[HPforGrownups] Hogwarts Castle musings (was: Re: Voldemort descendents )

[Edblanning at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 40345

OK, I'm going to have one more go at this topic,

*which only arose to show that Muggle history and wizard history don't 
necessarily mix and that we can't decree what wizards in the past did or 
didn't do by reference to known historical facts.* (1)

I think this is on topic. At least it certainly started on-topic. 
Unfortunately I may have to stray a bit in order to defend my position, for 
which I apologise in advance.

As far as I'm concerned, JKR could have set the whole thing in a fifth 
century spaceship. The same principle would apply. I'd happily go along with 
it in the context of this piece of literature, but it wouldn't be consonant 
with what we know of Muggle history.

Bernadette:
> Is it actually specified in the books that the castle (as it is
> currently seen) has always been that way?  
> 
No, I don't think that it does specify that Hogwarts has never changed.

> age of Hogwarts school isn't necessarily something 
> that wizards would create all at once, as we see it in the "current day."  I
> believe it is the school as an organization that is over a
> thousand years old.  Not the building it currently resides in.
> Or at least, not the current incarnation of the building.
> 

That is the sensible answer. JKR says that they built a 'castle', though. 

> 
> The school maybe have been founded a thousand years ago on that
> site, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the initial buildings
> were created in the high style we think of when we see castles
> today.  

No argument here.

> 
> of the type in the 900s, there WERE stone keeps in Britain--and
> certainly in many other parts of the European and North African
> 

But here, I beg to differ. My knowledge is of Saxon and Romanesque 
architecture, so I''ll confine myself to that here (meaning that I have no 
detailed knowledge of Scotland during what in England is the Saxon period). 
The Saxons, according to my understanding, did *not* build motte and bailey 
castles, wooden or otherwise. They had defended settlements (*burghs*) and in 
the late Saxon period, thegnly residences were sometimes surrounded by a 
defensive ditch . They also sometimes incorporated a 'thegnly tower', such as 
that which survives as the church tower at Earls Barton (Northants). But 
these were not the same as 'stone keeps' and their stone manifestations were 
late. That at Porchester Castle (don't get confused by the name, it's a Roman 
fort, whose defensive walls were repeatedly reutilised at later dates) wasn't 
built until the beginning of the 11th century.

But the motte and bailey was a Norman introduction. 

> 
> The White Tower in the Tower of London is within a century of the
> founding of Hogwarts, and even accounting for its changes over
> time, I could conceive of the Founders being able to build a
> similar keep as the basis for their school (I do like the idea
> that they had to make it a defensive building--thanks to whomever
> it was who mentioned it).  As Wizards, they could possibly have
> an easier time of putting a keep together simply because they
> 

The White Tower dates from c 1078, and was a secular building of a scale 
completely unprecedented in England since the end of the Roman Empire. It was 
very much a power statement designed to assert the authority of the new 
Norman regime.

But I guess the founders could have got the idea of a large stone keep from 
the continent where they were found earlier. 
The earliest reference to (not example of) castles of which I know does 
indeed date from 864, but that is in a decree from Charles the Bald, king of 
the western Franks. Castles in the medieval, monumental mould seem to have 
developed in the Loire valley, chiefly as a result of the endeavours of the 
notorious Fulk Nerra, Duke of Anjou (987-1040) who was rather fond of 
building them in furtherance of his expansionist aims.

The founders would have had to build such a keep by magic, though, unless 
they imported a large workforce from overseas. :-)

It was I who pointed out the defensive nature of castles, BTW. 

> <snip>
> As far as the subterranean chamber that became the Chamber of
> Secrets... even in Britain there are evidences of stone walled
> underground rooms... the various barrows and chambered tombs that
> are scattered about the island.  

Not quite on the scale of the Chamber of Secrets, though :-). Most barrows 
and chambered tombs are more or less at ground level with a mound raised 
*over* them. There are of course the Iron Age fogous of Cornwall, similar to 
Breton souterrains(2), but these are not very deep. Perhaps the nearest 
parallel is found in the underground chambers sometimes associated with 
Scottish Iron Age brochs (3), or the famous isolated Iron Age chamber at Mine 
Howe on Orkney (4). They too are not nearly on the same scale.

Again, I think that magic would *have* to have been employed to excavate 
something the size of the Chamber of Secrets.

Hey, perhaps we should just push the founding of Hogwarts all the way back to 
the Iron Age. Then it can have started life as a broch, complete with secret 
underground chamber, enchanted to grow with the basilisk it contained. ;-)

Eloise

1. I wrote that in desperation to get my point across, as I don't believe 
there is any such thing as historical 'truth'.
2.Underground chambers, associated with settlements, of unknown function, but 
possibly for the storage of seed grain.
3. Iron Age drystone towers found in Atlantic Scotland (architecturally very 
sophisticated for the region at the time).
4. For a virtual tour, visit 
http://www.channel4.com/history/timeteam/archive/2000minehow.html


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