Talk:List of castles in England/Archive 1

Colchester Castle
Colchester Castle is listed on this page as being "Privately Owned", which is incorrect. The article states ownership correctly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Merenta  (talk • contribs)  18:14, 20 October 2004 (UTC)

Counties
This listing should be under the Traditional Counties of England, for most of the castles were built in feudal times and before the recent changes in government administration over boundaries. Castles are as useful today as the archaic address system, whereby one can write in the Trad. Co. form. The castles had a territorial system based upon the T.C. and this article is ignorant of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ScapegoatVandal  (talk • contribs)  23:39, 11 June 2005 (UTC)


 * I disagree - the medieval counties were actually very different to the "traditional counties" anyway, and changed significantly over the medieval period. VivaEmilyDavies 20:00, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Categories
Does this page carry the same information that Category:Castles_In_England carries? Seems that there are two different areas with roughly the same information. Ianmccurdy 16:22, 15 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I guess the advantage of a list is that these include mentions of castles that aren't really worthy of an article of their own accord.

Castle text
There is a big chunk of text on the castle page, headed 'Influence of castles in Britain' :Supergolden:: 11:07, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I think the section should be made a standalone article linked from that article and from the relevant England historical articles. Saga City 12:04, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, move to Influence of castles in England then? Or, as an alternative, move this list page to List of castles in England, and move the section to Castles in England, with a view to expanding it into a proper overview of the subject. This is an idea that has been discussed regarding Castles in Scotland, and was generally met favourably, though not yet implemented. :Supergolden:: 13:06, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I prefer the alternative you suggest, moving this page to List of castles in England (which fits better with the rest of the pages in Category:Lists of castles) and moving the section to Castles in England. There's much more to say about English castles (history, architecture, etc.) than simply their influence.
 * In any case, the section needs to be reworked - it seems to be taken from the 1911 Britannica (judging by the original diff. (Assuming it wasn't taken from this page which has the same content...) --David Edgar 17:18, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * You're right, its from EB 1911 . Definitely a need to expand, but its a start. I may just have to be bold and move this.:Supergolden:: 10:15, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

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BetacommandBot (talk) 05:15, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Greater Manchester
Would anyone object if I were to make a separate table for the castles in Greater Manchester and move into it the castles that are now in the historic county of Cheshire, etc.? Peter I. Vardy (talk) 10:50, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Done. Peter I. Vardy (talk) 13:02, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Fort or castle ?
Not sure of your terms of reference, if a fort is classed as a castle then you have the Roman fort in Castlefields, Manchester. Forgive me if I am way off topic.......... Phil aka Geotek (talk) 02:10, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It seems to be there as Manchester Castle. Peter I. Vardy (talk) 12:35, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Not quite, Manchester Castle is different to the Roman fort in Manchester. It depends what your definition of a castle is. My own opinion is that Roman fortifications should not be included in this article, although the word castle derives from castellum, Latin for 'little fort' or 'refuge'. Nev1 (talk) 22:14, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Overhaul
In its present state, this article isn't very helpful, it's not much more than a list of names. I think maybe new tables need to be introduced with more information such as the dates of construction and perhaps the type of castle. Any thoughts on what else could be done to improve this? Nev1 (talk) 22:25, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed. The format used on the  List of Castles in Scotland page might be a good starting point.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Findan (talk • contribs) 20:36, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Hadlow Castle
Should Hadlow Castle be added to the Kent section? Mjroots (talk) 20:35, 24 February 2010 (UTC)


 * As Hadlow dates from the late 18th century it is not a castle.
 * On a related note, what is and is not a castle is a slightly wooly area, but I think if this list goes by D J Cathcart King's Castellarium Anglicanum (a gazetteer of castles in England and Wales) there should be little room for arguement as the decision of what is and is not a castle is taken away from editors. That said, the list is incomplete and pretty poor really. Nev1 (talk) 20:41, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Question on artillery forts
It's great to see Paravane giving the article some much needed TLC. The list currently includes artillery forts/Henrican castles and I was wondering what people's thoughts are on this. I'm in two minds. Castellarium Anglicanum includes them, but D. J. Cathcart King was criticised for doing so. However, he argued that as his attempt was to create a comprehensive index, it was better to be as inclusive as possible, which may be analogous to what this article should be attempting. Nev1 (talk) 11:37, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I think, like tower houses, they are on the cusp, and should be included. They were considered castles at the time, and most volumes I've read on English castles end with a chapter on them. I'd not include the post-Civil War coastal forts though, which seem to me to fall the wrong side of the line (even if architecturally similar). Hchc2009 (talk) 12:34, 5 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm glad my efforts have been noticed! I'm not significantly changing what's listed, except to try to reduce the impact of castles of which little or nothing remains.  My view is that the list should - as it already does - cover all types of buildings that are commonly described and accepted as castles, rather than hold to a strict definition, especially since there will now be an outline description and date for each building.  So for instance I've added Peckforton Castle - again - but I plan to remove Barbury and Castle Ashby. Paravane (talk) 15:39, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I can only agree with the above sentiments. Could we go further and flag, for example, follies as such and make it clear that they're not castles? The advantage of doing so would to stop well-intentioned others from adding entries to the list that would not be so flagged. S a g a C i t y (talk) 15:53, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Unless we list every building that includes the word 'castle' in its name, there'll always be a problem with spurious entries being added. There very much needs to be a preamble to the list which outlines the kinds of buildings included, and that could incorporate a simple listing of buildings that do not belong in the main list, such as Maiden Castle, Severndroog Castle and any faux ruined castles built as garden ornaments.  Paravane (talk) 16:37, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The other problem that will continue to be an issue, I suspect, is the sheer number of castles in England (even on a conservative basis!) - if the list here was fully fleshed out, particularly if it including those castles where earthworks remain (which in some cases are quite significant), I worry that it would become unmanageably long. I have wondered in the past if the list might not ultimately work better if it broke down by county, but then left each county list page to provide the details of the individual castles. But in the meantime, nicely done! Hchc2009 (talk) 17:03, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm more than happy with the answer to my question on scope. This looks to be shaping up very interestingly. As images are being integrated in the tables, we can probably remove the ribbon of images down the right hand side of the list which I added mostly as decoration (it was also a way of highlighting the more interesting castles in what at the time was a pretty drab list). The issue of length has put me off having a go at the list before. Paravane's approach of excluding those of which little remains is an interesting approach; sub-lists, such as list of castles in Gloucestershire could then go into much greater detail as Hchc2009 says and of course include these vanished castles. Would it be useful to have a co-ordinates column? As the list has been significantly changed already, this may be a pain to go back and do but I'd be happy to help with that if we can decide on how to do it. Nev1 (talk) 14:36, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I've excluded a Location column because of the extra work! If added I'd favour it being the last column.  I agree that sublists, as exist for Cheshire and others, are a good way to provide extra details and pursue completeness.  Most of the images in the ribbon will be included in the lists though smaller, I plan to remove them when/if I get to the top of the list, possibly retain a few alongside some introductory text. Paravane (talk) 15:05, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Isle of Man
There seems currently to be an anomaly in that there are lists of castles for England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and the Channel Isles, together covering all of the British Isles, but not the Isle of Man. Since there are, I think, only 2 castles in the Isle of Man, ignoring mock castles, a separate list would seem inappropriate. One possibility would be to include the IOM in one of the other lists, and arguably the most appropriate would be the list for England, on the grounds of historical and of popular association. The list could be renamed List of castles in England and the Isle of Man. Since Castle Rushen in the IOM is considered one of the finest in the British Isles, it is a pity for it not to be listed somewhere, other than the global List of castles page. Does anyone have any thoughts? Paravane (talk) 23:03, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Created new list for Isle of Man with 6 entries. Paravane (talk) 20:45, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

ones missing in hampshire and IOW

 * Possibly St Andrew's castle at Hamble-le-Rice although its unclear if it was actualy a castle
 * Godshill castle very little left
 * merdon castle some walls remain
 * Two castles in Crondall (see Crondall) very little left

Taken from The Castles of Hampshire & Isle of Wight.©Geni 00:33, 12 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I've added all those at the top of the Hampshire list. St. Andrew's Castle is listed as a  Henrician fort, so the Hamble-le-Rice page should perhaps be edited.  The Hursley entry also seems misleading, Merdon castle is listed as a motte and bailey with earthwork remains, as well as a building at risk. Paravane (talk) 20:57, 12 May 2011 (UTC)


 * since we now have an article on Warblington Castle and it has a fair bit of stonework standing could be promoted into the list proper?©Geni 07:10, 29 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Done. It's a marginal case I think, a single slender turret is not much and it seems less than certain that it was actually a fortified building, but it's remarkably tall and we now have a photograph! Paravane (talk) 20:00, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Location maps
Location maps would be more valuable if each site on the map could be made clickable to access Geohack mapping. This would solve the problem of providing location data for all the castle sites. Currently the whole map image is clickable to access the larger image. All that is necessary in the html is to provide the same clickable feature for each of the red/green location images, supplying the required href for each. This feature seems not to be currently available in Location map~, but it should be very straightforward to implement. Does anyone know whether this facility is available, or has been requested, or how best to go about requesting it? Paravane (talk) 17:21, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
 * The maps look good, although - as ever! - I worry about the length of the article if they're done for all of the counties. Cumbria and Northumberland and some of the "busier" maps are going to be hard work, I think - but we can deal with that when we get there. Hchc2009 (talk) 18:52, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
 * The geohack facility looks set to be implemented, it will probably require using the template, which is rather different from the  used so far.  See Template talk:Location map‎. Paravane (talk) 21:07, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Since Northumberland was one of the counties for which maps might be too densely populated, I have tried programming it in (the old method for now I'm afraid).
 * As expected, the map is extremely busy so I'm not at all convinced that it will work. I've done one with labels and without labels.  I haven't put any on the main page.
 * As the list of castle remnants for such counties are quite long, we can at least use a larger map. I've included the list and map below so you can see the size comparison.
 * What do you think?

Castles of which little or nothing remains include:
 * Burradon Tower,
 * Cornhill Castle,
 * Dally Castle,
 * Duddo Tower,
 * Ford Parson's Tower,
 * Great Tosson Tower,
 * Haltwhistle Castle,
 * Heiferlaw Tower,
 * Hepple Tower,
 * Hethpool Tower,
 * Howtel Tower,
 * Kyloe Tower,
 * Little Swinburne Tower,
 * Lowick Castle,
 * Nafferton Castle,
 * Overgrass Tower,
 * Ponteland Castle,
 * Simonburn Castle,
 * Staward Peel,
 * Tarset Castle,
 * Thornton Tower,
 * Warden Castle,
 * Wark Castle,
 * Welton Hall,
 * West Lilburn Tower and
 * Widdrington Castle


 * The one without labels does look neater, if that is preferred, should more colours be used to denote different types of castle? Or we could use the symbols used in the tables as I've done for Berkshire below?  Just thoughts if labels won't work...


 * And I know I need to use the new location map code, I haven't done here because I'm just fielding ideas...


 * Mjb1981 (talk) 20:22, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I have increased the width of the labelled version from 450 to 550, which does improve the appearance. Perhaps a little tweaking can improve it again, e.g. Cornhill and Whittingham.  A mammoth effort!  It's much more useful with labels than without.  Looks like Burradon belongs in Tyne and Wear.  Paravane (talk) 20:54, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Tweaked. Converting to  will reduce font size slightly. Paravane (talk) 23:05, 21 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I quite like the one with the labels, but it is large; it would work nicely in a specific "List of castles in Xshire" article, I think, but it might be too big combined with a lot of other maps in this article. I couldn't really make out the one with just the symbols on it. Hchc2009 (talk) 05:05, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Other big maps will be needed for Cumbria, Herefordshire and Shropshire in particular. I suspect that the majority view will be that a full set of around 40 maps, a number of them large, added to a page that is already ~1MB, is going to overload the page.  One possibility might be to create a new page to put all the maps on, say Maps of castles in England by county, and link to it from the List of castles in England page, county by county.  Paravane (talk) 15:56, 22 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I've put a couple more of the smaller maps up but I tend to agree that it probably isn't workable for bigger maps. I like the idea of a maps page which we can link to, although it could be something like Maps of castles in Britain by county which could be linked to from the pages of the respective countries.
 * Mjb1981 (talk) 20:28, 22 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Better Maps of castles in the United Kingdom by county than Maps of castles in Britain by county, a lot of castles, a lot of maps. Paravane (talk) 20:50, 25 July 2011 (UTC)


 * As you've no doubt noticed, I've been hiding some maps to make the page appear neater, I think perhaps all maps should be hidden in this way (example below). I've also used two maps for Lancashire as there was a lot of castles in one part.  What is the consensus on the second map idea?
 * Although I've been doing a few of these maps each week, I won't be able to do so many over the next few weeks but I still intend to continue.
 * Two maps together take a lot of space anyway, I think I'd prefer one map given that it's hidden. Others' experience may vary but I find this page now desperately slow to load, given limited memory (1GB), it may be better to transfer the maps to a new page as discussed, and replace the 'Map [Show]' with a link to the map on a separate page.  Good progress, there's a lot of maps now! Paravane (talk) 18:03, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Mjb1981 (talk) 16:59, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

East Riding of Yorkshire
I've just done the map for this county, and it would appear that two castles listed in this section are actually in North Yorks... Mjb1981 (talk) 16:46, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Both used to be in the East Riding, now apparently in North Yorkshire, I have moved them. Paravane (talk) 18:03, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Tagged: Very long
I've tagged this as very long - what with all the prose, references, tables, images and maps this article now exceeds 322,000 bytes - even on my 10MB Broadband the page takes ages to load, and the edit page often crashes on submitting new contribs suggesting that even Wiki servers have some difficult with this much data. Instead of piling more are more data into the article, common sense needs applying, and the article should probably be split into smaller articles to make it more manageable for everyone. See WP:SIZERULE which recommends splitting at 100KB - this article is more than 3x that and in danger of becoming carried away with itself.  Ma &reg;&copy; usBr iti sh [talk] 09:57, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * It's creaking badly on mine as well. One option would perhaps for us to start splitting off the county lists (e.g. like the List of castles in Somerset, etc.) in a systematic way, allowing us to trim back the parent article. Hchc2009 (talk) 10:31, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, I don't plan on helping with splitting, because there are a few primary contributors who are best suited to determine what needs doing precisely who should discuss it soon and come to an agreement before someone uninvolved takes an axe to the article and starts slicing it up without consensus. All I can suggest is if you split one off, you split all - anyone searching for "castles in 'X' county" either needs to be presented with one accessible page (which this article is not due to its size) or a list of ALL counties - not "counties 'A', 'F' and 'L'" whilst the rest are still muddled up in "Castles in England", because it would be confusing and sloppy. A series of articles, one per county, with a lead, map and table, would be better suited to this: a mini Castles project, in a way - with a uniform set of articles, all of which could be managed easily. Perhaps even a Portal would benefit that many articles, if it's permitted to create one for that purpose, to act as an index for all those counties.  Ma &reg;&copy; usBr iti sh [talk] 10:47, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree it's too long: on my computer the reflist and the bibliography are not being transcluded correctly; all I am seeing is "Template:Reflist" and "Template:Cite book". In fact, the article is in the hidden category Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded, so a fix is needed fairly urgently. An alternative to splitting by county could be splitting by region, e.g. East of England, North West England, etc. (When splitting, ensure an attribution history is maintained, e.g. by use of and  on the talk pages.) --   Dr Greg   talk  13:38, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * It got put into that category as a result of the very long tag, no one put it there, it's automatically added. And yes, the Refs/Books templates are screwed up.. maybe due to the page length exceeding wiki server limits, to prevent DoS attacks, etc.  Ma &reg;&copy; usBr iti sh [talk] 14:49, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I do not recall any complaints about length prior to the addition of the maps. If the length was - just about - acceptable before any maps were added, they could all be moved to a separate page as has been suggested above.  Maps apart, the page had reached a stable state and should not grow any further.   The maps could also be added to individual county pages as has been done for Somerset.  Existing county lists perform a different role, splitting into counties would lose the overview that this list provides.  If there are no objections, I will move the maps and see where that leaves us. Paravane (talk) 15:28, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * It will still leave it over 100KB - it was slow before the maps were added, it's worse now. It's not just the maps to blame - there are hundreds of images and nearly 500 references being loaded - that's a lot for the server to parse, and hard for browsers to take, hence why wiki has a size limit, to keep things smooth running. This article is bound to put a lot of strain on the server, and really needs making more manageable, for all parties concerned. Besides that, they're not "complaints", they are valid "concerns".  Ma &reg;&copy; usBr iti sh [talk] 15:38, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * It did parse better before the maps though. I'd agree with you that these aren't complaints - Paravane and Mjb1981 have built up the material here in a tremendous way: it's wonderful that we've so many maps and images now that we can even be talking about the options for splitting material! Hchc2009 (talk) 15:40, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, don't get me wrong they've done a fookin-fantastic job on getting it done - but it's a BIG subject, really worthy of a WikiProject or Task Force of it's own - thousands of castles, and ruins - but we have to be realistic here - one page is not enough for them all, especially if you want to provide details, a key, tables, maps, etc - it's just too much for one article to handle. Heck, it's too much for most books to publish in one volume, let alone a server.  Ma &reg;&copy; usBr iti sh [talk] 15:45, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

At 256,221 bytes article is still approx. 2.5x in excess of Wiki's 100Kb (102,400 bytes) WP:SIZERULE, despite reduction attempts. Maps of castles in England by county also seems pointless per se - a disassociated page of maps, with no reference points or prose to support them - or as wiki puts it - unencyclopedic - very long should not have been removed by a principal author, but an uninvolved or new reviewing editor, due to potential COI issues associated with the tag and authors. As it stands it is still an impractical page of too much data to load, edit, and save despite its presentation. Removal of maps has not really helped the matter.. it's like cutting your speed down from 80mph to 60mph when the limit is still 25mph - at the end of the day it's still over, and it's a bit backhanded to presume otherwise over other editors.  Ma &reg;&copy; usBr iti sh [talk] 22:07, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Some points:
 * Your edit of 9th July increased the size from 208,525 to 228,260 bytes, simply to support sorting by dates, but you gave no indication then - or at any time prior to 29th August, although the issue of size has been discussed above in connection with the addition of maps - that you regarded this as an 'impractical page'.
 * The maps are referenced systematically by county on this page.
 * WP:SIZERULE includes the advice that "These guidelines... apply less strongly to list articles".
 * This page has reached a stable state. Aside from edits associated with the addition of maps, almost all edits in recent months have been in response to comments by reviewers, including yourself.  If the page is edited relatively rarely, then any inconvenience of editing owing to size will be relatively rarely experienced.
 * When first submitted for review in June, the page was less than 150k in size. Almost all of the increase in size since then has been in response to reviewers' comments.  My understanding was that those comments were intended to improve the page, not bring about its destruction. Paravane (talk) 23:15, 1 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Overly defensive, aren't we?
 * My edit on 9th of July was in reply to your Peer Review, but also before I was even aware WP:SIZERULE existed. Moot point.
 * This is not a "list article" per se, only in name - I would call it more an "Index of castles in England" due to the format. Fact is, it has a very long prose lead and is heavily tabular; lists are bullet pointed articles with short leads and usually one or two lines of text after the bullet. These are concise tables with images - not found in lists. And not just one or two tables, but dozens - if you know anything about web browsers, you will know it takes a lot more html code, and therefore memory to render a table. Evidenced by basic example List HTML:




 * Compare that to basic example Table HTML:




 * They will look nearly identical once rendered, only tables are often bulkier, hence why they are less commonly used these days in preference of divs and floating elements:


 * Fact is, WP:SIZERULE exists for a reason. To make pages manageable, to prevent slow loading, to reduce server strain, etc. All of which I mentioned earlier, and all but yourself agreed there were issues in terms of the page becoming laggy. Again, you were defensive, considering the very long tag a personal attack, rather than a genuine issue - which it is, and remains - rather than find a solution, and join in discussion.
 * Maybe we should look at the growing ownership concerns here.. a few of your edit summaries:
 * removed overlong tag after reduced in size by 25% - article is still very long, per SIZERULE and removal is questionable
 * please do not delete 'duplicates' without asking - asking? since when do editors need permission if you won't partake in consensus
 * Restored bibliography+references, well-established and preferred terminology - "preferred" speaks for itself
 * Undid revision 441499845 by Wharton, Cumbria (talk) Unadjust! - snappy
 * Needless to say I really don't think you're in any position to criticise my contribs or assessment of the situation, given that I opened up a discussion, and sought consensus regarding the size issue on this article - which you chose to ignore, whilst others agree there is an issue. Crying about other editors concerns based on legitimate reasons doesn't solve the matter, it just makes them worse.
 * Solutions have been presented by myself, and other editors as to alternative approaches to this subject - the common one being to use this article as a summary, and move each table into its own article. My suggestion would be to start a consider a new WikiProject Castles or Task Force under MilHist and create a portal, under which this, and castle lists for countries, counties and individual sites could be allocated and managed by a team, on which you might find a place as a coord, given your knowledge and input. As that was ignored also, in preference for this code-boated page, I'll assume it's out of your league, despite the potential a project of such magnitude holds.
 * "This page has reached a stable state." - not per SIZERULE, it isn't. Not when it takes 1 minute to load on 10Meg broadband it isn't. Not when it almost always returns an Error page upon saving edits, it isn't.
 * "almost all edits in recent months have been in response to comments by reviewers, including yourself" - indeed - but I recall that I suggested a Key using a 2 or 3 letter code. Instead you adopted an icon based Key, which introduces yet more imagery, and longer code image name.png compared with "NT". Again, it's just more bloat and not really user-friendly given that once you're half way down the page, with the key at the top, it's not easy to navigate. On a county per page setup, at least there would be less scrolling required.
 * The Referencing is ridiculous in terms on length.. about 500 citations. Necessary, but too much for one page. Again, should be split for the same reason - it bloats the Kb pagesize by necessity, you can't ditch refs unfortunately.
 * If it was 150Kb then, it should have been better assessed and managed then - to make less work now. Can't blame others for that. Or maybe you too were unaware of WP:SIZERULE - in which case, you have no place knocking my contribs.
 * "not bring about its destruction" - since when is "splitting" destruction? How is taking one vast subject packed into one page, and moving it into smaller articles anything that even resembles "destruction"? Is knocking down one over-crowded house to build a block of self-contained flats in its place destructive? I think you're taking your defence of the article too it's limits, and forgetting common sense here.. and taking the matter far too personal. If a policy- hardfast admin were to review this article, it'd probably be chopped into bits in minutes, per SIZERULE and you wouldn't get a say on the matter. You should respect the fact that a discussion was opened, rather than adopt point and blame retorts - because, without a doubt, they're not constructive, and we all know you're capable of better than that.
 * I think you need to consider that SIZERULE is a wiki policy editing guideline, that this is not a list article by any means, and that a 256,000b article - that is just the raw code you see in the Edit box by the way, that is a 250Kb having to be processed by Wiki's servers, which then gets parsed and sent to a webrowser - including every castle image thumb. Perhaps you don't understand the technicalities, perhaps you do, either way it's a heavy load - hence why SIZERULE exists. Which is nothing personal, nor aspersions, it's a global policy editing guideline, with a few exceptions. I doubt this i one of them given that there are several alternatives.
 * Just to point out here, I have studied Web Design and PHP Web Development at Uni, hence my understanding of what is going on "behind the scenes" in terms of how code is processed. Even though Wiki caches pages to reduce server load, there are too many edits going on at once here to make a cached copy last long. Every time you save a full article edit, you add a further copy to the article history. Consider that if this was broken into counties, if sensible proportion, it would be easier on everyone to use and manage.
 * The maps article is still worthless by itself - self-contained county articles would allow each map to be properly integrated into a page alongside their counter-part table. Furthermore, individual pages would allow more room for prose based on the history of that county - which feudal lords and princes were there, why they built in certain geographic locations, battles and sieges, etc. Seems you don't seem open to thinking things out, though. As I said, a WikiProject Castles might establish a great deal of support, for historians, and such in Britain and some of Europe. Perhaps even American's and their forts. Who knows? Answer to that being, no one, because you'd rather "keep flogging this fat horse than raise a batch of ponies".
 *  Ma &reg;&copy; usBr iti sh [talk] 01:49, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I don't have time to read every word in this discussion, and this point may have already been made (somewhere). The list is too long and should be split.  Splitting into counties would make some lists ridiculously short.  So why not split into regions, as I did with the lists associated with Churches Conservation Trust? --Peter I. Vardy (talk) 08:58, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Well I found there is a WikiProject History: Fortifications Task Force last night, shortly after typing my last post. I see no reason why one or two principal members there cannot utilise it to achieve bigger goals than a hefty one page article, or as I said expanding into the realms of a new WikiProject Castles (or Fortifications or cover international sites). I recommend splitting into English administrative counties, of which there are 49. Yes, some articles would be small, "stub" form - but it's the range of stub, small, promoted (B/A), GA and FA articles that makes a project diverse and interesting - because interested members are on hand to create and expand stubs/small articles. This is the "Areas of Search" template for SSSIs in the UK: Template:SSSI AOS lists, SSSIs being Scientific Sites of Special Interest which I recently waved under WikiProject Protected areas scope, and that project covers areas of conservation, national parks, etc round the world. No reason why someone can't look to take up the task of creating a similar project for all the Castles and Forts in the world. But first this article does need looking into, with currently 4 editors in favour of splitting, and 1 clearly not interested in the idea. If this article keeps going the way it is, it'd be like trying to juggle too many balls with one hand.. and back to where it was a few days ago when I tagged it "very long".  Ma &reg;&copy; usBr iti sh [talk] 10:32, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Greetings from a tourist who has just wandered in here after seeing the signpost over at Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. First of all, I think the article looks pretty great, although I have to say I have not read it all, not even the entire intro. Its greatness in quality is matched by its greatness in size, and I agree it needs reducing. It simply takes too long to fully load, and even just resizing my browser window causes a long delay on my PC.

I have the impression, after reading the comments here, at WT:FLC, and at the VP Policy page (don't know where else discussions are ongoing), that some editors have the idea of just deleting some refs to decrease page weight. That'd clearly be unacceptable; we need good refs always. 500 refs is too many, but it's not the refs' fault; it's just a symptom of contentual obesity.

I see that a new page with separate maps has recently been started, so that the images could be extracted from there respective sections in this page. I think this doesn't help individual display of this list much, and improves its page code weight even less. It also gives us two pages, neither of which is very clear. The sum of the two is less useful than the combined whole.

How about if we rename this article from List of castles in England to the plural Lists of castles in England? Then we can more logically split off worthy sections as needed. (Are the sections English counties? There's no indication of such, except at Durham, and I'm a geographical ignoramus.) We wouldn't have to split off all the sections, just the biggest ones, where they are long enough to justify it: Herefordshire, Kent, North Yorkshire, etc., but probably not West Midlands.

This page of lists would then keep its fine intro and much of the sectional lists, but for the more heavily populated sections would link to the respective "main article", e.g., List of castles in Kent. The maps would come back to their sections where they belong (and Maps of castles in England by county deleted). This page would still shrink but give an encyclopedic treament of the topics of English castles as well as lists of castles. (The intro seems to currently talk a wee bit much about castles in general; is this a place where we could/should trim the text a little?)

FWIW: Just the thoughts of a tourist (who, I'm afraid, is unlikely to actually help, although I might wander by again and snap some photos of you sweating while you work). &mdash; JohnFromPinckney (talk) 23:17, 5 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your thoughts. There are widely different suggestions as to what to do about this page.  There are already a few lists by county, e.g. List of castles in Somerset (with map), the plan has been for a full set, independently of this page.  There are differing opinions about references also.  The point is that a reference for an item in the table with a link to its own wikipage really does not do anything particularly useful, but helps bloat the page. Paravane (talk) 14:54, 6 September 2011 (UTC)


 * What? Just because there's a link to a Wikipedia article doesn't mean we don't need references for the facts asserted here on the list page. The individual ref is still necessary. &mdash; JohnFromPinckney (talk) 23:27, 6 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I have been casting around to try to establish what the practical options are, and there seems to have been some bad advice! There has been an update at VP Policy page. Paravane (talk) 23:45, 6 September 2011 (UTC)


 * "Colin" is 100% correct. If you just had a bog-standard list - that is one bullet point, name of castle, done - you could easily get away with a few general books, because Wiki says as long as a place is legally-recognised it is usually notable in itself. The very moment it becomes tabular with even one extra column, with a "built" date for example, each and every row can be challenged and an easy target for vandals who cunningly alter uncited facts to cause disruption. There's no way round it, and you get inevitable bloat - because WP:V then applies to that "factual data" on a higher level than any inherited notability. But adding one new column means a list of 500 sites quickly goes from 500 cells, to 1,000 to 1,500 to 2,000, etc, that fast. He's also correct that Wiki is not a reliable source - WP:RS has said that for as long as I know - but you can't expect readers to click back and fourth between 500 wikilinks either to double check everything, which is why RS' are required in the first place. This article has clearly gained more columns (and therefore markup) over time, and more data in some than may have been originally intended. As time goes on there might become reason to add new columns, for example it might become policy that anything geographical must have a geolocation, or a castle expert historian might know a piece of information relevant to each one, such as designer, or first lord and want to add it - even if it's just in the Notes. Or a new system might be created by archaeologists to categorise or grade castle ruins. Again, we never know.. which is why all Wiki articles need to be open-minded about future expansion. Someone might note here that browsers are expanding too - which is true, but an entire new study of English castles could be published tomorrow, whilst the internet take months to move in steps that big. And server technology isn't that fast moving either, nor is it cheap. I read many a good book where the author uses the term "due to publisher limitation", meaning he could only write 600 pages or whatever. Whilst wiki is a little more flexible, it too has limitations that need respecting for good reasons, beyond "who worked on it".  Ma &reg;&copy; usBr iti sh [talk] 04:33, 7 September 2011 (UTC)