A good deal more controversial is the question: did the Saxons have private fortresses? Ordericus Vitalis, the chronicler, was quite clear in his own mind on this one. He described how King William traversed the country 'for the fortresses which the Gauls call castella (castles) had been very few in the English provinces' and he attributed the failure of the English in withstanding the Normans to their lack of castles.
