A Room With A View? Looking Outwards From Late Medieval Harewood

Abstract

The consideration of contemporary ‘designed landscapes’ around late medieval castles is now well-established. However, all too often the consideration of such a landscape is not accompanied by an equally detailed study of the building from which it was viewed, particularly the ‘viewing windows’—windows suggested to be deliberately placed within a building to provide a view over, across or towards a specific element of a designed landscape or the wider natural landscape. This paper discusses such windows, and also wall-walks, within the architectural context of one particular castle. It identifies three basic questions which should be asked in relation to any view (how did the viewer look, what were they looking at and why did they choose to look at it?), and seeks to demonstrate that windows and wall-walks intervene between the viewer and the view to the same degree as they facilitate the act of looking. An appreciation of these processes is crucial to understanding late medieval concepts of viewing.