Great, stone castles with towers, moats, drawbridges and battlements, have always been one of the key images which come to mind when people think of Medieval Europe. As children, we often dreamt about living in a castle, with its grand halls, dark passageways, cozy chambers and spooky dungeons, but many of us forget that the primary purpose of a castle was to serve as a defensive fortress and as such, they were probably not the nicest places to live in. So, what were they like?

The First Castles.

The first castles that appeared at the end of the Dark Ages are very different in appearance to what most people percieve a castle to be. This is largely because they were made of wood, instead of stone. What…Yes, wood, not stone. Wood. ‘Why?’ you ask? Well, because wood was more plentiful, it was easier to work with and easier to transport. The first kind of castle was known as the ‘motte and bailey’ castle. But what is a ‘motte’ and a ‘bailey’? They were the two key components of early castle-design. The ‘motte’ was the mound or hill upon which the castle keep was constructed. The ‘bailey’ was the walled-in plateau that existed at the bottom of the motte. Within this walled bailey, civilians and soldiers could live in relative safety, with houses, shops and other necessities safely protected by the wall built around their village.

A motte and bailey castle. The motte is the hill on the right, with the keep on top. The bailey is the walled in village at the bottom

When a motte-and-bailey castle was attacked, civilians fled from the bailey, across a wooden bridge which spanned a ditch or moat, and up the side of the motte, to the keep at the top. Defending soldiers would attempt to defend the bailey first, shooting arrows at enemy soldiers gathered outside the bailey walls. Should the bailey be breeched, defenders would retreat across the bridge (destroying it as they went), and up the sides of the motte. Attackers would be forced to go into the ditch or across the moat in order to climb the motte. This put them at a disadvantage, as the defenders, higher up, could shoot them down with bows and arrows.

While the motte-and-bailey castle was effective against small-scale attacks, it was easily overrun by larger groups of enemies. It was soon evident that something more permanent was needed if people desired a safe place to retreat to, in times of warfare.

Stone Castles.

The weaknesses of the motte-and-bailey castle must’ve been evident to their constructors pretty early-on in castle-building history, because while there were hundreds of these, easy-to-build castles all over the place, they didn’t last very long. Indeed, by 1068, the first stone castles started being built in Britain. Wood was cheap, wood was easy to build with, it was easy to transport…but it was susceptable to fire and water. Fire burned away at the wooden walls, and rainwater could rot the wood until it was too weak to be used in making practical defensive walls. Stone, on the other hand, was heavier, harder to cut, harder to transport, but it was a hell of a lot stronger than wood, for rather obvious reasons. The oldest surviving stone castle in Great Britain, Chepstow Castle, was the one built in 1068, and it is the oldest stone castle still surviving in Britain.

Chepstow Castle in Wales, the oldest surviving stone castle in Great Britain.

Now that castles were becoming larger and grander and above all – permanent structures – more care and thought started being put into how they were designed and constructed. We mustn’t forget that a castle’s main purpose was to serve as a defensive fort in times of warfare. So, how was a castle built to make it easily defendable?

Stone Castles – Defensive Features and How Castles were Defended.

1. The Moat.

Every castle has to have a moat! How could you not have a castle without a moat? They’re so wonderful in all their…moaty goodness! Seriously, though, not all castles had moats, it was fact of life, unfortunately. While a moat could make a castle incredibly easy to defend, the truth is that they were not easy to construct. Most moats were shovelled out by hand, or builders surveying the land took advantage of natural depressions or gullies in the landscape, such as building near a dry riverbed. Diverting a nearby river to flood low-lying land, or simply having the depression fill up with water over time, was how most moats were constructed or filled.

Once they were there, however, a moat made a castle ridiculously easy to defend. In a day and age when most people couldn’t swim, attacking a castle which had beautiful, moatside views from its windows, was nearly impossible. To get across, you’d have to row over in a boat, keeping your back to the defenders, who could shoot you between the shoulderblades with arrows. And once you got to the castle walls, you still had to get over them. And certainly by the time you arrived at the castle, the defenders would have hauled up the drawbridge at the gatehouse, which was the only practical way in. It’s no wonder that people loved building castles with moats so much, they made the structures themselves so much easier to defend.

But like I said, not all castles had moats. And if it didn’t have a moat, how else did you protect your castle?

2. The Curtain Wall.

The curtain wall was a massive, defensive wall built around the keep (the main castle building). Curtain walls were truly enormous; they could be up to twenty feet thick and twice as high as they were wide. Most curtain walls had wide walkways along the tops of them, so that defending soldiers could stand up there and shoot down at the advancing enemy, or pour or drop stuff down on them to kill them.

3. Battlements.

Another famous castle design-feature…battlements! The purpose of battlements was to provide protection to defending soldiers who were up on the curtain-wall walkways, shooting or throwing things down at the enemy. Battlements are actually made up of two distinct features: Merlons and Crenels. The ‘merlon’ is the big chunk of stone on the battlements which you could take cover behind. The crenels were the gaps between these stones through which you could shoot at the enemy. Some merlons had special holes built into them, called loopholes or arrow-slits. These enabled defending crossbowmen to shoot their crossbow-bolts through the merlons into the enemy hordes below, while remaining perfectly safe behind a big stone block while shooting through a hole with an outside diameter of a beer-mug. Arrow-slits and loopholes were often conically-shaped so that they allowed the defender a wide field of fire, but presented the attacking enemy with only a tiny hole to shoot at.

4. The Gatehouse.

A Curtain Wall is only as strong as its weakest gatehouse. The gate is the weak-point in any defensive wall, so medieval architects built these entranceways to be as easily defendable as possible, with multiple gates, doors and other features which made them strong, easy to defend and hard to attack.

The first defensive element was the gate itself, a massive, wooden door, usually bolted shut with massive wooden beams to brace the door and to prevent easy entry. The bracing that the heavy wooden bolts provided, made it hard for battering-rams to smash the door down. They also absorbed some of the shock from the ramming.

If the door was broken, there were still plenty of other defensive features in a gatehouse. Most gatehouses would also have a gate (usually two of them) called a portcullis. A portcullis is a lattice gate made of wood and usually strengthened with strips of iron and nails. They were opened by raising them on pulleys and winches, and closed by dropping them down. The metal strips hammered onto the wooden gates made them fireproof, but it also added much-needed strength to the gate, without compromising its weight. When a gate might have to be raised or lowered quickly, it was important that it was made as light as possible.

The latticework in the portcullis’s construction meant that defending soldiers had holes in the gate through which they could shoot at the enemy, but, like with the arrow-slits in the battlements, enemies couldn’t shoot back. Gatehouses usually had two portcullises, one behind the other. The first reason for this is rather obvious – to provide for greater security. The second reason is perhaps not so obvious.

A closed portcullis

A common tactic in siege warfare was to open the gates to the castle and practically welcome the enemy inside. This was an old trick, but it was one that was deployed often, and when you read what happens next, you’ll see why defenders loved doing it so much.

In the event of the main door being smashed open by a battering ram, enemy soldiers would charge into the gatehouse. All doors leading into the entranceway would be locked from the inside, so that the enemy soldiers would be huddled in the ‘tunnel’ produced by the gatehouse’s wide walls and roof. Once enough soldiers had entered the gatehouse, the first portcullis was quickly dropped down, trapping the men between the first and second portcullis.

If you go into a medieval castle today and pass under the gatehouse, take a look upwards. You might see several large holes in the ceiling of the entranceway. They’re not building-mistakes…these are called ‘murder-holes’, and their name directly reflects their purpose.

Murder-Holes in the ceiling of a castle gatehouse

Once the enemy soldiers were trapped between the two portcullises, defenders in the upper levels of the gatehouse would pour things through the murder-holes, to kill the closely-packed soldiers below. It could be heavy rocks, scalding hot sand or cauldrons of boiling water. Contrary to popular belief, oil, which was a scarce commodity in Medieval Europe, was not poured through the murder-holes. It was so valuable that even though it could be heated so hot that it would flash-fry the trapped intruders like a bunch of chicken-wings, it was too valuable a resource to waste during a siege.

5. Towers.

Despite what fairy-tales and movies might give us to believe, towers were used for much more than just locking up fair maidens for tall, strapping knights to rescue. During a siege, a castle tower could be used to signal to approaching allies or reinforcements outside the castle, or it could be used as a command-post, from which superiors could direct their defending soldiers to various parts of the castle, if they saw the enemy army approaching. They also provided execellent vantage-points for shooting at enemy soldiers far below. Towers were often built with clockwise-spiralling staircases, this was so that the defender had the advantage when going up the stairs. A defender would be backing up the stairs, with his sword in his right-hand, with his body protected by the stairway’s central column. The attacker would have his sword-swings blocked by the column and he would have to expose more of his body to the defender, in order to get a decent thrust, which put him at a disadvantage.

6. Castle Grounds.

Really elaborate castles, called ‘concentric’ castles, started being built in the 1200s. These were real masterpieces. Castles within castles. A concentric castle consisted of numerous curtain walls (usually two or three), and a large, central keep. The outer curtain-wall was lower than the inner curtain-wall so that defenders further back, could shoot arrows or bolts over the heads of their fellow soldiers into the grounds outside the castle. Also, the ground between the two walls, should the outer wall be breeched, could be turned into a massive killing-field. Enemy soldiers, with nowhere to hide and duck for cover, would be massacred by defending archers, who shot at them from both walls.