Living on the Edge: Cheshire Castles in Context

Landscape studies have seen considerable recent debate, resulting in the development of an interdisciplinary research environment, thus reinvigorating castle studies by promoting new approaches and interpretations. However, in this work, the county of Cheshire in north-west England has been hitherto ignored, perhaps because few medieval documents exist for the county, and because relatively little archaeological excavations and survey have been undertaken on the county’s castles. Interdisciplinary landscape research for Cheshire’s castles therefore distinguishes itself from previous studies, in its recognition, definition and presentation of the entire medieval county of Cheshire as a medieval frontier. Considered separate from England by its contemporaries, this frontier, and the unique power of the earls of Chester, provided the contexts for the multifarious purposes and forms of Cheshire’s castles. Placing the construction of the castle within the political framework of Anglo-Welsh social and political relations is therefore an original dimension of this paper to both castle studies and to the study of the medieval March of Wales. However, the frontier of Cheshire also had influence beyond its boundaries: it was representative, and indeed pivotal, to changes within the British Isles. The county was clearly and intrinsically linked with the overall political, social and economic dynamics of not only England, but also Wales and the Irish Sea Province. This paper therefore questions traditional documentary and secondary source narratives, which have taken on divisive Welsh versus English cultural identities based on false or irrelevant, modern, and thus constrictive, historic time periods and tenurial boundaries.