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Stone Castle
By Med | April 17, 2006
When the Normans had settled in an area they abandoned the motte and bailey forts and built stone castles. They were very strong and almost impossible to capture and destroy, but they took many years to build. They were damp, cold, draughty places. Over time castles grew more comfortable, but they were still chilly places. The only heat came from an open fire. Only the really rich took baths but not often and not in special bathrooms. They sat and soaked in a wooden tub in their chamber instead. Toilets were called garderobes and they were built into the castle walls. Everything dropped down into the moat or a cesspit. The smelly job of cleaning out the cesspit was done by men called gong farmers. Many of them, now almost eight hundred years old, are still standing today.
A stone keep was the central feature, with thick walls and few windows. Entrance to the keep was by stone steps leading to the first floor. The kitchens were situated on the ground floor while living quarters were on the upper floors. The first keeps were rectangular in shape but later ones were often circular. The Stone Keep would be surrounded by a thick stone wall containing turrets for lookouts.
Stone castles were built for stability and to symbolize the power of the lords of the kingdom. Even if the king did not order a particular castle to be built for his use, he still retained the ability to seize any of his lords’ castles if they displeased him or if the king had a special reason to want to use it.
The features that made stone castles stable and able to withstand battle include the following:
- The walls were very thick, anywhere between 8 and 20 feet in thickness, so they could withstand bombardment or battering from a battering ram, or another siege engine (like a trebuchet or catapult).
- Over time, the shape of the towers changed as castle- builders experimented with designs that were less likely to fall down in battle or from the instability of the structure itself. Originally, towers were simple square-shapes, easy to build but also easy to topple down.
One of the most ingenious ways that a tower was pulled down was a method known as undermining. An enemy’s soldiers would dig a tunnel under one corner of a tower, prop it up with wood, and then set the wood on fire. When the wood burned to ashes, the tower would be so unstable (no longer having a good foundation) that it would tumble to the ground. However, sometimes undermining did not accomplish what the enemy soldiers wanted - sometimes the wood fell down before the enemy had left the tunnel, and they died! One of the towers at Rochester Castle near London still shows an unsuccessful attempt by an invader to pull down a corner tower.
The round tower was determined to be a more effective shape for withstanding the impact of a battle. However, it was more difficult to build because the design was more complex. Yet, many castles made use of round towers. Their shape caused cannon balls and other types of missiles to bounce off the walls without doing damage. They also were not vulnerable to undermining. And they also gave an added bonus of providing more space on the interiors. The greatest of Norman knights, William Marshall, introduced the use of round towers to Britain, and they were especially used in Wales.
Some castles used what is known as a splayed plinth, which added support at the base of the towers. The plinth had the effect of placing sturdy legs into the earth at the base of the tower, so that it would not lean or be likely to fall down. Goodrich Castle has excellent examples of the splayed plinth.
- The curtain wall (the wall which surrounded the main portion of the castle) gradually became a more and more effective means to stabilize the castle. At first, they were just simple walls, but with time, they became much thicker. The curtain wall was intersected at various points (good for observing the activity outside the castle, and to watch for invaders) by different types of towers, most of which were used for observation, but also as living quarters, the chapel, for storage, or to house the dungeon.
- One of the most important modifications to the curtain wall was the development of the gatehouse. At first, the gatehouse was just the way in and out of the castle, and was usually a simple doorway. However, they soon became the strong point of many castles, the place where an enemy was most likely to try to break through, so the gatehouses were equipped with several defensive techniques to thwart an enemy’s attack. These included: the portcullis (a heavy iron grate that was lowered to block the intruder’s entrance); heavy wooden doors that could be barred shut; strategically-placed arrowslits (slits in the stone wall that pointed outward, and through which a soldier could shoot arrows at an enemy without being shot back at); and murder holes (gaps in the ceiling above the entrance passage through which boiling liquids or deadly missiles could be thrown down upon attackers). One of the most complex gatehouses can be found at Pembroke Castle in Wales.
- Immediately outside the castle were other features which added to its stability. Most were surrounded by some form of ditch (which we more commonly called the moat). Ditches were deep, cut into the bedrock or earth around the main part of the castle, and also around a bailey. While many ditches were water-filled (some by changing the direction of an adjacent river!), others never had water. They were every bit as difficult to cross as the water-filled moats, because they were very deep and had very steep walls.
- In order to gain entry to the castle, wooden drawbridges were built to span the ditches. These bridges were ingeniously designed and could be moved away from the ditch to prevent unwanted visitors from gaining access to the castle. (By the way, inside the castles, entry to some of the towers, especially the keep, was by using a wooden ladder that reached the second floor, and could be removed to prevent unwanted access!)
Sometimes more than one ditch and drawbridge were constructed, to make unwelcome access even more improbable. And many castles were built atop steep hillsides that would make it difficult for an invader to climb (especially carrying heavy weapons). These high locations also allowed the castle guards to see a long distance into the countryside, which was useful for detecting an invasion.
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