What were inside castle walls?

Inside the Walls. The outer wall of a castle was called the Bailey. Inside the Bailey were buildings where the lord of the castle's cattle, horses and servants lived. Some of the soldiers needed to defend the castle might live in part of the gatehouse (known as the Barbican).



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Walls were generally built of stone within wooden frames designed to hold the stone in place while the mortar dried. For thick walls, the wall was usually constructed with a cavity that was filled with rubble rather than being solid stone. Where strength was not so vital, the cavity sometimes contained a staircase.

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Forde-Johnston describes such a site as a castle in which water plays a prominent part in the defences. Apart from hindering attackers, an abundant supply of water was also an advantage during a siege. Topographically, such structures are a type of low-lying castle.

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Often, these walls sloped away at the base to redirect objects dropped from the top of the castle wall, ricocheting them out at soldiers on the ground. Because they had walls to protect them, castle defenders would sometimes hunker down and try to wait out their attackers.

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Medieval castle walls were usually very thick for both protection and structure, anywhere from ten to twenty feet in thickness. They were designed to be impenetrable from the outside, although that certainly did not stop outsiders from trying.

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The entrance to the castle was always its weakest point. Drawbridges could be pulled up, preventing access across moats. Tall gate towers meant that defenders could shoot down in safety at attacks below. The main gate or door to the castle was usually a thick, iron-studded wooden door, that was hard to break through.

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The height of walls varied widely by castle, but were often 2.5–6 m (8.2–19.7 ft) thick. They were usually topped with crenellation or parapets that offered protection to defenders.

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They were stronger than hourdes and would withstand crossbow quarrels and even stones hurled by stone throwing siege engines.

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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.

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As the gate is always a vulnerable point of a castle, towers may be built near it to strengthen the defences at this point. In crusader castles, there is often a gate tower, with the gate passage leading through the base of the tower itself.

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moat, a depression surrounding a castle, city wall, or other fortification, usually but not always filled with water.

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As far back as the 9th century, lords built wooden castles to protect themselves from the Vikings. Wooden lookout towers were built on a hill and surrounded by wooden fencing.

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It turns out that those fairy tales you read as a child all left out a very important truth: The moats that surrounded medieval castles weren't just useful defenses against attack; they were also open sewers into which the castles' primitive waste disposal systems flushed human excrement and other foul substances.

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When it comes to horrible jobs in a castle, gong farmer has to win the prize. Gong farmers, also known as nightmen, were responsible for cleaning out human excrement from the cesspits within the castle walls.

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