How Many Bricks are there at Tattershall Castle?

摘要

The Ancient Monuments Consolidation and Amendment Bill of 1913 was introduced in the House of Lords by the Conservative peer, George Nathaniel Curzon (1859-1925), who between 1911 and 1921 held the title, first Earl Curzon of Kedleston, before being raised to the rank of Marquess in the Birthday Honours (4 June) 1921 in title and style of the Marquess Curzon of Kedleston. Writing about Lord Curzon's sponsorship of the bill which became the Ancient Monuments Consolidation and Amendment Act of 1913, in his column in The Guardian on Saturday 2 February 2012, the journalist Ian Jack wrote: Amongst the most surprising buildings to find in the English landscape is Tattershall Castle, which shoots up straight from the vegetable flatlands of Lincolnshire and could easily be mistaken for a period reproduction, looking new and almost too castle-like, more a Victorian fantasy than a defensible tower built in the 15th century from 700,000 well-laid bricks. The remark "700,000 well-laid bricks" set the present writer thinking and he turned to the building accounts for Tattershall Castle, the originals of which are in Latin. The Latin accounts were transcribed by the late W. Douglas Simpson and published with an English translation over sixty years ago, in 1960 and re-issued in 2010.