ABSTRACT
I remember visits to the castles in the 1960s. A school trip up the Northumberland coast; driving out from where we lived in the south east of the county on summer weekend afternoons. I think back of the scale of the building, great gateways, estimating the thickness of the walls, worn and battered loop-holes, spiral stairways, pit-dungeon prisons, looking for rooms that still had their roofs intact (barrel vaulting), damp whatever the weather, and their smell of disinfectant (the custodians had to deal with visitors who couldn’t find the public conveniences), masons’ marks on the ashlar blocks (signs of distant anonymous personality), suits of armour and halberds in the armoury. Groundsmen, lawns and motor-mowers. Buying another official blue-covered pamphlet guide, produced by the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works (I liked the name). I found the historical notes very dull reading; the site descriptions were accessible; I liked the plans best of all – their transparent coded precision and testimony to materiality appealed to me.
