Stone soon became the preferred building material for castles. However, the influence of much earlier Roman and Byzantine fortifications can also be seen in concentric castles, as they generally utilised curtain walls punctuated by towers or bastions. The Motte-and-Bailey style of castles is a bit different from what you would normally think of as a... 3.
The keep could also be up to four stories high, with a raised entrance reached by a stair – in some cases, this staircase was protected by an additional building, such as can be seen at Castle Rising in England. amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; Castles Around The World. Some other important developments in castles were the change from very square blocky buildings to round buildings (particularly towers) Round towers were much stronger and able to resist attack better and a defender looking out the window of a round tower was able to see more. Furthermore, the intramural towers in the curtain walls could also be used to fire from, and if large enough could even house trebuchets. The walls of these castles could not so easily be undermined either, so could be built far thinner and lighter than the massively thick walls of rectangular stone keeps. So it has an inner ward, a middle ward, and an outer ward. For the most part it is reasonably easy to achieve this breakdown in castle types because they are something that changed over the course of centuries due to improvements in architecture, masonry, mathematics, and other skills. Motte-and-Bailey. About the Motte and Bailey: A Motte is a mound of dirt and a Bailey is a courtyard surrounded by a wall or a fence. The focus now was less on defense and more on lavish living quarters or centers for governing. Norman castles also featured buttresses (a kind of architectural support built against a wall) and were often highly decorated, with curved Romanesque arches and even blind arcading on exterior walls. PRIVACY POLICY, A guide to De Haar Castle in The Netherlands. The space inside the shell keep was used to house buildings, which were usually constructed against the walls to allow space for a courtyard in the very centre of the castle. The placement of one inner curtain wall perimeter within a wider, outer perimeter one gave the appearance of two castles – placed one within the other – creating a concentric castle. (Find out more about concentric castles). However, these buildings were still incredibly strong, with their imposing height and their thick, immovable walls. The outer wall also served to protect the inner wall from enemy siege engines. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Learn how your comment data is processed. amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; The concept of the castle itself emerged in the 9th and 10th centuries, around the time of the collapse of the Carolingian empire, a period of increased fighting between local lords, although it has also been argued that castles were built to defend against Viking raids across Northern Europe. These easy-to-build fortifications were popular in the 10th and 11th centuries across Europe, but eventually gave way to stone keep castles, which centred around far larger free-standing stone keeps, typically with a rectangular floor plan and extremely thick walls. Finally, the 12th and 13th centuries saw the emergence of concentric castles – these were made up of towers or bastions connected by curtain walls in a concentric shaped compound, and consisted of two or more such curtain wall compounds arranged one inside the other, giving the castle multiple lines of defence. Hello, I am Chrysoula, welcome to my blog where I share my journey of discovering historical castles around Europe. Historian Charles Coulson states that the accumulation of wealth and resources, such as food, led to the need for defensive structures. What sets concentric castles apart is their use of multiple layers of concentric curtain walls, as well as their typical lack of a free-standing keep. Sometimes there were moats in between these concentric circles or on the very outside. Your email address will not be published. The Rectangular Keep was the early types of castles that we are more familiar with today. The inner curtain walls were built higher than the outer wall, giving crossbows on the inner wall an excellent line of sight. The most trusted nonfiction series on the market, Eyewitness Books provide an in-depth, comprehensive look at their subjects with a unique integration of words and pictures. Motte and Bailey Castle - This type of castle isn't what we typically think of when we think "castle" but the Motte and Bailey is the first type of European castle. Except the curtain wall was stone. They were built of stone and tended to have very high and thick walls. This ended the building of castles as fortresses but, the building and architectural techniques were still used to build large structures. As weapons (particularly gunpowder weapons like the cannon) grew better, more powerful and more accurate the castle fortress became less and less effective. Good examples of this are the keep, the surrounding fence (which in later castles were stone), the Bridges and the gatehouse.
In effect it is a keep surrounded by a wall which in turn is surrounded by another wall. And, the builders of castles, because of centuries of experience, designed castles that were more effective.
© 2018 all about castles. Good examples of shell keep castles are Burcht van Leiden in Holland and Château de Gisors in France. POLICIES • TERMS AND PRIVACY, CONTACT US Norman Castles The first significant European castles with stone keeps. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. Some concentric castles still incorporated a central keep (see image below), whereas in others the chambers and castle buildings would often be constructed against the inner walls. The outer walls were lower than the inner walls (to allow archers on the inner walls to fire at attackers over the outer walls).
NEVER MISS A POST amzn_assoc_region = "US"; Across Europe, in the medieval period, there were a huge number of different kinds of castles, with a very wide variety of form and function – from the simplest wooden defensive construction to grand stone fortifications designed to hold territory and boost the prestige of powerful lords and monarchs. The design of castles evolved over time as builders responded to developments in military strategy and improvements in technology. But they were a natural extension of the traditional fortress castle and many of the fortress style castles were transformed and upgraded into palaces and living quarters. And the soil removed from the ditches was used to build up the Motte and to form a berm around the ditches. The reasoning behind this was the issue of weight – huge solid stone keeps were extremely heavy, and for engineers concerned that mottes could not hold their weight, shell keeps were a solution. These were prolific between the 10th and 12th centuries. This series of defenses was a very effective means of protection because attackers had to break through each line of defense one at a time.
The motte itself was an earth mound, which was flattened on top to make space for the construction of a keep. The free-standing rectangular stone keep castles were particularly popular among the Normans – in England, these castles were usually square, while in France and Normandy a rectangular style called barlongue appeared, where the sides of the keep were twice that of the width of the building. A motte-and-bailey castle consisted of a motte (a large mound of earth) and a bailey (a levelled courtyard located next to the motte). amzn_assoc_linkid = "4fd974a531137fed5834e17a4bc293bb"; You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. The keep was then surrounded by a thick stone curtain wall. Required fields are marked *.
In any case, the Motte-and-bailey castle really came to prominence in the 11th century. all rights reserved A moat often encircled the entire castle, providing another obstacle for the attackers to overcome. Although motte and bailey castles were relatively quick and inexpensive to construct, they were susceptible to fire and the walls could be breached by determined attackers. These structures differed from their eastern coun…
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