11th Century AD (Post Norman) Welsh Fortified Manor House Illustrations?

[Atheling]

Hi Folks,

I've been scouring the net for images/illustrations of an 11th Century (AD!) Wooden Welsh Fortified Manor House and I have come up with very little. I expect that they were similar to the typical Norman Motte thought I literally have no evidence for this so I'm not counting my chickens.

The images are to put together a model of said fortified manor.

I was hoping that some wiser minds might be able to guide me in the right direction of obtaining some illustrations/images that might set me on the right path.

Does anyone know where I should begin looking? My Google Foo has thus far failed me.

Cheers

[Dice Roller]

Hmm...a challenging one.
What I would say is that instead of looking for examples from the Normans, I would look for Saxon/Anglo-Dane examples. I would guess there's likely to be more architectural influence there than from the Normans.
In the mid-11th century the Welsh famously raided (then Earl) Harold Godwinson's lodge at Portskewet which was on the English/Welsh border. There may be artist's impressions of what that looked like.
My guess is they would have been just large wooden halls with a few ancillary buildings such as we often see in games of the period.
So I would be tempted to model them as a large main building, a few outer buildings, all surrounded by a wooden palisade and ditch to qualify as 'fortified'. The raised mote seems unlikely to me.

[Ninefingers]

Hmm...a challenging one.
What I would say is that instead of looking for examples from the Normans, I would look for Saxon/Anglo-Dane examples. I would guess there's likely to be more architectural influence there than from the Normans.
In the mid-11th century the Welsh famously raided (then Earl) Harold Godwinson's lodge at Portskewet which was on the English/Welsh border. There may be artist's impressions of what that looked like.
My guess is they would have been just large wooden halls with a few ancillary buildings such as we often see in games of the period.
So I would be tempted to model them as a large main building, a few outer buildings, all surrounded by a wooden palisade and ditch to qualify as 'fortified'. The raised mote seems unlikely to me.

I'm guessing there will be an artist's impression somewhere as IIRC Time Team did a dig there.

Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syiVXUf911A from about 44 mins.

[AndrewBeasley]

Possibly this one https://www.portskewettcc.org/harolds-field/


It's a bit small and 100% supposition as wood degrades very quickly.

[FinnN]

I’m sure there are reconstruction drawings out there, but this is the clearest one I can find (of Llys Rhosyr):

https://hwb.gov.wales/api/storage/4a245208-8875-4a7c-9458-c2c45689698d/CastlesinWalesPDF.pdf

[Atheling]

Thanks guys and apologies, for some reason I've got the wrong settings set to receive notifications. I'll try to remedy that now.

[Little Odo]

There's not a lot of data out there, but you could try Timber Castles by Higham and Barker (Exeter Press 1992) for a bit of background for (mostly) British timber fortifications. There are some archaeological plans of contemporary fortifications and maps of where they were located in the book that might help.

[carlos marighela]

Crook framed wooden houses seem to be the norm in Wales pre and even post Conquest, although there's no surviving architectural evidence before circa 1400. Wooden pallisade enclosure? I suppose if there was enough locally available stone and the resources existed that enclosure could be stone?

A contemporary description of Owain Glyndŵr's house from the 14thC has it as a timber structure with a slate roof, although Owain probably had a bit more cash to splash than most.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Wales

The time team illustrations are of a Norman stone structure dating to the 12thC  which is what they found atop that hill.

[trev]

A bit too late and already mentioned (it's based on Llys Rhosyr) but here are some more links for the Llys Llywelyn reconstruction project at St Fagans open air museum.  Well worth a day trip if you're in the area.







https://www.medieval.eu/medieval-court-welsh-prince/
https://museum.wales/stfagans/buildings/llys-llywellyn/
https://www.heneb.co.uk/palaceoftheprinces/rhosyr.html
https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5688378

[Atheling]

A bit too late and already mentioned (it's based on Llys Rhosyr) but here are some more links for the Llys Llywelyn reconstruction project at St Fagans open air museum.  Well worth a day trip if you're in the area.







https://www.medieval.eu/medieval-court-welsh-prince/
https://museum.wales/stfagans/buildings/llys-llywellyn/
https://www.heneb.co.uk/palaceoftheprinces/rhosyr.html
https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5688378

Bingo Trev!

This is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for 

Thank you very much indeed! 

[trev]

Glad I could help.  Are you going to scratch build a hall?  I'd look forward to seeing that.

[cadbren]

Hmm...a challenging one.
What I would say is that instead of looking for examples from the Normans, I would look for Saxon/Anglo-Dane examples. I would guess there's likely to be more architectural influence there than from the Normans.

That's a sound call. I was reading something recently about early medieval Wales and they were a lot more similar to the English of the time than people might think. In terms that is of political structures, land tenure. It seems that the land tenures in place after the Romans 'left' were retained across Britain and that the Anglo-Saxons didn't do much to the system other than take it over so you ended up with similar land forms in Welsh and English lands with similar architecture. Round houses existed for a time in both cultures but were replaced everywhere with rectangular houses so the Welsh were obviously influenced by their English neighbours too.

[carlos marighela]

Alternatively, those archaeological remains are merely evidence of Anglo-Saxon holiday homes burned down by infuriated proto Welsh nationalists. 

[Wilgut Spleens]

I am not sure that such a thing existed back then. Fortified manor Houses are a product of the mid to late 15th century

[Atheling]

I am not sure that such a thing existed back then. Fortified manor Houses are a product of the mid to late 15th century

Ah, what we think of when we think of the idea of a fortified manor house (Late 15rg CE era) didn't exist but I'm sure there were all kinds of small Motte, or Motte and Bailey type buildings around. I just need to find out where, what they generally looked like Mike.