Sandal Castle

In case you haven't noticed a running theme on the blog, I like ruins. Monastic ruins are nice, but they all follow the same layout, so usually the only real difference from one abbey to another is the extent to which the buildings are still standing. Castles on the other hand, well, castles are fun precisely because they vary so widely. So here's another castle for you.

Sadly, there is very (and I do mean very) little left of Sandal Castle. Like Pontefract, it was a royalist stronghold during the English civil war, but after a few centuries in the possession of the monarchy, who basically ignored it and let it get run down, it was already in bad shape before the war, and was deliberately destroyed by the Parliamentarians after the war. Originally built in timber around 1100 by the Warrenes, the earls of Surrey, Sandal was eventually rebuilt in stone around the 1300s. Like Pontefract, it is a motte and bailey construction; this is typical especially in the North, where a lot of castles were erected very quickly following the Norman Conquest. The northerners tended to resist anyone telling them what to do, so castle building was a key Norman strategy for gaining control over the troublesome North. Making a big pile of dirt and rock and then slapping a wooden tower on it is quick and requires very little in the way of skilled labor, so motte & baileys could be built quickly and easily with minimal expense. It was when these castles proved worth keeping up for a long period of time that they tended to be rebuilt in stone like at Sandal.

Here you can see where the motte would've been on the artificial hilltop, while the smaller mound off to the left of the photo would be the bailey area.

As you can see, the Parliament did a pretty thorough job dismantling the castle, which once would have been a hugely massive and impressive structure. In the 1400s, there was no Warenne heir, so the castle passed to King Edward III and from the king, to one of his younger sons. One of the king's other sons held Pontefract, and the two of them held several castles throughout the North and the borderlands with Scotland. This son became the first Duke of York, which embroiled Sandal in the War of the Roses during the second half of the 1400s, as the Houses of Lancaster (the red rose) and York (the white rose) competed for the throne of England. The monarchy swung from house to house as various kings were defeated in battle. Both Lancaster and York were the descendents of Edward III's younger sons (as the branches from the older sons had died out). The wars finally ended with Henry Tudor (Henry VII), the Lancastrian candidate after a whole slew of closer relatives died in the wars, beating out Richard III (of York) and marrying Elizabeth of York to bring the two houses together.

Before Richard III had come to the throne, his father, also Richard, attempted to gain the throne. He led his troops from Sandal against those of Queen Margaret based out of Pontefract. They met at the Battle of Wakefield, where Margaret's troops won a crushing victory and Richard was killed. But then his son became king, so I guess it all worked out in the end. Margaret herself is an interesting lady. Her husband, Henry VI was, well, insane, so Margaret was effectively ruling England and parts of France herself. She also sort of started the Wars of the Roses by snubbing the Yorkists and then proceeded to lead the Lancastrians for many years. Anyhoo, the Battle of Wakefield is where the mnemonic British kids use to learn the colours of the rainbow comes from: Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain. Much more effective than Roy G. Biv, I think. Shakespeare also used Sandal as a setting in Henry VI Part 3 as it discusses Richard (the one who lost at Wakefield) learning of Margaret's approach and then his subsequent death.

Bonus for castles? They're fun to climb on :)

And being built on a hill means awesome views of the surrounding area.