Y is for the Why Castles are like they are ...

Why are Castles like they are – here is a glossary of terms, with some extra footage for good luck.

Bodiam Castle - built after the owner applied for a
licence to crenellate (to build) 

Why were castles built?  Leaders, Kings and nobles built castles to control their land and peoples, then during times of war to protect them and their family from attackers.  Kings and Lords also built castles to show how big and powerful they were.

Launceston Castle

Norman timber motte and bailey castles – none of these timbers survive in England, although the mounds are still there as in my K for Knepp.  A Norman motte and bailey earthwork castle can be found at Launceston in Cornwall, dated to 1067. 

Carisbrooke Castle, Isle of Wight - a
reconstruction as it would have been
during the 14th C, showing the keep
built on the motte (top) and
bailey at the bottom

The Keep was a great tower and usually the most strongly defended point of a castle before the introduction of concentric defence.  The great tower until the 1500s was known as a “donjon” – with our dungeon becoming a corrupted form.  WarkworthCastle shows a large tower keep.

Curtain walls were defensive walls enclosing a bailey – at Windsor castle there are two stone curtain walls surrounding the two baileys, with the Keep on a motte in the centre – see my Queen’s Castle.

They had to be high enough to make scaling the walls with ladders difficult and thick enough to withstand bombardment from siege engines, which from the 15^th C onward, included artillery.

A trebuchet (a type of siege engine)

A typical wall could be 3m (10 ft) thick and 12m (39 ft) tall – though each castle’s walls would vary.  To protect them from undermining, curtain walls were sometimes given a stone skirt around their bases.  Walkways along the tops and battlements would give them further protection.

Barbican Gate at Glencarm Castle,
Co Antrim, Northern Ireland

The Gatehouse – the entrance was often the weakest part in a circuit of defences.  To overcome this the gatehouse was developed allowing those inside to control the flow of traffic.  There were one or more portcullises – a wooden grille reinforced with metal to block a passage – and arrow-slits from which to harry the enemy.

Towers were added to the gatehouse for extra visual and actual protection; extra length meant invaders had to spend under fire and in a confined space.  A barbican was an extra defence and outer building added to the gatehouse, and may have included bridging across a ditch.

A moat was a defensive ditch with steep sides, and could be either dry or filled with water.  Its purpose was two-fold: to stop devices such as siege towers from reaching the curtain wall, and/or to prevent the walls from being undermined.

Caerlaverock Castle, Scotland

Water moats were often found in low-lying areas and were usually crossed by a drawbridge.  Fortified islands could be added to the moat, adding another layer of defence.

Other features would be battlements surmounting the curtain walls and gatehouses, which could comprise several elements: 

crenellations (gaps and solid stone); hoardings were extra wooden constructs allowing defenders to shoot at, or drop objects on attackers below; while machicolations giving a similar use were stone projections.

Until the 12^th century, stone built and earth and timber castles were contemporary, with stone being preferred, and as the timber and earthwork sites declined, stone castles could be built where appropriate as conditions changed, and could be ‘made to’ fit the lay of the land.

Caerphilly Castle - used an early concentric design

At the same time there was a change in castle architecture – the Crusaders had learned much about fortification from their conflicts with the Saracens and exposure to Byzantine architecture ... the time had come for composite castles or concentric castles.

Castle design had changed, master masons were the architects and engineers of their day; concentric castles had their buildings in the centre and new castles of this design had no keep; while composite castles were made up of different parts – usually a mixture of old and new.

Caerphilly Castle (above) is a medieval castle in South Wales.  It is second in size only to Windsor Castle; built mainly between 1268 and 1271 and is an early example of a concentric castle with extensive water defences.

Only the richest and most powerful men had the money to build a great castle.  Officers of the king or lord had to buy building materials, transport them, find labourers, pay them and supervisor their work.

Conway Castle - one of Edward I's castle
building programme

The simplest timber castle would take 6 – 9 months to finish, depending on the weather.  Stone castles took a lot longer to complete, some as long as 8 -10 years!  They needed warm sunshine to harden the mortar between huge blocks of stone, and dry dirt roads to move heavy equipment and building materials (some might come by river).

Edward I’s castles each required at least a thousand men.  Unskilled and skilled craftsmen travelled far and wide, some from abroad, to work on the project:

Ø the master masons masterminded the construct;

Ø the stonemasons chose, worked and cut the stone to ensure strong walls;

Ø carpenters helped make the scaffolding, and cut the timber for floors and rafters;

Ø ditchers came from low-lying flat wet areas (East Anglia or the Low Countries {The Netherlands}) to dig the castle’s foundations, its moat and other important ditches and ramparts.

St Mawes Castle, Cornwall -
one of Henry VIII's Henrician Castles
on the east side of the Carrick Roads
see my Pendennis Castle

By the 1500s the role of fortifications had changed once more with the development of artillery capable of breaching even thick stone walls.  Henry VIII fearing invasion led to the building of a series of new fortresses known as Device Forts or Henrician Castles. 

These were designed to defend against artillery, and since they were not private residences, but national fortifications, they do not possess what architectural historians have come to see as the defining characteristics of a castle.

University College, Durham Castle - it has been
wholly occupied by the University since 1840

Essentially that covers castles at their basic best ... by the 1600s castles were going into decline – as we have seen some have withstood the test of time and we are able to enjoy them today;

Some are ruins, some have been restored, some are put to new uses: wedding venues, hotels, open gardens, event parks; some were rebuilt as castellated mansions, some restored to their former glory ... as is always the case with the human being – he reinvents .... and we here in England have some of the best on show.

So if anyone can define a Castle ... please start counting ... and put us all out of our misery as to how many there are ... any takers?!

That is Y for Why the Castles – part of the ABC series of Aspects of British Castles.

Bob Scotney very cleverly featured Xanten Castle in Germany for his X post yesterday ...

Hilary Melton-Butcher

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