Mottes<\/h3>\n<\/div> <\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> The motte at Tonbridge Castle (Photo by Getty)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nIf you see a great artificial mound of earth \u2013 a motte \u2013 the castle almost certainly dates from the late-11th or early 12th century, which is when castles were introduced to England on a huge scale.<\/p>\n
Mottes vary in size. They can be quite modest or they can be huge \u2013 the one at Tonbridge Castle in Kent, for example, would have taken months to build. And that\u2019s something to reflect upon if you see a motte: although it looks like \u2013 and essentially is \u2013 a large mound of earth, you can\u2019t put that up overnight. Just in terms of moving the earth, it\u2019s going to take thousands of man hours.<\/p>\n
You also can\u2019t make a motte out of one type of material. If it were all mud, it would just slip away. You have to build it with layers. You have to put a layer of clay, a layer of stone, a layer of sand, a layer of mud. So mottes are really consolidated, artificial hills. They would have to be, in order to bear the weight of the stone buildings that are later built on top.<\/p>\n
- Read more | How to build a medieval castle: 9 top tips<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul> 2<\/span>
Wells<\/h3>\n<\/div> ![\"""\"]( "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Dover Castle\u2019s well is an incredible feat of engineering (Photo by Getty)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nAnother thing you might look out for is the castle\u2019s main well, because that\u2019s going to be essential. In the day-to-day living in a castle, it saves you having to go down to the river as your source of water. But in a siege, it becomes critical, because you can be hungry and last out a couple of weeks, but you can\u2019t be thirsty.<\/p>\n
It is one of the terrible things as a medieval historian, you do have to look into things like \u2018how quickly does it take to starve to death\u2019? I\u2019ve looked at these questions, and you can go without food for two or three weeks, but you can\u2019t go without water for more than two or three days. Maybe you might last a week and then that\u2019ll be it. So you need a well, basically.<\/p>\n
It is one of the terrible things as a medieval historian, you do have to look into things like \u2018how quickly does it take to starve to death\u2019? <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div> The first thing you do when you see a well is chuck a coin down to see how deep it is. And sometimes it\u2019s a disappointing half a second and just goes splosh, but sometimes they can be jolly deep. If you go to Dover Castle<\/a>, which I think is the deepest in Britain, and you toss a coin down there, it\u2019s a good seven to eight seconds before you hear it go splosh. It\u2019s incredibly deep.<\/p>\nThe thing to think about there is just what an incredible feat of engineering that is. It gives the lie to the idea that the Middle Ages was somehow crude in terms of their engineering skills.<\/p>\n
- Watch now | Five British castles with romantic histories<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul> 3<\/span>
Twin-towered gatehouses<\/h3>\n<\/div> ![\"""\"]( "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Arrow slits are visible on the twin-towered gatehouse of Rockingham Castle (Photo by Alamy)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nThe entrances to early castles \u2013 those of the 11th and 12th centuries \u2013 are to a large extent, unimpressive. I\u2019m not talking about the entrances to the towers, but the outer walls. Getting in through those is sometimes, literally, just a hole in the wall. Other times it\u2019s a tower with a gateway through it.<\/p>\n
From around about the year 1200, you start seeing two towers pushed together. That\u2019s your twin-towered gatehouse, and the entrance is between the two towers.<\/p>\n
By this stage they\u2019ve got all the elaborate tricks that you associate with castle defences. You\u2019ll have arrow loops all around, facing forwards and crossing the entrance so you\u2019ve got a field of fire against potential intruders. As you go through the twin-towered gatehouse, if you look up or look to the side, you will see grooves in the walls for portcullises to be lowered and slots in the ceiling for them to disappear into.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll almost certainly, again if look up, see holes as you go through the entrance passage, which are so-called \u2018murder holes\u2019, from which you would traditionally chuck boiling oil<\/a>, but pretty much anything you like that\u2019s nasty: quick lime or boiling water for instance.<\/p>\nWe\u2019re certainly beyond 1200 if you see a twin-towered gatehouse. It\u2019s a good marker of the later Middle Ages.<\/p>\n
- Read more | Who was the original king of the castle (and who was the dirty rascal)?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul> 4<\/span>
Putlog holes<\/h3>\n<\/div> ![\"""\"]( "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Putlog holes can be seen in the ruins of Harlech Castle (Photo by Getty)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nPutlog holes are literally holes in which you put logs. They are holes in the masonry where the original scaffolding was.<\/p>\n
This sounds like a builder not finishing the job properly, but because these buildings were whitewashed and plastered on the outside or painted over, rather than taking the scaffolding down and then filling the hole with a block, they often just sawed off the log and left it in situ.<\/p>\n
Often these putlog holes are at a horizontal level, so they are just a line of holes for a platform. In some cases \u2013 such as in Edward I<\/a>\u2019s castles in north-west Wales \u2013 the putlog holes on the towers spiral around, as if there had been a helter-skelter effect. This is one of the things that indicates that Edward I\u2019s castles in this area were built by continental Savoyard masons, rather than English ones.<\/p>\n- Read more | Reassessing Edward I: battle-hungry aggressor or dutiful conqueror?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul> 5<\/span>
Machicolations<\/h3>\n<\/div> ![\"""\"]( "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> Machicolations on Bodliam Castle (Photo by Getty)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nMachicolations are where the wall head, the fighting platform, is built out from the wall so that you could theoretically throw things down on people\u2019s heads. I think one of the reasons that people like machicolations going into the 14th and 15th centuries is because they look pretty. The way you make your castle look like it\u2019s permanently wearing a crown is to machicolate the towers.<\/p>\n
The earliest examples are from the 1280s on the castles Edward I built in north-west Wales, but by the time they catch on, it\u2019s well into the 14th and into the 15th century. So if you see machicolations around the top of your towers, you know you are dealing with a late medieval castle.<\/p>\n
- Read next | 9 of Britain\u2019s best castles<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
Dr Marc Morris was speaking to Charlotte Hodgman on the HistoryExtra<\/em> podcast, answering listener queries on history of British castles as part of our Everything You Wanted to Know podcast series<\/a>. Hear more from this conversation in the full audio episode<\/a> or explore more of our bitesize history videos<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n
","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Marc Morris highlights five features of Britain\u2019s castles that show their development throughout the Middle Ages, from essential engineering to eye-catching decorations <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":24678,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"6"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2023\/05\/five-things-to-look-out-for-when-visiting-a-castle.jpg",620,413,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2023\/05\/five-things-to-look-out-for-when-visiting-a-castle-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2023\/05\/five-things-to-look-out-for-when-visiting-a-castle-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2023\/05\/five-things-to-look-out-for-when-visiting-a-castle.jpg",620,413,false],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2023\/05\/five-things-to-look-out-for-when-visiting-a-castle.jpg",620,413,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2023\/05\/five-things-to-look-out-for-when-visiting-a-castle.jpg",620,413,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2023\/05\/five-things-to-look-out-for-when-visiting-a-castle.jpg",620,413,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Marc Morris highlights five features of Britain\u2019s castles that show their development throughout the Middle Ages, from essential engineering to eye-catching decorations","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/24677"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
If you see a great artificial mound of earth \u2013 a motte \u2013 the castle almost certainly dates from the late-11th or early 12th century, which is when castles were introduced to England on a huge scale.<\/p>\n
Mottes vary in size. They can be quite modest or they can be huge \u2013 the one at Tonbridge Castle in Kent, for example, would have taken months to build. And that\u2019s something to reflect upon if you see a motte: although it looks like \u2013 and essentially is \u2013 a large mound of earth, you can\u2019t put that up overnight. Just in terms of moving the earth, it\u2019s going to take thousands of man hours.<\/p>\n
You also can\u2019t make a motte out of one type of material. If it were all mud, it would just slip away. You have to build it with layers. You have to put a layer of clay, a layer of stone, a layer of sand, a layer of mud. So mottes are really consolidated, artificial hills. They would have to be, in order to bear the weight of the stone buildings that are later built on top.<\/p>\n
- Read more | How to build a medieval castle: 9 top tips<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>2<\/span>
Wells<\/h3>\n<\/div>
![\"""\"]( "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Dover Castle\u2019s well is an incredible feat of engineering (Photo by Getty)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n Another thing you might look out for is the castle\u2019s main well, because that\u2019s going to be essential. In the day-to-day living in a castle, it saves you having to go down to the river as your source of water. But in a siege, it becomes critical, because you can be hungry and last out a couple of weeks, but you can\u2019t be thirsty.<\/p>\n
It is one of the terrible things as a medieval historian, you do have to look into things like \u2018how quickly does it take to starve to death\u2019? I\u2019ve looked at these questions, and you can go without food for two or three weeks, but you can\u2019t go without water for more than two or three days. Maybe you might last a week and then that\u2019ll be it. So you need a well, basically.<\/p>\n
It is one of the terrible things as a medieval historian, you do have to look into things like \u2018how quickly does it take to starve to death\u2019? <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
The first thing you do when you see a well is chuck a coin down to see how deep it is. And sometimes it\u2019s a disappointing half a second and just goes splosh, but sometimes they can be jolly deep. If you go to Dover Castle<\/a>, which I think is the deepest in Britain, and you toss a coin down there, it\u2019s a good seven to eight seconds before you hear it go splosh. It\u2019s incredibly deep.<\/p>\n
The thing to think about there is just what an incredible feat of engineering that is. It gives the lie to the idea that the Middle Ages was somehow crude in terms of their engineering skills.<\/p>\n
- Watch now | Five British castles with romantic histories<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>3<\/span>
Twin-towered gatehouses<\/h3>\n<\/div>
![\"""\"]( "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Arrow slits are visible on the twin-towered gatehouse of Rockingham Castle (Photo by Alamy)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n The entrances to early castles \u2013 those of the 11th and 12th centuries \u2013 are to a large extent, unimpressive. I\u2019m not talking about the entrances to the towers, but the outer walls. Getting in through those is sometimes, literally, just a hole in the wall. Other times it\u2019s a tower with a gateway through it.<\/p>\n
From around about the year 1200, you start seeing two towers pushed together. That\u2019s your twin-towered gatehouse, and the entrance is between the two towers.<\/p>\n
By this stage they\u2019ve got all the elaborate tricks that you associate with castle defences. You\u2019ll have arrow loops all around, facing forwards and crossing the entrance so you\u2019ve got a field of fire against potential intruders. As you go through the twin-towered gatehouse, if you look up or look to the side, you will see grooves in the walls for portcullises to be lowered and slots in the ceiling for them to disappear into.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll almost certainly, again if look up, see holes as you go through the entrance passage, which are so-called \u2018murder holes\u2019, from which you would traditionally chuck boiling oil<\/a>, but pretty much anything you like that\u2019s nasty: quick lime or boiling water for instance.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re certainly beyond 1200 if you see a twin-towered gatehouse. It\u2019s a good marker of the later Middle Ages.<\/p>\n
- Read more | Who was the original king of the castle (and who was the dirty rascal)?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>4<\/span>
Putlog holes<\/h3>\n<\/div>
![\"""\"]( "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Putlog holes can be seen in the ruins of Harlech Castle (Photo by Getty)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n Putlog holes are literally holes in which you put logs. They are holes in the masonry where the original scaffolding was.<\/p>\n
This sounds like a builder not finishing the job properly, but because these buildings were whitewashed and plastered on the outside or painted over, rather than taking the scaffolding down and then filling the hole with a block, they often just sawed off the log and left it in situ.<\/p>\n
Often these putlog holes are at a horizontal level, so they are just a line of holes for a platform. In some cases \u2013 such as in Edward I<\/a>\u2019s castles in north-west Wales \u2013 the putlog holes on the towers spiral around, as if there had been a helter-skelter effect. This is one of the things that indicates that Edward I\u2019s castles in this area were built by continental Savoyard masons, rather than English ones.<\/p>\n
- Read more | Reassessing Edward I: battle-hungry aggressor or dutiful conqueror?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>5<\/span>
Machicolations<\/h3>\n<\/div>
![\"""\"]( "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Machicolations on Bodliam Castle (Photo by Getty)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n Machicolations are where the wall head, the fighting platform, is built out from the wall so that you could theoretically throw things down on people\u2019s heads. I think one of the reasons that people like machicolations going into the 14th and 15th centuries is because they look pretty. The way you make your castle look like it\u2019s permanently wearing a crown is to machicolate the towers.<\/p>\n
The earliest examples are from the 1280s on the castles Edward I built in north-west Wales, but by the time they catch on, it\u2019s well into the 14th and into the 15th century. So if you see machicolations around the top of your towers, you know you are dealing with a late medieval castle.<\/p>\n
- Read next | 9 of Britain\u2019s best castles<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
Dr Marc Morris was speaking to Charlotte Hodgman on the HistoryExtra<\/em> podcast, answering listener queries on history of British castles as part of our Everything You Wanted to Know podcast series<\/a>. Hear more from this conversation in the full audio episode<\/a> or explore more of our bitesize history videos<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n
","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marc Morris highlights five features of Britain\u2019s castles that show their development throughout the Middle Ages, from essential engineering to eye-catching decorations <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":24678,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"6"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2023\/05\/five-things-to-look-out-for-when-visiting-a-castle.jpg",620,413,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2023\/05\/five-things-to-look-out-for-when-visiting-a-castle-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2023\/05\/five-things-to-look-out-for-when-visiting-a-castle-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2023\/05\/five-things-to-look-out-for-when-visiting-a-castle.jpg",620,413,false],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2023\/05\/five-things-to-look-out-for-when-visiting-a-castle.jpg",620,413,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2023\/05\/five-things-to-look-out-for-when-visiting-a-castle.jpg",620,413,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2023\/05\/five-things-to-look-out-for-when-visiting-a-castle.jpg",620,413,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Marc Morris highlights five features of Britain\u2019s castles that show their development throughout the Middle Ages, from essential engineering to eye-catching decorations","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/24677"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- Read next | 9 of Britain\u2019s best castles<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
- Read more | Reassessing Edward I: battle-hungry aggressor or dutiful conqueror?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
- Read more | Who was the original king of the castle (and who was the dirty rascal)?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
- Watch now | Five British castles with romantic histories<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/05\/GettyImages-1228423569-eb00355-e1683889810432.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/05\/arrow-slit-caa4407-e1683888721470.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C412"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/"){kind=icon}
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/05\/putlog2-61d7d28-e1683888387518.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/05\/mach-holes-5bd499b-e1683888210902.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C412"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>