FOREWORD

Mr. Richard Hind Hedger Holmes (1826-1900), who began his career as a schoolmaster at Worcester, came to Pontefract, Yorkshire, in 1862, when he took over the printing and stationery business with Government stamp agency, which is believed to have been established about 1787. One of its early holders was Benjamin Boothroyd, who published in 1807 a history of Pontefract, and after him was George Fox, who issued another history of Pontefract in 1827.

Mr. Holmes had not been long settled in Pontefract before he turned his attention to its history. He was, however, an extraordinarily patient, enthusiastic and scholarly investigator, with a vigorous contempt for ignorance and inaccuracy and his own copies of both Boothroyd and Fox are strewn with corrections and amplifications as well as many scathing criticisms.

Taking one feature or subject at a time he wrote numerous articles and booklets on local history, but he soon came to declare that it was beyond the power of any man in one lifetime to cover the whole history of Pontefract accurately and completely.

He had passed twenty years in Pontefract therefore, before he published in 1882, what he described on its title-page as "No.1 in a Collection towards the History of Pontefract." This was a most copiously annotated transcription of the Book of Entries of the Pontefract Corporation – in other words, the Minute Book, in which are recorded the decisions and proceedings of the Corporation from 1648 – the year of the last siege of the Castle – until 1726.

Another five years passed before the publication in 1887, of No. 2 in his "Collection" – "The Sieges of Pontefract Castle." For the greater part of his life, essays, articles and treatises had flowed steadily from his pen, and most of them gained the permanence of print in his own works in the yard behind his house, where his eight sons in turn learned the trade. Perhaps one of his greatest undertakings was his transcription, translation and annotation of The Cartulary of St. John of Pontefract, which under Mr. Holmes editorship, the Yorkshire Archaeological Society published in 1899 in their Record Series.

The appeal of these several works was generally local rather than universal, so the editions were small, and almost all of them are therefore now out of print. Since Mr. Holmes day, other have endeavoured with varied ability, to sum up the story of Pontefract, which nevertheless still awaits a master to study and summarise it with the skill, accuracy and sense of historical perspective which is essential to its adequate treatment.

PONTEFRACT CASTLE - A SHORT HISTORY

To write the history of Pontefract is a most formidable task owing to the wealth of material available ; but to put together a short account of Pontefract Castle is somewhat more simple. The first problem is to decide in what way best to deal with the subject. Something must be said about the growth of the buildings as buildings, and the various stages by which those buildings changed from being a simple early Norman fortress to become one of the most magnificent Plantagenet Castles in the North of England. Something must be recorded of the personalities of the people who inhabited the Castle at various times ; and any history, however brief, will be incomplete unless it includes reference to some of the many outstanding events in the history of England of which Pontefract Castle was the centre.

Under the first head there is no doubt that a Saxon stronghold existed on the hill where the Castle was established, but it is probable that it was a mere stockade within which the local barbarian chiefs established themselves and their followers so as the better to make themselves secure against their raiding neighbours and to provide them with a safe base from which to organise their own raids and also – a much more important matter – to afford them a place of protection from the ordinary daily hazards of a little settlement set amidst the wide wild country which in those days these parts were.

THE NORMAN CONQUEST

A trustworthy record of Pontefract Castle must start with Norman times. It will be remembered that when the last Saxon King, Harold, had met his doom from an arrow in the eye on Senlac Hill near Hastings in 1066, the Norman, William the Conqueror, harried the country by fire and sword from south to north, killing all who resisted him, and driving the remainder of the British into the Welsh mountains and across to Ireland. On his return to London he placed the heads of his army in charge of large areas of the country, and about 1080 or 1085, Pontefract became the seat of Ilbert de Lacy, who was probably a native of Lassy, a small place between Aulnay and Vire in the Department of La Calvados.

Ilbert was made responsible for the good government, and in short, the civilising, of the land from Hull in the east as far west towards the Pennines as he was able to subdue its inhabitants.

The first thing he did was to make secure his own personal position and that of his followers by the erection of a fortress. As a site for this he could hardly anywhere have found a better than that which he picked at Pontefract – an oval rock, thirty of forty feet high crowning a steep mound set in the fork of two deep valleys which unite on its north east and expand away into the great Plain of York, much of which could actually be seen from the building which Ilbert and his successors, eventually erected.

A CLEAN SWEEP

Absence of records tends to confirm the supposition that the Norman’s found none of the Saxon works worthy of incorporation into their schemes. The lie of the land made the south from the obvious choice for the entrance which faced the Darrington road (now carried over the railway just east of Baghill Station), as the remainder of the circumference could hardly have been dealt with otherwise than by being solidly walled in – which the Norman’s at once set about, with an erection ten to twelve feet thick or more, very much more in some places, having defence towers at intervals, and cross or flanking walls at strategic lines.

The Castle enclosure of today is somewhat shrunken by comparison with that of the place before the demolition, and the public way known as Castle Chain now passes straight across the former southern side of the Inner Barbican lying in fact for some of its way, on the ruins of the very wall which, five feet thick, at one time maintained an eight foot difference in level between the Inner and Outer Barbican (the Castle Garth of today), the latter a steep slope which fell down to border the high way from Pontefract to Knottingley and the east. The Inner Barbican, it should be noted, had at least three gates ; that towards the town on the west, a south gate, and one at the eastern extremity, at the top of the Booths where Ass Hill, the steps from South Baileygate, join them.

TWO DRAWBRIDGES

The modern approach from the town follows that of the past for quite a distance but there is little trace today of the entrance tower which at one time stood at the corner of Spink Lane, and none whatever of a fellow to it, which is thought to have held the facing position on the right at the angle of Micklegate and Steany Hill. At this point the mound of the Castle most nearly approached in level the eastern extremities of the similar but very much larger hill on which the town now stands ; but it is clear even today that not a vast amount of labour was needed to unite the steep valley on the western side of the Castle with the steeper and wider slopes declining to the south. A drawbridge of the type common in such circumstances, was naturally a feature of the defences at that point, as also at the eastern extremity of the Inner Barbican.

Two centuries after the demolition traces of the eastern drawbridge were discernible in Castle Chain, whilst part of the western one had been converted into a dwelling house. There is little to be seen today of the Kings Stable, on the left, which for generations was the first building to be reached within the Castle outer gates. The Main Guard, however, on the south side of the road, still stands and is in use to this day, though as a private house.

THE PORTER'S LODGE

At this point however, whereas the modern visitor takes a short cut to the left to gain the castle interior, through a modern gateway, the ancient caller made his way a little further (along the modern Castle Chain) before his track turned north into a steep approach barely wide enough for two horsemen abreast. Security all the time was only too plainly the planners motto, for this narrow way was straddled and enveloped by the massive buildings of the Porter’s Lodge, in the heart of which was the portcullis gate. Of the gate itself no trace or relic remains to-day but the grooves in which it was raised and lowered rigidly across the track can be plainly discerned in the stones forming the bases of the remains of these very solid buildings.

A little imagination soon puts on these foundations quite a clear picture. In the centre would be the solid door of massive oaken timbers iron bound and studded, flanked by masonry of prodigious thickness with narrow slits at safe and cunning positions so that the holders of the castle might at their convenience study their visitors as they awaited admission – or might repel them if they endeavoured to enforce it.

About and above would be the solidity of the rest of the Porter’s Lodge – a stout tower at each side with a wall, or more likely, chambers between them, over the portcullis opening.

Let it not be overlooked that to raise and lower the heavy portcullis would require chains, counterweights and cranks, with several men to manage and manipulate them. Doubtless some of these men had their dwelling in the buildings at this point, serving in turn as blacksmith’s or builder’s, armourers, sentries, or just plain labourers, as occasion demanded : for it seems reasonable to assume that in peace or war a great deal of activity and strength would at all times be concentrated in or near the gatehouse, or Porter’s Lodge. There appears to be some ground for the belief that this gate forms part of the basis of the ‘Bird on Gate’ mark used, even now, on all genuine Pomfret Cakes, and it is certainly the basis of the design forming the seal of Pontefract Corporation.

Having now attained the Castle yard it might perhaps be well to turn from it for a little while and make a tour of the main walls of the place. Using then, the modern entrance drive in reverse, and leaving behind us the ruins of the Porter’s Lodge and those of the Round Tower on the right, we can pass round the end of what remains of the great flanking wall which at one time formed the western end of the Inner Barbican, with probably a gateway in it, across the drive from the drawbridge to the portcullis.

THE ROUND TOWER

This huge cross-wall joins right up to, what must have been in the days of its prime and certainly is to-day in its ruin, the most impressive piece of the whole collection of buildings which comprised the Castle – the Round Tower, which oddly is neither round nor a tower.

What the Normans found here was a steep knob of somewhat soft sandstone. Following the inherent weaknesses and strengths of the natural rock, the builders cut away the soft and weathered outer parts until they had a core roughly seventy feet in diameter in essence with three much smaller circular segments abutting upon it. All this they then faced with a very strong casing of stonework, carried out in a much harder and more permanent material than that which they had removed, and than that which they thus enveloped.

At the level at the top of the mound – fifty or sixty feet above the level at which they had commenced their work – the Normans continued their walling so as to produce a circular Keep some sixty feet in diameter and probably twenty-five feet high. This must indeed have been a noble structure, well worthy of Bishop Gundulph, architect of both the Tower of London and of Rochester Castle, who is thought possibly to have influenced the architect of Pontefract, if he did not hold that office himself.

The base of the Keep, though solid, was soft enough to permit of reasonably easy excavation, and a small door-way on the west, at the foot, looking out over the graft (or dry moat), reveals a small steep staircase in two flights of 12 steps and 21 steps, cut through the solid heart of the hill, and giving access to a little landing or platform on the south side, at the foot of a further flight of irregular stone steps external to the main building, but probably at one time roofed and well protected.

A DARK AND DISMAL DUNGEON

These three flights, then, made connection between ground level near the most used general entrance to the Castle and the top of the mound on which stood the main buildings of the Castle, with the Round Tower dominating high and low alike. And in the very core and kernel of the rock of the Tower was the dungeon, reached by twenty steps down from the first landing above the Postern door overlooking the western graft.

This dungeon, barely 3ft broad, 8ft 6ins long and 7ft high, with a preliminary chamber, slightly larger, is so placed with its approaching passages bent and elbowed, that no daylight can ever reach it. And all these passages it should be noted, are really tunnels through the rock, but so lined with stonework as to give a first impression that they are conventional masonry constructions.

On top of the mound the real building of the Keep (as distinct from the stone faced hill below) was so thoroughly destroyed that it has hitherto proved impossible to do more than guess what its layout and construction were. An old reference to repairs supports the theory that there may perhaps have been three rooms at this level, one or more of them maybe wainscoted, or possibly tapestried. And one of these was perhaps that which had in its centre a pillar on which marks were at a later stage pointed out as having been made by the murderers of King Richard II.

THE WALLS AND ITS TOWERS

Resuming a circumambulation interrupted by a diversion commencing at the postern door in the base of the Keep, we find on our left the western graft and on the right some of the most impressive surviving masonry of the Castle – the western sections of the great wall, which in a score of splays, enclosed the Castle Yard, with half a dozen towers along its length.

The first of these was Piper Tower (which Boothroyd annoys Holmes by calling Pix Tower, having apparently read as ‘x’ a sign accepted in those days as a contraction for ‘per’). This faces Northgate and is the only tower of which any appreciable remains still stand – and that notwithstanding that it was the only tower which gave way to the besiegers, who, on 19th January 1645, pierced it at practically the first attempt, a three day bombardment, delivered from across the graft, at barely 40 yards range.

Piper Tower, it must here be noted, also had a postern door, and it was in the ruins of this tower, at about this door, that three of the 1648 garrison, to whom quarter was refused at the surrender, were hidden, making their escape on the following night.

As he passes before the ruins of Gascoigne Tower the visitor finds the path rising steadily, enabling him to cross easily the rough limestone core remaining of the once so carefully faced boundary wall of the Castle Yard.

The tumbled masonry hereabouts includes an apartment known as King Richard’s Chamber, and also the general stables; whilst clearly to be seen are the footings and foundations of sundry other buildings, amongst them the Bakehouse, with its two roofless old beehive ovens showing plain signs of the fires which once burned within them leaving the stones sufficiently heated to cook the viands which were set upon them when the embers had been withdrawn.

With sections of the Norman wall to its north and a stout stone wall still some 8ft high on the south side (all in the north west corner of the Castle Yard), stood the Kitchen – naturally alongside the Bakehouse; and adjoining this may have been the site of a hall, not yet excavated, but probably the Chamber of Presence referred to by the visitors of 1634, and the Great Hall of the Castle in which in 1322 took place the trial of Earl Thomas of Lancaster.

Mention should be made at this point of Swillington Tower, a detached building due north of the centre of the Yard, the northern half of the remains of which was cut away when the highway was laid out in the vicinity of its present junction with Monkhill Station approach road. This tower was 46ft square with walls 10ft 6ins thick, and it must have been a place of considerable importance to the Castle, with which it is believed to have been connected by a walked stairway. Existing accounts, though contradictory, may be reconciled by reading from them that the Tower was built a little before 1322 by Earl Thomas of Lancaster and was very largely developed half a century later by Sir Robert Swillington.

THE CHAPEL IN THE CASTLE

A range of ruins on the east of the Castle Yard – facing the mound or terrace which has the Round Tower at its southern extremity – had a tower at each end. Queen’s at the north east and Kings at the south east. Before them, with the altar to the east in the conventional manner, lay the Castle Chapel of the Norman era, the outline of which can now be readily discerned, since it has been laid bare.

Finally, at the south-eastern corner of the Castle Yard, stood Constable Tower, the last before the Porter’s Lodge.

Such were, briefly, the buildings of the Castle in its closing years, but a wealth of further detail of varying interest, may be found in an examination of other features to which space here permits no reference. There are for instance, many parts of the great Norman enclosing wall, especially on the east, which will repay inspection, and the confusions and problems about the Piper Tower.

Above all, the visitor should be sure to see the Magazine, below the lawn which today covers the one time Castle Yard. This feature which comprises flights of steps totalling 42, in different styles and series, was originally the cellar and store beneath the Great Hall up to about 1280, with an internal circular staircase – now, like so many more, thoroughly blocked up. Independently of the stairway, a square stone shaft 4ft x 7ft and 9 ½ yards deep from lawn to cellar floor, gives light and air to the four apartments of the Magazine.

PONTEFRACT CASTLE IN ITS PRIME

Until 1965 it was felt to be a matter for regret that although several pictorial representations of Pontefract Castle still exist, not one of them was made until some time after the place had been demolished, but at least two are now known which were very probably made before the demolition – though with a good deal of artistic licence. A reproduction of one at Hampton Court and one in Pontefract Public Library where it was installed in mid-1965 when the Corporation had acquired it for 1,000 guineas. The Hampton Court one was at about the same period recognised as being of Pontefract.

One or two interesting verbal descriptions of the Castle have come down the long lanes of history to the present day.

One of the most intriguing of these was written in 1634, when the Castle would be in its very prime. It is number 213 in the Landsdowne Manuscripts in the British Museum, and is by "a Captain, a Lieutenant, and an Ancient", who, in a seven weeks journey, made a short survey of twenty-six counties. It is a lively account and tells how, having passed through Doncaster, the writers paid a visit to Robin Hoods Well, sitting in his chair and paying the usual fee of fourpence, and then proceeded to Pontefract, which they reached on Market Day. Of the town and its castle they thus discourse: -

"This town of Pomfret is an ancient Corporation, consisting of a Mayor, twelve Alderman and a Recorder, and hath two churches therein : to lighten o’rselves we lighted at the Star, and took a fayre re-past, to enable us the better to scale that high and stately, famous and princely impregnable Castle and Cittadell, built by a Norman vpon a Rocke : which for the situation, strength and largenesse, amy compare with any in the Kingdome."

"In the circuit of the Castle there is 7 famous towers of that amplitude & receit, as may entraine so many Princes, as sometimes have commanded this Island. The highest of them is called the Round Tower, in which that unfortunate Prince was enforced to flee round a poste till his barbarous Butchers inhumanely depriu’d him of life. Vpon that poste the cruel hackings & fierce blowes doe still remain : we view’d the spacious Hall which the Gyants kept, the large faire Kitchen wch is long, with many wide Chimneys in it : then went we up and saw the Chamber of Presence, the King and Queenes Chambers, the Chapell and many other Roomes, all fit and suitable for Princes. As we walked on the Leads wch couers that famous Castle, we took a large and faire prospect of the Country twenty miles about : Yorke we then easily saw & plainly discoured, to wch place (after we had pleased the She Keeper, our Guide), we thought fit to hasten."

Much of what this trio recorded fits in well with what is known to us, though the writers leave in other ways a good deal of room for conjecture.

Compiled from the writings of the late Richard H. H. Holmes.