Old walls have memories

Old Walls have memories.

Time and stone last forever.

If walls could talk? What would I have to say? I have stood for a thousand years, been repaired many times and parts of me have been rebuilt, but I am still the same wall that the Saxons built in the year 1023. They used wood, mud, and stones from the old Roman building. It was not until the Normans reached this part of England about 1070 that I was made into the magnificent structure I am today. They used quarried granite and the mortar formulated by the Romans, in fact many of my stone blocks were brought from the quarry by people enslaved by the Roman soldiers. It is these blocks that give me continuation, from the time of Alfred, and onto today.

The Saxons who lived in this area of Wessex, used wood for their homes but Alfred, wanted a defensible wall and so I was built. The Normans rebuilt me in the same line as I had stood since then. Then they built a mighty earth mound which they then topped with a wooden tower, they called this a keep and protected it by myself, and I was strengthened, built higher and made so sturdy I still stand a thousand years later. The original Norman lords called me a Bailey. Over the years the motte and wooden tower were replaced by a great stone building, but I was still left as the guardian and protector of it all. I am proud that I was one of the 48 castles listed in the doomsday book. What a fuss that book caused. It was a taxation list rather than a book. The purpose was to allow the king to know what was built where, and how much tax he could raise from each location. Much wealth was hidden in holes dug near my corners, all inside the bailey. The horses were ridden to a sweat by the spies who warned of the approach of the recording priests, even the lords and ladies of my castle did not read or write but they were warned that whatever the scribes wrote about them, it would end up costing them. So, they hid wealth, claimed bad harvest and poor growing lands. Once the recorders had moved on, things settled back to the same slow settled ways of before. Every day I watched the courtyard inside my protection, used as a training ground for the warriors and their horses,

As the years passed the training and the language spoken by the people changed. The great armoured knights with their huge horses, also weighed down with steel plates of armour, became less numerous as the numbers of archers recruited from the local hamlets, and trained into the disciplined army that became so feared all over Europe, increased. These bows were longer than most archers were tall, and the strength to draw them would defeat anyone not trained from a young age. They could drive a steel tipped yard long arrow through armour and into the wearer. Put a hundred archers loosing three arrows so fast that the third was in flight before the first struck its target and you have the reason they were so feared. Time passed and knights on horseback faded into legend.

Muskets and the skirmisher rifles took over from the long bow, but these new forms of warfare still trained inside my protection. Many a lead ball was flattened by my stones. I heard a man talk of how great walls like me could be crumbled by digging shafts under them and then use the black power, gun powder, to blow great sections to rubble. I heard this talk but thankfully never experienced the destruction. There were so many changes to the people who lived within my wall. People live such a short time, may be because they never seem to rest much. When darkness comes, they light fires and torches to keep moving. I find I rest for several of their lifetimes. But they never rest for long enough for the mortar to set, no wonder the die so soon after being built.

The great towering keep was “modernised,” the windows had glass put in them, doors were made to fit, fires and chimneys changed every few decades, floors made from wood were put over the stone, Pipes carried water to save the servants carrying buckets, the great bread ovens were changed so the cooks no longer used burning charcoal. Lights that came at the touch of a switch, were installed. So many changes, yet I still stood, still the same. Season came and went, some hot, some wet, snow and ice, scorching heat, they are all the same to me.

People came with measurements and noted every detail of my size and position in the land, far more thorough than the doomsday book priests. They use equipment, devices, to talk to each other. I can only suppose shouting over a distance hurts their voices. They fixed notices to my stones, frustrating for me since you need to be the other side of these to read them. Over the years I have noticed that while humans change the way they speak, the clothes they wear, the training they undergo, the numbers of them that come through my gates. They change the transport that saves their feet from activity, this seems to be constantly changing, yet they, as humans, they remain basically the same. No one has made them last longer, no one has made them stronger. They still have to be protected all the time, in many ways those old archers were stronger and needed less protection that the newer versions.

I hear that now I am a protected national structure, a historical monument. After years of protecting humans, they have now decided they are protecting me! Time will tell and I have more time than they have.