‘The Chamber called Gloriette’ : Living at Leisure in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Castles

Ashbee, Jeremy A.

‘The Chamber called Gloriette’ : Living at Leisure in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Castles

Resource type

Journal article

Creator (person)

Ashbee, Jeremy A.

Date published

July 18, 2013

Abstract

Recent research at Chepstow Castle has identified a chamber known by the name ‘Gloriette’. Other buildings with this name have previously been identified at Corfe, Leeds and Hesdin Castles and at Canterbury Cathedral Priory. ‘Gloriette’ has usually been explained as a reference to a type of garden building in the Islamic world, transposed to northern Europe either from Spain or Sicily, though the word's etymology, and the particularities of each site make this interpretation difficult. The architectural differences between oriental garden pavilions and 13th-century Gothic chambers, and the particular association of the term with castles rather than unfortified manors, suggest an alternative meaning. It is proposed that ‘Gloriette’ was more immediately a reference to a 12th-century chanson de geste, ‘la Prise d'Orange’, in which the name was used for an exotic marble tower. In this chanson, ‘Gloriette’ was the scene of romantic and military adventures of the kind to which Christian knights might aspire. However, the recurrent association of the word with Islamic Spain suggests that European patrons adopted it with these connotations of a sophisticated alien culture in mind.