The first five chapters of this book dealt, first, with the origin of the castle both in this country and on the Continent, a matter now very much again the focus of attention, though mainly by archaeologists, and, thereafter, dealt with the architectural history of the English castle, its development and decline. That architectural history has also received a good deal of attention during the last century or so, though it must be added that castles still lag far behind churches in the amount of study lavished upon them by professional architectural historians, and, further, like so much else in the medieval period, the later castle remains neglected by comparison with the earlier. A subsequent chapter dealt with castlebuilding, i.e. with the question of how castles were built, a subject of which very much more is known now than when this book was first planned and written over twenty years ago. Next, some attempt was made to answer the question which should matter most to historians, namely why castles were built, in terms of their function and value to contemporaries both in peace and war. On this subject it is still true to say that little work has been done, even though it ought to be self-evident that architecture cannot or should not be separated from the society which produces it and whose needs and aspirations it embodies. In this respect one may venture to suggest that the history of architecture is too important to be left to those professional architectural historians preoccupied with mere description, affinities and styles, and it would be difficult to say which is the more regrettable in the modern world of over-specialization, the divorce which tends too often to exist between ordinary and architectural historians, or that between the former and the archaeologists. Lastly, there yet remain some more general points and observations to round off this study of the castle in England and Wales, though it must be emphasized that so little work has hitherto been done upon the subject from any save the architectural and archaeological point of view that any discussion of these matters can only be both brief and tentative.