For scheduled monuments it seems to have depended on how strong a case TT have made. They tend to steer clear of going to them because of all the extra hassles involved. However there have been a number of examples where they must have considered a site so intriguing that they have gone ahead and applied, Malton being the one that I instantly remember.
English Heritage seem to need a strong argument, and in some cases (Plympton) have said no. I get the impression that EH have got more relaxed in their restriction for TT than they used to, or that may be just the way it comes across.
English Heritage seem to need a strong argument, and in some cases (Plympton) have said no. I get the impression that EH have got more relaxed in their restriction for TT than they used to, or that may be just the way it comes across.
EH are merely advisors - the Secretary of State (Tessa Jowell) decides whether SMC should be granted or not. In practice, the decision is delegated to a DCMS official who determines an application in her name.
We may understand that the castle wouldn't have worked as protection against the plague, but wouid they have understood that then? Especially if they didn't even know how it was transmitted! I'm not suggesting that this IS what the castle was for, I just don't think it's as far fetched if you look at it from a Medieval perspective.
Plenty of people in castles died of the plague. So I don't think that anyone is suggesting that Edward III thought that fortifications would protect him from it. He had a wide selection of those elsewhere anyway.
The idea seems to be that Q.C. could have been a bolthole away from London. Cities and towns were where the plague hit hardest. Frankly I think it fanciful though. Historians tend to get bored with the obvious. It's more fun to come up with novel ideas.
Edward III built an obvious fortification in a place where it made total sense to have one. He noted its strategic significance. He spent a fortune on the thing. He built a town beside it. (Not a smart move if your aim to get away from the dangerous miasmas of urban life.) All that when he could have used any one of a number of country residences he already had.
Originally posted by Hudson: With the last day panic over where the walls where or where not and was the layout right, I was a bit suspicious over the certainties at the end.
Well I wish I'd seen them - C4 must have been running late and my video missed the end!
Did they manage to explain why the layout of Phil's trench suggested an outside wall rather than the inside wall they were expecting?
I was very dissapointed by the Queenborough Castle episode especially since there is a far better source of it's history in John Guy's book entitled Kent Castles. If they had bothered reading it before they went in then they would have found out more to say about the castle itself, how revolutionary it was in design in upgrades of weaponary. How it wasn't completley trashed after the English Civil War, and that the locals robbed a lot of the foundation stones away, along with timber from the castle being used to restore the belfry of the local church. The book itself (written in 1980 ) did say that even as late as 1807 there were some buildings associated with the castle estate still surviving including the barn and stables. The book itself does give a good insight into exactly how many castles there are in Kent (though it does list mock castles such as Hadlow and later castles such as Deal, Walmer and Sandgate) and also sites of mounds, moats, manors and hillforts
