Some later medieval castles had walls that were only about 15 to 20 feet (4.6 m to 6 m) high, but the walls of the stronger castles typically measured about 30 feet (9 m) in height and sometimes more. e wall of Eng- land's Framlingham Castle reached 40 feet (12 m) above the ground.

The height of a medieval castle varied significantly based on its strategic purpose and the era of its construction. A typical curtain wall (the outer defensive wall) usually stood between 24 and 39 feet (7 to 12 meters) tall; this height was sufficient to discourage scaling ladders while remaining thick enough to withstand battering rams. The keep or donjon (the central stronghold) was much taller, typically averaging 80 to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters). Some extreme examples, like the Coucy Castle in France, reached a staggering 180 feet before its destruction. To put this in a 2026 perspective, an average castle keep was roughly the height of an 8-to-10-story apartment building. These heights were precisely engineered to provide a superior "vantage point" for archers and to make the sheer physics of a siege—such as building a wooden tower of equal height—a logistical nightmare for attackers. The "average" height was essentially the maximum height a stone structure could reach while maintaining stability on the often-artificial "motte" (earthen mound) it was built upon.