Farleigh Hungerford
Farleigh Hungerford is a castle. How far is this a valid description?
Farleigh Hungerford was built in 1377 and owned by speaker of House of Commons, Sir Thomas Hungerford for his family to take shelter. The building itself has two main parts to it being the inner and outer with an outer bailey being built in 1425 as an improvement. It contains many typical and atypical features of a castle which leads to the debate of whether or not is it actually a fortified manor house rather than a castle.
To begin with the building did contain many typical features such as curtain walls which were built around it for protection. During the castles time of construction, this feature was one very common to most castles and it gives the castle a defensive property leading it to appear much like a typical castle. However, if looked upon in deeper detail these curtain walls were inadequately thin and not very tall making the castle rather venerable to attack; a lot like the wall height around Bodam Castle which too has small and almost ineffective walls. This feature, meant for strong defence, lacks in effectiveness unlike other British castles such as Cheptow Castle in Wales where the curtain walls are thick and tall to serve the purpose of having them in the first place. Overall, the curtain walls at Farleigh Hungerford seem to be just built to have properties and looks of a castle rather than actually being able to defend like a real castle could. In addition to these walls being made for just appearance are the crenellations built around the castle. These crenellations again are a very typical feature for castles to have however for these already unusually small crenellations to actually...
View Full Essay
