Miserden Castle
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Miserden Castle
Miserden Castle was a castle near the village of Miserden in Gloucestershire, England. The castle is a large motte and bailey Norman castle, built before 1146 by Robert Musard, after whose family the local village is named.Pettifer, p.80. The castle overlooks the River Frome and included a wide shell keep, protected by a stone wall and a moat.National Monument Records website
, accessed 20 December 2010.
The castle is positioned on a rocky spur, and the north side of the castle was probably flooded from the river to produce a wet moat, further strengthening the considerable defences. Musard was killed by forces loyal to King

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Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gloucester and other principal towns and villages include Cheltenham, Cirencester, Kingswood, Bradley Stoke, Stroud, Thornbury, Yate, Tewkesbury, Bishop's Cleeve, Churchdown, Brockworth, Winchcombe, Dursley, Cam, Berkeley, Wotton-under-Edge, Tetbury, Moreton-in-Marsh, Fairford, Lechlade, Northleach, Stow-on-the-Wold, Chipping Campden, Bourton-on-the-Water, Stonehouse, Nailsworth, Minchinhampton, Painswick, Winterbourne, Frampton Cotterell, Coleford, Cinderford, Lydney and Rodborough and Cainscross that are within Stroud's urban area. Gloucestershire borders Herefordshire to the north-west, Worcestershire to the north, Warwickshire to the north-east, Oxfordshire to the east, Wiltshire to the south, Bristol and Somerset ...
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England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century and has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century. The English language, the Anglican Church, and Engli ...
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Miserden Castle Ditch 2
Miserden is a village and civil parish in Stroud District, Gloucestershire, England, 4 miles north east of Stroud. The parish includes Whiteway Colony and the hamlets of Sudgrove and The Camp. In the 2001 census the parish had a population of 420, increasing to 449 at the 2011 census. The village lies in the Cotswolds at an elevation of over 800 ft, above the valley of the River Frome. Until the Middle Ages, Miserden was known as Greenhampstead, and was mentioned by that name in the Domesday Book. The name Miserden derives from ''Musardera'', "Musard's manor" - Musard was the name of the family which held the manor at the time of the Domesday Book. Robert Musard built Miserden Castle in the 12th century. In fiction The battle and siege scenes in ''Brother Cadfael's Penance'' by Ellis Peters (a pen name of Edith Pargeter) are set in the castle built by the Musard family, given the name of "La Musarderie" in the novel. The story is set in the 12th century, in December ...
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Motte And Bailey
A motte-and-bailey castle is a European fortification with a wooden or stone keep situated on a raised area of ground called a motte, accompanied by a walled courtyard, or Bailey (castle), bailey, surrounded by a protective Rampart (fortification), ditch and palisade. Relatively easy to build with unskilled labour, but still militarily formidable, these castles were built across northern Europe from the 10th century onwards, spreading from Normandy and County of Anjou, Anjou in France, into the Holy Roman Empire in the 11th century. The Normans introduced the design into England and Wales. Motte-and-bailey castles were adopted in Scotland, Ireland, the Low Countries and Denmark in the 12th and 13th centuries. Windsor Castle, in England, is an example of a motte-and-bailey castle. By the end of the 13th century, the design was largely superseded by alternative forms of fortification, but the earthworks remain a prominent feature in many countries. Architecture Structures A mott ...
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Miserden
Miserden is a village and civil parish in Stroud District, Gloucestershire, England, 4 miles north east of Stroud. The parish includes Whiteway Colony and the hamlets of Sudgrove and The Camp. In the 2001 census the parish had a population of 420, increasing to 449 at the 2011 census. The village lies in the Cotswolds at an elevation of over 800 ft, above the valley of the River Frome. Until the Middle Ages, Miserden was known as Greenhampstead, and was mentioned by that name in the Domesday Book. The name Miserden derives from ''Musardera'', "Musard's manor" - Musard was the name of the family which held the manor at the time of the Domesday Book. Robert Musard built Miserden Castle in the 12th century. In fiction The battle and siege scenes in ''Brother Cadfael's Penance'' by Ellis Peters (a pen name of Edith Pargeter) are set in the castle built by the Musard family, given the name of "La Musarderie" in the novel. The story is set in the 12th century, in December ...
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Motte And Bailey
A motte-and-bailey castle is a European fortification with a wooden or stone keep situated on a raised area of ground called a motte, accompanied by a walled courtyard, or Bailey (castle), bailey, surrounded by a protective Rampart (fortification), ditch and palisade. Relatively easy to build with unskilled labour, but still militarily formidable, these castles were built across northern Europe from the 10th century onwards, spreading from Normandy and County of Anjou, Anjou in France, into the Holy Roman Empire in the 11th century. The Normans introduced the design into England and Wales. Motte-and-bailey castles were adopted in Scotland, Ireland, the Low Countries and Denmark in the 12th and 13th centuries. Windsor Castle, in England, is an example of a motte-and-bailey castle. By the end of the 13th century, the design was largely superseded by alternative forms of fortification, but the earthworks remain a prominent feature in many countries. Architecture Structures A mott ...
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River Frome, Stroud
The River Frome, once also known as the Stroudwater, is a small river in Gloucestershire, England. It is to be distinguished from another River Frome in Gloucestershire, the Bristol Frome, and the nearby River Frome, Herefordshire. The river is approximately long. It flows broadly westwards, from its source high up on the Cotswold escarpment, initially through a narrow, steep-sided valley, which it shares with the Thames and Severn Canal and the Golden Valley line railway. Below Stroud, the main town on the river, it is swelled by flows from several tributaries, and the valley opens out, with the channel splitting into two before reuniting into a single channel. The river, as well as its tributaries, has been used for milling since the time of the Domesday Book. Some early mills were used for milling corn but subsequently the river was important for the woollen industry, until that experienced a series of depressions in the early 19th century. The area then became known for t ...
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Shell Keep
A shell keep is a style of medieval fortification, best described as a stone structure circling the top of a motte. In English castle morphology, shell keeps are perceived as the successors to motte-and-bailey castles, with the wooden fence around the top of the motte replaced by a stone wall. Castle engineers during the Norman period did not trust the motte to support the enormous weight of a stone keep. A common solution was to replace the palisade with a stone wall then build wooden buildings backing onto the inside of the wall. This construction was lighter than a keep and prevented the walls from being undermined, meaning they could be thinner and lighter. A gazetteer compiled by archaeologist Robert Higham counted 21 shell keeps in England and Wales. Examples include the Round Tower at Windsor Castle and the majority were built in the 11th and 12th centuries. Surviving English examples of shell keeps include: * Arundel, West Sussex (re-modelled post-medieval) * Berkhamps ...
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Stephen Of England
Stephen (1092 or 1096 – 25 October 1154), often referred to as Stephen of Blois, was King of England from 22 December 1135 to his death in 1154. He was Count of Boulogne '' jure uxoris'' from 1125 until 1147 and Duke of Normandy from 1135 until 1144. His reign was marked by the Anarchy, a civil war with his cousin and rival, the Empress Matilda, whose son, Henry II, succeeded Stephen as the first of the Angevin kings of England. Stephen was born in the County of Blois in central France as the fourth son of Stephen-Henry, Count of Blois, and Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror. His father died while Stephen was still young, and he was brought up by his mother. Placed into the court of his uncle Henry I of England, Stephen rose in prominence and was granted extensive lands. He married Matilda of Boulogne, inheriting additional estates in Kent and Boulogne that made the couple one of the wealthiest in England. Stephen narrowly escaped drowning with Henry I's son, William ...
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The Anarchy
The Anarchy was a civil war in England and Normandy between 1138 and 1153, which resulted in a widespread breakdown in law and order. The conflict was a war of succession precipitated by the accidental death of William Adelin, the only legitimate son of King Henry I, who drowned in the sinking of the ''White Ship'' in 1120. Henry sought to be succeeded by his daughter, known as Empress Matilda, but was only partially successful in convincing the nobility to support her. On Henry's death in 1135, his nephew Stephen of Blois seized the throne, with the help of Stephen's brother Henry of Blois, who was the bishop of Winchester. Stephen's early reign saw fierce fighting with disloyal English barons, rebellious Welsh leaders, and Scottish invaders. Following a major rebellion in the south-west of England, Matilda invaded in 1139 with the help of her half-brother Robert of Gloucester. In the initial years of civil war, neither side was able to achieve a decisive advantage; the ...
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Castles In Great Britain And Ireland
Castles have played an important military, economic and social role in Great Britain and Ireland since their introduction following the Norman invasion of England in 1066. Although a small number of castles had been built in England in the 1050s, the Normans began to build motte and bailey and ringwork castles in large numbers to control their newly occupied territories in England and the Welsh Marches. During the 12th century the Normans began to build more castles in stone – with characteristic square keep – that played both military and political roles. Royal castles were used to control key towns and the economically important forests, while baronial castles were used by the Norman lords to control their widespread estates. David I invited Anglo-Norman lords into Scotland in the early 12th century to help him colonise and control areas of his kingdom such as Galloway; the new lords brought castle technologies with them and wooden castles began to be established over ...
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List Of Castles In England
This list of castles in England is not a list of every building and site that has "castle" as part of its name, nor does it list only buildings that conform to a strict definition of a castle as a medieval fortified residence. It is not a list of every castle ever built in England, many of which have vanished without trace, but is primarily a list of buildings and remains that have survived. In almost every case the buildings that survive are either ruined, or have been altered over the centuries. For several reasons, whether a given site is that of a medieval castle has not been taken to be a sufficient criterion for determining whether or not that site should be included in the list. Castles that have vanished or whose remains are barely visible are not listed, except for some important or well-known buildings and sites. Fortifications from before the medieval period are not listed, nor are architectural follies. In other respects it is difficult to identify clear and cons ...
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