page_title: Castles in Great Britain and Ireland
section_title: Military and governmental use
hierarchical_section_title: Castles in Great Britain and Ireland / 18th century / Military and governmental use
caption_attribution_description: Carlisle Castle
context_page_description: Castles have played an important military, economic and social role in Great Britain and Ireland since their introduction following the Norman invasion of England in 1066. Although a small number of castles had been built in England in the 1050s, the Normans began to build motte and bailey and ring-work castles in large numbers to control their newly occupied territories in England and the Welsh Marches. During the 12th century the Normans began to build more castles in stone – with characteristic square keep – that played both military and political roles. Royal castles were used to control key towns and the economically important forests, while baronial castles were used by the Norman lords to control their widespread estates. David I invited Anglo-Norman lords into Scotland in the early 12th century to help him colonise and control areas of his kingdom such as Galloway; the new lords brought castle technologies with them and wooden castles began to be established over the south of the kingdom. Following the Norman invasion of Ireland in the 1170s, under Henry II, castles were established there too.
context_section_description: Some castles in Britain and Ireland continued to have modest military utility into the 18th century. Until 1745 a sequence of Jacobite risings threatened the Crown in Scotland, culminating in the rebellion in 1745. Various royal castles were maintained during the period either as part of the English border defences, like Carlisle, or forming part of the internal security measures in Scotland itself, like Stirling Castle. Stirling was able to withstand the Jacobite attack in 1745, although Carlisle was taken; the siege of Blair Castle, at the end of the rebellion in 1746, was the final castle siege to occur in the British Isles. In the aftermath of the conflict Corgaff and many others castles were used as barracks for the forces sent to garrison the Highlands. Some castles, such as Portchester, were used for holding prisoners of war during the Napoleonic Wars at the end of the century and were re-equipped in case of a popular uprising during this revolutionary period. In Ireland Dublin Castle was rebuilt following a fire and reaffirmed as the centre of British administrative and military power.
  Many castles remained in use as county gaols, run by gaolers as effectively private businesses; frequently this involved the gatehouse being maintained as the main prison building, as at Cambridge, Bridgnorth, Lancaster, Newcastle and St Briavels. During the 1770s the prison reformer John Howard conducted his famous survey of prisons and gaols, culminating in his 1777 work The State of the Prisons. This documented the poor quality of these castle facilities; prisoners in Norwich Castle lived in a dungeon, with the floor frequently covered by an inch of water; Oxford was "close and offensive"; Worcester was so subject to jail fever that the castle surgeon would not enter the prison; Gloucester was "wretched in the extreme". Howard's work caused a shift in public opinion against the use of these older castle facilities as gaols.
caption: Carlisle Castle in England, modernised in the 18th century to defend against Jacobite invasion
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