CHAPTER II 



NORMAN TOWER GARDEN, WINDSOR CASTLE 



The Round Tower at Windsor dominates the landscape for 

 miles around. It is pre-eminently the centre, the heart so to 

 speak, of the supremely magnificent building, and from its 

 summit ever flies the flag of England to announce Imperial 

 ownership, or the Royal Standard to proclaim the personal 

 presence of the Sovereign. In Norman William's time it was 

 the keep and ultimate stronghold of the castle, and was for 

 centuries the residence of its Constable or governor. The 

 tower is built on a lofty artificial mound which was originally 

 encircled by a deep fosse, or moat. It is on the steep banks 

 of the old mound, and in what remains of the moat, that 

 Norman Tower garden is situated. 



There is some room to doubt whether the moat was ever 

 intended for water. A dry fosse or ditch would seem to be 

 sufficient protection from hand-to-hand attack on a position 

 of such strength. At all events, it is probable that from the 

 time of Henry III., if not before, the need for a water-moat 

 here disappeared, as the outworks of the castle were then con- 

 siderably strengthened. And again, in Edward III.'s reign, 

 between 1356 and 1369, an almost complete re-building, under 

 the famous William de Wykeham, entirely altered the appear- 

 ance of that part of the castle near Round Tower. Some 

 forty or fifty years after this important change, the first direct 

 evidence of the existence of a garden in the moat is to be 

 found in a poem by King James I. of Scotland, who was im- 

 prisoned in Norman Tower early , in the fifteenth century. 

 The window of the room he is known to have occupied has 



only one outlook, and he distinctly alludes to a garden visible 



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