THE DISTRIBUTION of the different types of documented conflict events recorded in England and Wales between 1135 and 1153 is mapped in Figures 3.1a–c. These make clear both the large number and wide variety of military clashes during the conflict. Despite its duration, pitched battles were singularly rare and sieges dominated the military landscape in a conflict that was tightly focused in distinct regions. This chapter explores the landscape context of military engagement. It combines analysis of the documentary sources with scrutiny of the places of battle and the material traces of warfare to reconstruct the conduct of conflict and reveal something of its underestimated psychological and symbolic aspects (the arms and armour of the military forces of the period are examined separately in Chapter 6). Following an overview of the settings of conflict and an assessment of the two most significant battlefields (the Battle of the Standard or Northallerton, 1138, and the Battle of Lincoln, 1141), the chapter goes on to explore siege warfare in particular detail. It concludes with a case study of Wallingford, Oxfordshire, one of the most bitterly contested sites of the conflict.

Landscapes of War: Settings and Contexts

Attitudes to the conduct of medieval warfare were inextricably fused to religious belief.The momentum to regulate warfare in north-west Europe in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries amounted to what some scholars have styled a ‘peace movement.’ By the first quarter of the twelfth century, the First Crusade had done much to rehabilitate the social validity of the bellatores in the eyes of the Church, but for ecclesiastical traditionalists, much acquainted with classical precedents of military discipline and service to the state, contemporary knighthood had become the antithesis of its divinely ordained function and the Church acted to regulate the excesses of conflict. The Church deemed that the appropriate role of the bellatores was not restricted to the defence of Christendom's frontiers against external enemies, but extended to the protection of the poor and helpless and, above all, the Church.The repression of pillage and exactions, respect for the Church's possessions and the establishment of protocols for truces all featured in new attitudes to warfare linked to an emerging chivalric culture.

CASTLES WERE FIRMLY CENTRE STAGE in the civil war's military and political landscape – they were invariably the focal points of events in a conflict in which control of castles equated to control over territory. Chroniclers’ accounts have long dominated our understanding of castle construction and use during the period. As symbols of tyranny, disorder and oppression, castles – especially those newly built or strengthened – were a cause of consternation for ecclesiastical writers, who singled them out as the cause rather than just a symptom of the disorder. The question of these so-called ‘adulterine’ (adulterina) castles – usually interpreted as ‘unlicensed’ – has cast a shadow over how we have interpreted the physical remains of twelfth-century castles and deflected from our understanding of the totality of castle-building practices and contexts. While brief overviews of the ‘castles of the Anarchy’ have already been published, this chapter will provide a platform for a more systematic survey of the evidence that can enable us to confront the familiar caricature of the Anarchy-period castle as a simple, warlike and transient feature of the English landscape. Drawing upon an upsurge of archaeological evidence alongside the documentary sources, it starts with an account of the castles of Stephen's reign from the perspective of chroniclers, before exploring and analysing as far as is possible the forms, function distribution, relationships and chronology of these sites, in order to assess the extent to which the landscape was militarised.

Reassessing the ‘Castles of the Anarchy’

Numerous historical and archaeological studies perpetuate the notion that the castles of Stephen's reign were mostly short-term and martial in nature. For Frank Stenton, writing in his classic and influential 1932 study The First Century of English Feudalism, ‘castles of the Anarchy were rarely, if ever, castles of stone’; instead, conditions of feudal anarchy saw the proliferation of temporary and underdeveloped earth and timber fortresses built on defensive sites.

A revisionist view is that the late 1130s and 1140s actually saw greater variation in construction forms and in the social context of castle building than previous decades.

A LONG-STANDING focus for historical debate on King Stephen's reign concerns whether or not the epithet ‘the Anarchy’ is appropriate for the period. The pendulum of opinion has swung between maximalist and minimalist viewpoints with sharply different understandings of the scale, intensity and impact of the conflict and of the degree to which royal government broke down. If nothing else, ‘the Anarchy’ makes a useful distinction from the ‘English Civil War,’ which is universally understood as the crisis of the mid-seventeenth century. Scholars have also assessed the characters and achievements of the main historical figures of the period – primarily King Stephen, his cousin and nemesis the Empress Matilda and the king's younger brother Bishop Henry of Blois. Other debate has centred on the attitudes and agency of the Church and the aristocracy during the conflict, and considered how these institutions were transformed by it. Without doubt, the concept of the ‘Anarchy’ of the twelfth century was in need of deconstruction and critical examination, but it is unclear how much further debate can develop if it remains focused on essentially the same body of documentary source material. Accordingly, this volume has attempted to draw together the full range of archaeological and material evidence – comprising sites, landscapes and artefacts – alongside new spatial presentations and understandings of documentary sources to afford a rather different perspective on the civil war and its era. Both direct and indirect evidence for the nature and impact of the conflict have been considered at different scales, from individual items of portable material culture to buildings, to nationwide patterns of conflict events. What does this reassessment provide?

Using the Archaeology

This body of archaeological and other material evidence – old and new – does not and cannot contribute evenly to all the different areas of debate about Stephen's reign and the so-called ‘Anarchy.’ Archaeologists have sometimes applied the labels ‘the Anarchy’ and ‘Anarchy-period’ rather loosely and often inappropriately. The period has sometimes been used as a convenient chronological peg from which to hang interpretations and around which site chronologies have been based, sometimes without due caution.

THe War And Violence of human conflict, whether in the past or present, disturb, fascinate and remain enduringly popular topics of academic research. While the focus of this volume is an infamously destructive conflict which took place in twelfthcentury England, during the reign of King Stephen, the approach that it develops – wherein the psychological and symbolic aspects of warfare and its impacts on society are not divorced from the conventional military history of events on the ground – is more universally applicable. War was, and is, a cultural and social as well as a military phenomenon, and to study it in its totality it is essential to take account of the multiple arenas within which it was played out. The place of war is not necessarily the battlefield; equally, landscapes are more than just the setting for violence. The materialisation of warfare and militarised societies can comprise fortifications and other sites as well as artefacts and other forms of material culture and human remains. The impacts of conflict are always felt on social structures and human settlements across both the long and short term. Accordingly, this volume is intended as more than just an exploration of a particular conflict, but as a more detailed analysis of the interplay between war, society, material culture and landscape.

The troubled reign of Stephen, King of England (1135–54) has long held particular fascination for scholars of Anglo-Norman history. Stephen's protracted struggle with a rival claimant to the throne, the Empress Matilda, and her Angevin supporters saw England plunged into political turmoil, rebellion and bitter conflict for almost two decades. Contemporary writers reported with horror the activities of predatory lords responsible for a plague of castle building, damage to church property and devastation of the landscape, and since the late nineteenth century the conflict has been styled as ‘the Anarchy’ – although this term is now contentious. That the word ‘anarchy’ has since often been capitalised in the epithet ‘the Anarchy,’ puts it in a very select group of historical events including ‘the Conquest,’ ‘the Reformation’ and ‘the Dissolution,’ and has done much to elevate the period to prominence in the public consciousness.

THIS APPENDIX provides a brief gazetteer of key sites associated with the ‘Anarchy’ that can be visited. Arranged by region, it includes details on site location and accessibility. Given the sheer number of places involved in a civil war that extended over almost 20 years, this is not a comprehensive list, but is intended to indicate to the reader locations where tangible and broadly dateable remains can be seen, as well as conflict landscapes that are accessible.

Southern and South-West England

Danes Castle, Exeter (SX919933) is a small ringwork siege castle almost certainly built by King Stephen against Rougemont Castle, which lies on the opposite side of Longbrook Valley to the south (although the view is blocked by Exeter Prison). The earthworks were landscaped after the site was excavated in the early 1990s and are fully and freely accessible. The best-preserved siege castle of the civil war is, however, the ringwork and bailey known as ‘The Rings’ at Corfe, Dorset (SY956820), located on a publicly accessible site immediately south of the great castle, with spectacular views of the latter. The site has never been excavated but the earthworks are impressive and show evidence of modification as a platform for gunpowder artillery in the English Civil War.

Winchester, Hampshire contains numerous sites of significance from the period; the foremost is Wolvesey Palace (SU484290), in the south-east corner of the city walls, which preserves extensive remains associated with Bishop Henry of Blois. Farnham Castle, Surrey (SU83724732), preserves excellent evidence of Henry of Blois's castle in the form of the excavated remains of a tower sealed within the motte, itself surrounded by a later shell keep. Both sites are managed heritage attractions with entrance fees.

Nothing remains of Malmesbury Castle, Wiltshire, although the abbey which it adjoined displays some of the finest late Romanesque sculpture in Britain (ST933874). Located approximately 1.5km south of Malmesbury (ST94058578), and probably constructed in order to besiege the town and castle, is the ringwork of Cam's Hill. Although on private property, a public footpath passes to the north of the monument, from which there are good views of the earthworks.

IN THE FINAL thematic chapter of this volume, the focus shifts to the evidence for towns, rural settlements and landscapes. In contrast with castles and siege works, which represent arguably the most conspicuous traces of the civil war in the English landscape, the influence of the conflict upon everyday urban and, especially, rural life is, as will be seen, far less tangible. Major towns were not spared from the flow of the conflict, but in terms of the archaeology of urbanism, the mid-twelfth century is a difficult and somewhat neglected area. Material culture from twelfth-century phases of settlements is typically scant and, again, we must employ an interdisciplinary approach in order to maximise our understanding. This chapter first investigates the different impacts of the conflict upon urban landscapes, with London and Winchester afforded particular attention given the key roles that these centres played, followed by an assessment of the conduct of sieges within and around towns and the evidence for the establishment of new towns and markets. The second half of the chapter turns to the archaeology of the countryside, questioning first whether the Anarchy influenced or affected settlement forms or agricultural regimes, before considering fortified villages and concluding with an overview of the overall evidence for landscape devastation during the conflict.

Major Urban Centres

The conflict of Stephen's reign occurred a good way along the trajectory of urbanisation in England. Against the general sweep of medieval urban history, it represented a relatively minor interruption of a period of sustained growth across c.850–1300, bridging the preceding phase of Norman imposition and the great period of expansion and town foundation that followed. Besides the damaging effects of sieges, the uncertain political environment of the mid-twelfth century exacerbated strains and divisions within urban communities and stalled or damaged commercial growth. In this environment, political favour and location had a considerable bearing on the fortunes of major urban centres, no more so than in the contrasting experiences of London and Winchester.

London and Winchester

While London and its region saw little direct military action, the city still played a pivotal role in unfolding political events. Londoners had enthusiastically acclaimed Stephen as king in 1135 and he held his Christmas court there that year.

IN A PERIOD with more than its fair share of infamous characters, Geoffrey II de Mandeville, Earl of Essex from 1140, is perhaps the most disreputable of all. In J.H. Round#x0027;s 1892 biography Geoffrey de Mandeville, the earl was ‘the great champion of anarchy,’ the quintessential robber baron whose allegiance shifted as he sold and resold himself to the highest bidder. Authors since have been tempted into portraying him as ‘the poster boy of England's “anarchy.”’ Historians have unsurprisingly focused on Geoffrey's remarkable political career; debate has centred on the extent of his loyalty, his motives and the reasons for his downfall, the evidence hinging on charters whose dating has been vigorously contested. Rather less attention has focused on the realities on the ground of Geoffrey's military involvement in the civil war – most notably, his rebellion and fenland campaign of 1143–44 that ended with his death, and a programme of castle building and aggrandisement that mirrored his meteoric rise – and its impact upon the landscape. Accordingly, this case study considers the conflict landscape of the Isle of Ely and its surrounding district, which was the focus not only of Geoffrey de Mandeville's revolt but also two earlier operations, by King Stephen in 1140 and by Geoffrey and Earl Gilbert of Pembroke in 1142. Three campaigns in four years ensured that the fenland region was one of the most heavily affected in the entire civil war. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's generalised description of Stephen's reign as 19 winters ‘when Christ and his saints slept’ – perhaps the most oft-quoted snippet of primary documentary evidence for the chaos of the civil war – was written by a Peterborough monk and may well draw on local experiences of the conflict rather than capturing the situation in England more generally.

This case study presents a narrative account of the three fenland campaigns of the 1140s against the background of William I's famous struggle in the same area against Hereward the Wake in 1070–71. It reconstructs the main military movements and events as a basis for examining the archaeological evidence for the network of castles that loomed large in and around this unusually complex conflict landscape.

MATERIAL CULTURE – the physical evidence of artefacts and architecture – is of course core to archaeological discourse but has played a very marginal role in previous discussion of ‘the Anarchy.’ While the period's coinage has been the subject of several important studies and is the focus of its own specific debates and literature, a great volume of other evidence – including pottery and other artefacts recovered from archaeological excavations, single finds of artefacts (especially through metal-detecting), architectural sculpture, building remains and environmental evidence – has been badly overlooked. This body of information, which is growing all the time as new discoveries come to light, has much potential to illuminate aspects of everyday life, including at a level below the social elite, but making sense of it comes with a set of challenges – not least the ever-present issue of dating materials precisely to the period in question.

It is important to underline from the outset that it is simply not possible to identify ‘the Anarchy’ as a clear event horizon with most of the evidence explored in this chapter. An obvious exception is the coinage, which represents an exceptional category of material as coins are simultaneously historical sources and everyday items of material culture. If we were to reimagine the mid-twelfth century as a hypothetical prehistoric research context, stripped of all our knowledge and preconceptions of the period based on its documents, it is highly unlikely that archaeologists would identify the ‘signature’ of any great rupture in society or crisis in the landscape. Indeed, the same is broadly true of the Norman Conquest, with key categories of evidence such as pottery showing imperceptible change and the archaeology instead pointing towards life carrying on pretty much as before for the vast majority of people, although a clear horizon of coin hoards deposited in the 1060s and 1070s provides one likely indicator of disruption – at least in some regions (see pg. 149). For the most part, changes in the material evidence occurred over much longer timescales, although political and concomitant economic turmoil could act to variously accelerate and amplify or hold back longer-term processes that were already in train.

New information about twelfth-century portable material culture is being revealed especially through metal-detected finds reported through the Portable Antiquities Scheme.