At a time when archaeology was still finding its feet, Ella Sophia Armitage undertook the ambitious task of mapping Britain's Norman inheritance. This 1912 study traces the seismic architectural shift that followed 1066, showing how the Normans transformed a landscape of Anglo-Saxon and Danish earthworks into something altogether more permanent: the stone castle that would dominate European defense for centuries. Armitage turns her attention to what others had overlooked. The forgotten earthworks, the moated mounds, the subtle earthworks that preceded the great stone keeps. She understood these were not mere precursors but essential threads in a feudal tapestry, clues to how castles functioned as expressions of Norman power stitched across the British landscape. For the reader willing to dig into its pages, this remains a foundational text on how one conquest literally reshaped the ground beneath a nation's feet.
