Page 608 - Het middeleeuwse kastelenlandschap van het Oversticht - Diana Spiekhout

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Summary
We also see that, between 1350 and 1400, either alone or in cooperation with the bishop, the cities conducted various expeditions against individual castle lords. The purpose of these tours was to demolish the defensive architecture of the noble homes. As stated previously, the cities’ residents would sometimes demolish the fortifications themselves. Sometimes, however, they would purchase a castle for the purpose of demolishing the entire structure. The cities in Salland also worked with the bishop to ensure that nobles did not build any more castles with architecture intended to serve a military purpose. Around 1380, this mainly pertained to low-lying noble homes with a strong main castle surrounded by multiple moats and sometimes bulwarks. This measure meant that after around 1380 in Salland and roughly 1400 in the rest of the Oversticht region, none of the noble homes were left with architecture with a military purpose or only a very limited amount.
Parallel to this development was the securing of the Oversticht borders by means of the construction of castles and land ditches (landweren). First, the bishop (mainly Jan van Arkel and Floris van Wevelinkhoven) was able to secure Salland land in cooperation with the cities of Zwolle, Deventer and Kampen with the construction of Arkelstein, Waardenborg, Hardenberg and the creation of the Salland land ditch. These defences were located in strategic places in the landscape, mainly at an intersection between a border and a road or waterway. A difference with the previous periods was that territorial border castle building was now systematically organized. The bishop no longer entrusted the management of these castles to a burgrave whose title was granted in fealty, but to a dischargeable castellan. This way, he hoped to prevent the managers from taking ownership of the castles in their care. Because cities now often worked with the bishop, they were also involved in the appointment of castellans. They also constructed their own fortifications.
In the end, Frederik van Blankenheim was the man who knew how to consolidate the bishop’s territorial power in other parts of the Oversticht region, including in Twente, Drenthe and the Gorecht area. During his episcopate, the number of permanent episcopal castles was greatly expanded with the construction of Venebrugge, Slingeborg and Blankenham, the purchase and buyback of Kuinre and the recapture of Coevorden. In the case of the two latter castles, Van Blankenheim had a new castle built because the existing structures apparently did not meet his needs. Vollenhove continued to function throughout that time and the Twente/ Salland land ditch and the castle at Venebrugge were also constructed during the time of Van Blankenheim. Five temporary fortifications and a land defence ditch at Groningen were also erected at the bishop’s request, in the context of the war between Utrecht and Groningen. At the end of the war, these fortifications were demolished again. But Van Blankenheim had more up his sleeve, such as his plans to purchase Blankenborg near Haaksbergen. By protecting the borders of this area with land ditches and castles, the bishop and the cities hoped to be able to ward off external threats and manage internal order. The bishop’s castles now functioned as military, legal, economic and administrative centres of the late medieval territorial civil service. These politics were continued under the reign of Rudolf van Diepenholt, who went on to acquire Blankenborg and who owned the castle of Enschede. As a result of all of the above, by 1450, the entire Oversticht area had grown into a closed off and secure territory with castles and land ditches.
The analysis of the territorial castle landscape in chapter three revealed two noteworthy phenomena. First, we noticed that the two oldest castles had a deviating location in the landscape compared to other researched castle sites, in that they were constructed in the wilderness. A second observation was that, on the map of the Oversticht area, several noteworthy concentrations of castles and possible castles are visible; namely around the city of Groningen, the north of the Drenthe area, the southwest of Drenthe, the southwest of Twente, along the Regge and Vecht rivers and along the IJssel river between the cities of Deventer and Zwolle.
In chapters four and five, we studied two castle landscapes at the local and micro-regional level at a more detailed and interdisciplinary level, to get more clarity on these phenomena. The model of the castle landscape formed became the guiding principle for the design of