Editing Keep (section)

===Late medieval keeps (14th–16th centuries)===
{{Multiple image|direction=horizontal|align=right|image1=Château de Vincennes Paris FRA 002.jpg|image2=Plan of Chateau de Vincennes keep.png|width=170|caption2=|caption1=Keep at the [[Château de Vincennes]] in Paris, completed by 1360 as the heart of a palace fortress}}

The end of the medieval period saw a fresh resurgence in the building of keeps in western castles. Some castles continued to be built without keeps: the [[Bastille]] in the 1370s, for example, combined a now traditional quadrangular design with machicolated corner towers, gatehouses and moat; the walls, innovatively, were of equal height to the towers.<ref>Pounds, pp.265–6.</ref> This fashion became copied across French and in England, particularly amongst the ''[[nouveau riche]]'', for example at [[Nunney Castle|Nunney]]. The royalty and the very wealthiest in France, England and Spain, however, began to construct a small number of keeps on a much larger scale than before, in England sometimes termed tower keeps, as part of new palace fortresses.{{refn|The term "tower house" is also used in the literature to describe this class of building.|group=nb}} This shift reflected political and social pressures, such as the desire of the wealthiest lords to have privacy from their growing households of retainers, as well as the various architectural ideas being exchanged across the region, despite the ongoing [[Hundred Years War]] between France and England.<ref>Emery, p.206; Anderson, p.223.</ref>

The resurgence in French keep design began after the defeat of the royal armies at the battles of [[Battle of Crécy|Crécy]] in 1346 and [[Battle of Poitiers (1356)|Poitiers]] in 1356, which caused high levels of social unrest across the remaining French territories.<ref name=DurandPurtonP81>Durand, p.81; Purton, p.140.</ref> [[Charles V of France]] attempted to restore French royal authority and prestige through the construction of a new range of castles.<ref name=DurandPurtonP81/> The [[Château de Vincennes]], where a new keep was completed under Charles by 1380, was the first example of these ''palace fortresses''.<ref name=DurandPurtonP81/> The keep at Vincennes was highly innovative: six stories high, with a ''[[chemin de ronde]]'' running around the [[Machicolation|machicolated]] battlements; the luxuriously appointed building was protected by an ''[[enceinte]]'' wall that formed a "fortified envelope" around the keep.<ref>Durand, p.81; Purton, p.140; Anderson, p.208.</ref> The Vincennes keep was copied elsewhere across France, particularly as the French kings reconquered territories from the English, encouraging a style that emphasised very tall keeps with prominent machicolations.<ref>Purton, p.141.</ref> No allowance for the emerging new gunpowder weapons was made in these keeps, although later in the century [[gunport]]s were slowly being added, as for example by [[Charles VI of France|Charles VI]] to his keep at [[Saint-Malo]].<ref>Purton, p.141, 270.</ref>

{{Multiple image|direction=horizontal|align=left|image1=Penafiel-Espana0007.JPG|image2=Penafiel_castle_keep_rotated.png|width=190|caption2=|caption1=Keep at [[Peñafiel Castle]] in Spain, built in the mid-15th century}}
The French model spread into Iberia in the second half of the century, where the most powerful nobles in [[Kingdom of Castile|Castile]] built a number of similar tall keeps, such as that at [[Peñafiel Castle|Peñafiel]], taking advantage of the weakness of the Castilian Crown during the period.<ref>Anderson, p.237.</ref> [[Henry IV of Castile]] responded in the 15th century by creating a sequence of royal castles with prominent keeps at the [[Castle of La Mota]], [[Portillo, Valladolid|Portillo]], and [[Alcázar of Segovia]]: built to particular proportions, these keeps became known as a key element of the Valladolid school of Spanish castle design.<ref name=KaufmanKaufmanP284>Kaufmann and Kaufmann, p.284.</ref> Smaller versions of these keeps were subsequently built by many aspiring new aristocracy in Spain, including many converted [[Jew]]s, keen to improve their social prestige and position in society.<ref name=KaufmanKaufmanP284/> The French model of tall keeps was also echoed in some German castles, such as that at [[Karlštejn]], although the layout and positioning of these towers still followed the existing ''bergfried'' model, rather than that in western castles.<ref>Anderson, p.174.</ref> An other impressive 15th century metiterenian castle keep is the keep of the [[Kolossi Castle]], in [[Cyprus]], a three floor square keep, 21 meters high. {{Multiple image|direction=horizontal|align=right|image1=KOLOSSI 01.jpg|image2=Κάστρο Κολοσιού κάτοψη.jpg|width=190|caption2=|caption1=Keep at [[Kolossi Castle]] in [[Cyprus]], built in the 1454}}

The 15th and 16th centuries saw a small number of English and occasional Welsh castles develop still grander keeps.<ref>Pounds, p.271; Johnson (2002), p.111.</ref> The first of these large ''tower keeps'' were built in the north of England during the 14th century, at locations such as [[Warkworth Castle|Warkworth]]. They were probably partially inspired by designs in France, but they also reflected the improvements in the security along the Scottish border during the period, and the regional rise of major noble families such as the [[Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland|Percies]] and the [[House of Neville|Nevilles]], whose wealth encouraged a surge in castle building at the end of the 14th century.<ref>Emery, pp.14–5.</ref> New castles at [[Raby Castle|Raby]], [[Bolton Castle|Bolton]], and Warkworth Castle took the quadrangular castle styles of the south and combined them with exceptionally large tower keeps to form a distinctive, northern style.<ref>King, pp.152–3.</ref> Built by major noble houses, these castles were typically even more opulent than the smaller castles like Nunney, built by the ''nouveau riche''.<ref>King, p.152.</ref> They marked what historian Anthony Emery has described as a "...second peak of castle building in England and Wales," following on from the Edwardian designs at the end of the 14th century.<ref>Emery, p.25.</ref>

In the 15th century, the fashion for the creation of very expensive, French-influenced palatial castles featuring complex tower keeps spread, with new keeps being built at [[Wardour Castle|Wardour]], [[Tattershall Castle|Tattershall]], and [[Raglan Castle]].<ref name=Pounds1994P271>Pounds, p.271.</ref> In central and eastern England, some keeps began to be built in brick, with [[Caister Castle|Caister]] and Tattershall forming examples of this trend.<ref>Creighton and Higham, p.54.</ref> In Scotland, the construction of [[Holyrood Palace|Holyrood Great Tower]] between 1528 and 1532 drew on this English tradition, but incorporated additional French influences to produce a highly secure but comfortable keep, guarded by a gun park.<ref>Dunbar, pp.69–70.</ref> These tower keeps were expensive buildings to construct, each built to a unique design for a specific lord and, as historian Norman Pounds has suggested, they "...were designed to allow very rich men to live in luxury and splendour."<ref>Pounds, p.270.</ref>
{{Multiple image|direction=horizontal|align=left|image1=Warkworth Castle 2.jpg|image2=Warkworth keep.jpg|width=190|caption2=|caption1=Keep at [[Warkworth Castle]] in [[Northumberland]], England, a large tower keep built during the 1370s}}

At the same time as these keeps were being built by the extremely wealthy, much smaller, keep-like structures called [[tower house]]s or [[peel tower]]s were built across Ireland, Scotland, and northern England, often by relatively poorer local lords and landowners.<ref>Emery, p.26; Toy (1985), p.225.</ref>{{refn|Although [[tower house]]s are typically associated with smaller landowners, in Scotland larger tower houses were also built by the rich.<ref>Tabraham, p.80.</ref>|group=nb}} It was originally argued that Irish tower houses were based on the Scottish design, but the pattern of development of such castles in Ireland does not support this hypothesis.<ref>Barry, p.223.</ref> A tower house would typically be a tall, square, stone-built, crenelated building; Scottish and Ulster tower houses were often also surrounded by a [[barmkin|barmkyn]] or [[bawn]] wall.<ref>Toy (1985), p.224; Reid, p.33.</ref> Most academics have concluded that tower houses should not be classified as keeps but rather as a form of fortified house.<ref>Pettifer (2000b), p.320.</ref>

As the 16th century progressed, keeps fell out of fashion once again. In England, the gatehouse also began to supplant the keep as the key focus for a new castle development.<ref name=ThompsonPP73>Thompson (1994), pp.73, 125.</ref> By the 15th century, it was increasingly unusual for a lord to build both a keep and a large gatehouse at the same castle, and by the early 16th century, the gatehouse had easily overtaken the keep as the more fashionable feature: indeed, almost no new keeps were built in England after this period.<ref name=ThompsonPP73/> The classical [[Palladian]] style began to dominate European architecture during the 17th century, causing a further move away from the use of keeps. Buildings in this style usually required considerable space for the [[enfilade (architecture)|enfiladed]] formal rooms that became essential for modern palaces by the middle of the century, and this style was impossible to fit into a traditional keep.<ref>Brindle and Kerr, p.50.</ref>{{refn|As Edward Corp has illustrated in the case of the exiled [[James II of England|James II]], operating a modern 17th century court within an older style of building could be extremely challenging.<ref>Corp, p.241.</ref>|group=nb}} The keep at [[Bolsover Castle]] in England was one of the few to be built as part of a Palladian design.<ref>Gomme and Maguire, pp.69–72.</ref>