page_title: Castles in Great Britain and Ireland
section_title: The Anarchy
hierarchical_section_title: Castles in Great Britain and Ireland / 12th century / The Anarchy
caption_attribution_description: English: Pickering Castle, with counter castle on left
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: Civil war broke out in England and raged between 1139 and 1153, forming a turbulent period in which the rival factions of King Stephen and the Empress Matilda struggled for power. Open battles were relatively rare during the war, with campaigns instead centred on a sequence of raids and sieges as commanders attempted to gain control over the vital castles that controlled the territory in the rival regions.  Siege technology during the Anarchy centred on basic stone-throwing machines such as ballistae and mangonels, supported by siege towers and mining, combined with blockade and, occasionally, direct assault. The phase of the conflict known as "the Castle War" saw both sides attempting to defeat each other through sieges, such as Stephen's attempts to take Wallingford, the most easterly fortress in Matilda's push towards London, or Geoffrey de Mandeville's attempts to seize East Anglia by taking Cambridge Castle.
  Both sides responded to the challenge of the conflict by building many new castles, sometimes as sets of strategic fortifications. In the south-west Matilda's supporters built a range of castles to protect the territory, usually motte and bailey designs such as those at Winchcombe, Upper Slaughter, or Bampton.  Similarly, Stephen built a new chain of fen-edge castles at Burwell, Lidgate, Rampton, Caxton, and Swavesey – all about six to nine miles (10–15 km) apart – in order to protect his lands around Cambridge.  Many of these castles were termed "adulterine" (unauthorised), because no formal permission was given for their construction.  Contemporary chroniclers saw this as a matter of concern; Robert of Torigny suggested that as many as 1,115 such castles had been built during the conflict, although this was probably an exaggeration as elsewhere he suggests an alternative figure of 126.  Another feature of the war was the creation of many "counter-castles". These had been used in English conflicts for several years before the civil war and involved building a basic castle during a siege, alongside the main target of attack. Typically these would be built in either a ringwork or a motte-and-bailey design between 200 and 300 yards (180 and 270 metres) away from the target, just beyond the range of a bow. Counter-castles could be used to either act as firing platforms for siege weaponry, or as bases for controlling the region in their own right.  Most counter-castles were destroyed after their use but in some cases the earthworks survived, such as the counter-castles called Jew's Mount and Mount Pelham built by Stephen in 1141 outside Oxford Castle.
  Matilda's son Henry II assumed the throne at the end of the war and immediately announced his intention to eliminate the adulterine castles that had sprung up during the war, but it is unclear how successful this effort was.  Robert of Torigny recorded that 375 were destroyed, without giving the details behind the figure; recent studies of selected regions have suggested that fewer castles were probably destroyed than once thought and that many may simply have been abandoned at the end of the conflict.  Certainly many of the new castles were transitory in nature: Archaeologist Oliver Creighton observes that 56 per cent of those castles known to have been built during Stephen's reign have "entirely vanished".
caption: Pickering Castle in England (right), and the counter-castle from the years of the Anarchy (upper left)
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