ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author proposes the royal castle of Newcastle-upon-Tyne as a particular example which may be explored in some detail. It has one of the finest and best-preserved Norman keeps in the country. Newcastle-upon-Tyne began its life as a Roman town. Duke Robert’s castle was made of earthwork and timber on the mount-and-bailey plan. William the Conqueror’s eldest son, Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy, planted a Norman castle in 1080 on the old site of the Roman Pons Aelius and the Anglian Monkchester. Before that time King Henry II had built the mighty square keep which is the glory of Newcastle. Railway trains have passed and repassed Henry II’s keep, smothering it in their smoke: so that, like the great tower of the castle of Plessis-les-Tours, as described by Sir Walter Scott in Quentin Durward, it ‘rises, like a black Ethiopian giant, high into the air’.
