Dover Castle

England’s green and pleasant land heavily fortified.  I was prompted to write this post after seeing the ‘Time Team’ special. Good old Tony Robinson. I enjoy his Dan Brown debunking excursions too. As we have all been buried under snow drifts for the past week and Britain seems more like Siberia at the moment it’s nice to include a photo of Henry II’s aggressive pile taken on a summer’s day. The academics on the programme were at pains to point out that it was really a kind of ‘show-offy’ status symbol for Henry. It looks pretty aggressive to me, however sumptuous the hangings in the king’s hall. Or perhaps I should say ‘defensive’. It is a thin line.

You will have picked up perhaps, on the tenor of this post which, as it is penned by somebody with an Anglo-Saxon interest, not surprisingly, betrays equivocal feelings about this castle. I was going to say ‘mixed’ but ‘equivocal’ does for it better. Feel free to interpret that howsoever you may. I think this peculiar feeling I have about the castle is similar to the one I have whenever I wander into an old English church and see the heads of all the statues smashed and a few dabs of fading colour. It is a feeling of wonder tainted with pointless regret. It is not even ‘regret’ because the ‘what might have beens’ are part of the richness. As I say it is peculiar.

I know Dover quite well and have visited the castle on more than one occasion. It was impressive as an empty shell but now it seems that English Heritage has done a wonderful job in restoring the interior of the ‘Great Tower’ to something like its twelfth century vividness. You can check out the virtual tour here. I fully intend to visit when I won’t need a snow-plough to reach it.

Henry II was William the Conqueror’s great-grandson and was an empire builder in the usual self-aggrandizing way. I do not necessarily mean his character, which I have read as being measured, learned, not to say sober and restrained. Possibly the latter virtue goes too far in that I believe he had several illegitimate children. Although this cannot really be held against him seeing as adultery has been a more favoured sport among the aristocracy than hunting. The two pastimes, as you might acknowledge, are not a million miles apart. When I say ‘self-aggrandizing’ I mean it more in terms of his annexing ambition and obsession with status. Thanks to his marriage to the interesting Eleanor he acquired Aquitaine as well as England, in addition to Normandy and Anjou. In a tediously familiar Norman and Plantagenet pattern he pushed into Brittany and Wales and attempted with some temporary success to control Ireland and Scotland. Eleanor of Aquitaine, btw, ranks highly on my historical most like to meet for ‘friendship, maybe more’ list. That must be something near a history geek’s equivalent to the sci-fi buff’s Princess Leia fantasy. For the record my idea of Eleanor is nothing like Katharine Hepburn.

Moving on then …

Henry is one of England’s great kings although he spoke French, is buried in France, and was French. C’est la vie. For me, you can forget the Angevin Empire, by far the most interesting thing about Henry is the Thomas Becket story. One of the most memorable, English history has to tell. Almost by accident this king of the Norman line, the first Plantagenet, turned Canterbury into one of the most revered shrines in Europe. Even in these days of enervated faith, it still is. Go and stand in the Becket chapel at Canterbury. If you feel nothing you might as well go and get into one of the tombs. The cathedral has plenty. One marvellous bonus of the conquest was our firm inclusion in the great flowering of Gothic architecture which began in France. Later, of course, we tried hard to smash it all up.

Dover may have been built for many reasons but there is no escaping the fact that these bluff and square-shouldered Norman castles, which history has veiled as characteristically English, were instruments of oppression. Most of them were built to defend against attack from within England as much as from outside it. These castles shout their ownership of the lands they survey and dare the cowed population to question it. They are wonderful and at the same time hateful. This point appeared lost on the enthusiastic historians and theatre/stage set designer of the English Heritage project at Dover Castle.

I found the discussion of the faux-Bayeux tapestry particularly revealing. The tapestry was stitched by the Royal School of Needlework  and it is a wonder of craftsmanship, something it shares in common with many of the beautiful objects made by talented people for the project. Incidently, you can meet a hologram of Henry II at the castle, something that seems faintly ridiculous but which I’m sure will be popular. Actually thinking about it as a kind of haunting, a kind of Banquo’s ghost, why not? The tapestry, which now decorates one of the cavernous halls, tells the story of 1066. The victorious exploit of Henry’s great-grandfather. Not unreasonable to imagine such a tapestry hanging at Dover or indeed it may be known that such a tapestry did hang there. Like a twelfth century movie Henry and his barons would never tire of. It is most appropriate also because some historians think that the original Bayeux may have been the product of skilled Kentish needlework. What struck me was the, dare I say, almost glee, with which it was talked about. One panel shows the English sinking a few jars the night before the battle. The theatre designer seemed extremely pleased with this little vignette. As Tony Robinson, to his credit, pointed out, actually Harold and his men were on a route march down from Stamford Bridge immediately prior to the battle. The designer merely shrugged. He was pleased with it. I assume it represents the sanctimonious Norman viewpoint of William of Malmsbury. The purpose being to show the English hopelessly mired in sin and the conqueror’s essential righteousness before God. As far as I know the Bayeux tapestry itself  shows no such thing. In fact it depicts a scene of William and his knights having a good old nosh down before the battle.

None on the programme seemed to appreciate the irony of celebrating such an abject defeat and its horrendous aftermath. One which is described tersely and grimly in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. Because really this is what the English Heritage project is doing in choosing to spend such a sum (£2-3 million?) on a keep built only 100 or so years after 1066. It is a gorgeous endeavor but as I said earlier it gives me a peculiar feeling. When William was crowned on Christmas Day 1066 in London it began a long and now venerated tradition but overturned the Anglo-Saxon way of doing things. William and his heirs, including the king of Dover Castle overturned much. It was left to the common people to hold onto whatever they could. You can say the Normans initiated a slew of political changes that were the foundation stone of England’s later success. I suppose it depends on how you define ‘success’. One might legitimately say that it involved us in a messy entanglement with France which led to continual war and misery over many centuries. Not to mention the blitzkreig of the conquest itself. From this point on all the kings of England assumed as a matter of course that they were rightful kings also of France. Wales too, Scotland, if they could ever manage it, which they never quite could, and Ireland. The word rightful is important since the rapacious kings of the Middle Ages liked to cover their naked ambition with the cloth of God’s will.

Interestingly, English Heritage, the government quango, sorry ‘agency’, entrusted with the care of the nation’s most cherished monuments and historical sites refused to look after Sutton Hoo. This amazing burial ground of the earliest English kings crept under their radar. They must have had their reasons but it is striking that this Anglo-Saxon heritage site of worldwide archaeological importance was of small interest to them. Yet they are the caretakers of Stonehenge. What a strange nation. This absence of ambivalence towards Dover Castle by the academics on the programme, and obviously by English Heritage, seems in itself quintessentially English and perhaps political, in a very middle class way. It is not the melancholy-tinged remembering of adversity and defeat characteristic of other nations. Melancholy, regret, or even as I say, a certain ambivalence, are entirely absent. It seems similar to preferring always to go out on penalties rather than endure the embarrassment of winning.

Merry Christmas!