T. E. Lawrence’s Undergraduate Dissertation – Page 62

shown in the readiness with which they borrowed or adapted the arts, and language, and literature of their neighbours. It would be more natural to find progress in architecture in the tenth century proceeding from Provence, where the little Romanesque keep of Les Baux may quite possibly be older than the keeps of Normandy. Also it has been suggested that in Maine are examples which must be placed before any built by the Normans themselves : a very early keep still exists at Langeais behind the monstrous chateau of the 15th century. There can however be no doubt that the keep took its final shape under the hands of William the Conqueror, whose White Tower in London set the fashion, and became the model for rather more than 50 keeps in England, and nearly as many in Northern France. It is perfectly evident that the Tower of London is not the first of its kind ; it is too certain in all its details to be an experiment, but the castle at Rouen, from which it is sometimes supposed to have been copied, has conveniently disappeared, and in Normandy the two or three specimens which might possibly be pre-conquest are very poor and uninteresting.(1) Probably Duke William discouraged the building of keeps by his nobles as far as possible, until the conquest of England laid open a huge field for the activity of every Norman architect and man at arms. ---------------------------------------------------------- (1) They are figured in De Caumont's Abecedaire d'Archeologie, pp. 308 - 310.