There is no evidence of the young TE Lawrence visiting Falaise castle, not in his letters nor in a photograph. Which, given its peculiarity – that William the Conqueror was born here – is odd. In fact it seems an impossibility that he did not visit. The castle falls right in his area of interest – architecture, particularly fortifications, until the end of the 12th Century - and it lies directly en route between Chambois and Coutances, where he and his father rode in 1907. Well I’m going to visit, anyway.
I make my way up through Falaise town centre, past more municipal works (more piled slabs and kerb-stones behind temporary metal fencing). There are still a few bullet holes in the churches and town buildings, a reminder of what Falaise went through in World War II (a moment in the Normandy campaign, the Falaise Gap, was named after it; it was a determined stand by German troops when surrounded by the Allied Army two months after the Normandy landings). Close to the castle entrance is a museum devoted to Civilian Life under Wartime Occupation.
The castle gates rear above me, two beautiful, curved towers with just a hint of a talus slope, a firmer footing, coming out to meet me. Inside, Falaise castle is really a park within curtain walls. A stretch of grass falls away to lower ground, above which the donjon and tower soar on an outcrop of rock (the ‘falaise’ of the town’s name, I assume). There is some high ground in the middle distance, but before the development of cannon the castle would have made a trusty redoubt. An arrow could never have reached them, nor a boulder flung from a trebuchet.
At the reception and shop I meet Samuel, the castle press representative and he talks about Falaise, peppering his description with interesting facts about medieval lore, life and well… castles. Falaise as we see it now was built after the birth here in 1028 of William the Conqueror. (He is ‘Conqueror’ only to the British; to the French he is mere William of Normandy - Guillaume de Normandie).
We stroll along the tapering shoulder of high ground towards the donjon (keep) and tower, which stand on the rock protrusion. They are built in Anglo-Norman style and like the castle at Chambois, the keep has echoes of the Tower of London. Before we enter the keep, however, we must negotiate a very curious modernist construction, a slab curtain and two stacks of pumice-grey concrete, like blocks of weights in some giant’s gym. It’s a huge leap of the imagination to think the construction is anything but out of place, but at least it is clear what is not original.
The keep was built in 1123 by Henry I, 40 years after William the Conqueror died. The stone, some worked and some rubblestone, was carted from Caen. It would have looked very different in Henry’s day. The idea was that it was visible from afar, so it would have been brightly decorated. It was a status thing; pigment was very expensive – mineral lapiz could be used for blue, vegetable cochineal for red - but garish white, red, or royal purple would have been impressive in a world that was generally green and brown.
Inside, the walls of the keep are bare. But I have been handed an ipad with which you can dress the rooms as they would have appeared 900 years ago. I rather enjoy it. Richly-coloured wall-hangings flutter into view, with thrones and beds and hefty wooden furniture shimmering into place as I turn in each room - the chapel, the bedrooms and the Lord’s Hall. It gives a human sense where most medieval castles are shells, just floors, walls and fireplaces if you’re lucky. I am also amused to learn the derivation of our word ‘Exchequer’: apparently it comes somehow from the game of chess (échecs in French).
And then I spend half an hour exploring the outbuildings, the towers in the curtain wall where the poor sentries had to spend their days and nights on guard. Evidently bored people have been carving names and symbols into the walls here for centuries. I wonder which is the oldest and who left it there.
Before we part company, Samuel explains why there are so many fortifications in the region, in Normandy and beyond, in Brittany. Basically it was to protect the approaches to Paris, the seat of the Franks. By 900 the ‘Hommes du Nord’ – the Normans, originally Vikings, of course - were speaking French and had been settled in Normandy for a while, so in order to keep other invaders out the Franks concluded a treaty with them, encouraging them to defend the north coast and the territory along the River Seine. Farther south and inland in France there are fewer fortifications, but Normandy and the northern coastline is dotted with them. It is why, with his fascination for the medieval era, they made such a happy hunting ground for the young TE Lawrence.