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140-461: The hill it is on was first fortified with a wood-reinforced earthen wall in the 12th century. In the first half of the 13th century, the stone keep was built. It still survives and is the tallest building of the castle, as well as the oldest standing building in the city. In the 14th century, during the reign of Casimir III the Great , the castle was rebuilt with stone walls. Probably at the same time,

280-514: A bretasche , a square structure that overhung from the upper floors of the building, enabling better defences and a more sturdy structural design. These wooden keeps could be protected by skins and hides to prevent them from being easily set alight during a siege. One contemporary account of these keeps comes from Jean de Colmieu around 1130, who described how the nobles of the Calais region would build "a mound of earth as high as they can and dig

420-802: A donjon carré or donjon roman in French – and circular shell keeps . The reasons for the transition from timber to stone keeps are unclear, and the process was slow and uneven, taking many years to take effect across the various regions. Traditionally it was believed that stone keeps had been adopted because of the cruder nature of wooden buildings, the limited lifespan of wooden fortifications and their vulnerability to fire, but recent archaeological studies have shown that many wooden castles were as robust and as sophisticated as their stone equivalents. Some wooden keeps were not converted into stone for many years and were instead expanded in wood, such as at Hen Domen . Nonetheless, stone became increasingly popular as

560-526: A "stalwart house ... glittering with beauty in every part". Mottes were made out of earth and flattened on top, and it can be very hard to determine whether a mound is artificial or natural without excavation. Some were also built over older artificial structures, such as Bronze Age barrows . The size of mottes varied considerably, with these mounds being 3 metres to 30 metres in height (10–100 feet), and from 30 to 90 metres (100 to 300 ft) in diameter. This minimum height of 3 metres (10 feet) for mottes

700-464: A Tsarist prison from 1831 to 1915, in independent Poland from 1918 to 1939, and most infamously during the Nazi German occupation from 1939 to 1944. Under Tsarist Russia prisoners included Polish resistance members, one of the most notable being writer Bolesław Prus . When between 40,000 and 80,000 inmates, many of them Polish resistance fighters and Jews, passed through. During World War II ,

840-433: A building material for keeps for both military and symbolic reasons. Stone keep construction required skilled craftsmen. Unlike timber and earthworks, which could be built using unfree labour or serfs, these craftsmen had to be paid and stone keeps were therefore expensive. They were also relatively slow to erect, due to the limitations of the lime mortar used during the period – a keep's walls could usually be raised by

980-408: A central keep. Military factors may well have driven this development: R. Brown, for example, suggests that designs with a separate keep and bailey system inherently lacked a co-ordinated and combined defensive system, and that once bailey walls were sophisticated enough, a keep became militarily unnecessary. In England, gatehouses were also growing in size and sophistication until they too challenged

1120-463: A central, rectangular courtyard, and built a wall around them to form a castle. The result, illustrated initially at Yonne , and later at Château de Farcheville , was a characteristic quadrangular layout with four large, circular corner towers. It lacked a keep, which was not needed to support this design. The end of the medieval period saw a fresh resurgence in the building of keeps in western castles. Some castles continued to be built without keeps:

1260-576: A circular keep was built with four round turrets; internally, however, the structure remained conventionally square. A few years later, Château d'Étampes adopted a quatrefoil design. These designs, however, remained isolated experiments. In the 1190s, however, the struggle for power in France began to swing in favour of Philip II , culminating in the Capetian capture of Normandy in 1204. Philip II started to construct completely circular keeps, such as

1400-596: A consequence of the centralising of royal authority in the 12th century. David I encouraged Norman and French nobles to settle in Scotland, introducing a feudal mode of landholding and the use of castles as a way of controlling the contested lowlands. The quasi-independent polity of Galloway , which had resisted the rule of David and his predecessors, was a particular focus for this colonisation. The size of these Scottish castles, primarily wooden motte and bailey constructions, varied considerably, from larger designs such as

1540-738: A decade or more to build. During the 12th century, new designs began to be introduced – in France, quatrefoil -shaped keeps were introduced, while in England polygonal towers were built. By the end of the century, French and English keep designs began to diverge: Philip II of France built a sequence of circular keeps as part of his bid to stamp his royal authority on his new territories, while in England castles were built without keeps. In Spain, keeps were increasingly incorporated into both Christian and Islamic castles, although in Germany tall fighting towers called bergfriede were preferred to keeps in

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1680-499: A degree of medieval allure to their owners. Some keeps were modified to exaggerate this effect: Hawarden , for example, was remodelled to appear taller but also more decayed, the better to produce a good silhouette. The interest continued and, in the late 18th and 19th century, it became fashionable to build intact, replica castles in England, resulting in what A. Rowan has called the Norman style of new castle building, characterised by

1820-504: A distinctive Romanesque style, often reusing Roman materials and sites, and were almost certainly intended to impress and generate a political effect amongst local people. The political value of these keep designs, and the social prestige they lent to their builders, may help explain why they continued to be built in England into the late 12th century, beyond the point when military theory would have suggested that alternative designs were adopted. The second early stone design, emerging from

1960-442: A ditch about it as wide and deep as possible. The space on top of the mound is enclosed by a palisade of very strong hewn logs, strengthened at intervals by as many towers as their means can provide. Inside the enclosure is a citadel, or keep, which commands the whole circuit of the defences. The entrance to the fortress is by means of a bridge, which, rising from the outer side of the moat and supported on posts as it ascends, reches to

2100-415: A few soldiers, whilst larger mottes could be equipped with a much grander building. Many wooden keeps were designed with bretèches , or brattices, small balconies that projected from the upper floors of the building, allowing defenders to cover the base of the fortification wall. The early 12th-century chronicler Lambert of Ardres described the wooden keep on top of the motte at the castle of Ardres , where

2240-460: A fresh style was clearly political, an attempt to demonstrate his new power and authority over his extended territories. As historian Philippe Durand suggests, these keeps provided military security and were a physical representation of the renouveau capétien , or Capetian renewal. Keep design in England began to change only towards the end of the 12th century, later than in France. Wooden keeps on mottes ceased to be built across most of England by

2380-472: A keep, rather than to a place of imprisonment. While the term remains in common academic use, some academics prefer to use the term donjon , and most modern historians warn against using the term "keep" simplistically. The fortifications that we would today call keeps did not necessarily form part of a unified medieval style, nor were they all used in a similar fashion during the period. The earliest keeps were built as part of motte-and-bailey castles from

2520-424: A maximum of only 12 feet (3.6 metres) a year; the keep at Scarborough was not atypical in taking ten years to build. The number of such keeps remained relatively low: in England, for example, although several early stone keeps had been built after the conquest, there were only somewhere between ten and fifteen in existence by 1100, and only around a hundred had been built by 1216. Norman keeps had four sides, with

2660-410: A more gentle incline. Where available, layers of different sorts of earth, such as clay, gravel and chalk , would be used alternatively to build in strength to the design. Layers of turf could also be added to stabilise the motte as it was built up, or a core of stones placed as the heart of the structure to provide strength. Similar issues applied to the defensive ditches, where designers found that

2800-405: A natural hill could be used, scarping could produce a motte without the need to create an artificial mound, but more commonly much of the motte would have to be constructed by hand. Four methods existed for building a mound and a tower: the mound could either be built first, and a tower placed on top of it; the tower could alternatively be built on the original ground surface and then buried within

2940-406: A new castle development. By the 15th century, it was increasingly unusual for a lord to build both a keep and a large gatehouse at the same castle, and by the early 16th century, the gatehouse had easily overtaken the keep as the more fashionable feature: indeed, almost no new keeps were built in England after this period. The classical Palladian style began to dominate European architecture during

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3080-585: A range of different castle types as motta , however, and there may not have been as many genuine motte-and-bailey castles in southern Italy as was once thought on the basis of the documentary evidence alone. In addition, there is evidence of the Norman crusaders building a motte and bailey using sand and wood in Egypt in 1221 during the Fifth Crusade . Motte-and-bailey castles became a less popular design in

3220-490: A result of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, use spread into Wales during the second half of the 11th century and into Ireland in the 1170s. The Anglo-Normans and French rulers began to build stone keeps during the 10th and 11th centuries, including Norman keeps, with a square or rectangular design, and circular shell keeps . Stone keeps carried considerable political as well as military importance and could take

3360-639: A similar transition occurred in the 13th and 14th centuries. One factor was the introduction of stone into castle buildings. The earliest stone castles had emerged in the 10th century, with stone keeps being built on mottes along the Catalonia frontier and several, including Château de Langeais , in Angers. Although wood was a more powerful defensive material than was once thought, stone became increasingly popular for military and symbolic reasons. Some existing motte-and-bailey castles were converted to stone, with

3500-489: A small number of keeps on a much larger scale than before, in England sometimes termed tower keeps, as part of new palace fortresses. This shift reflected political and social pressures, such as the desire of the wealthiest lords to have privacy from their growing households of retainers, as well as the various architectural ideas being exchanged across the region, despite the ongoing Hundred Years War between France and England. The resurgence in French keep design began after

3640-544: A stronghold and bailey construction surrounded by water, and widely built in the late medieval period. In England, motte-and-bailey earthworks were put to various uses over later years; in some cases, mottes were turned into garden features in the 18th century, or reused as military defences during the Second World War . Today, almost no mottes of motte-and-bailey castles remain in regular use in Europe, with one of

3780-416: A tall, square, stone-built, crenelated building; Scottish and Ulster tower houses were often also surrounded by a barmkyn or bawn wall. Most academics have concluded that tower houses should not be classified as keeps but rather as a form of fortified house. As the 16th century progressed, keeps fell out of fashion once again. In England, the gatehouse also began to supplant the keep as the key focus for

3920-414: A wall-walk around them, and the outer walls of the motte and the wall-walk could be strengthened by filling in the gap between the wooden walls with earth and stones, allowing it to carry more weight – this was called a garillum . Smaller mottes could only support simple towers with room for a few soldiers, whilst larger mottes could be equipped with a much grander keep. Many wooden keeps were designed with

4060-422: Is a European fortification with a wooden or stone keep situated on a raised area of ground called a motte, accompanied by a walled courtyard, or bailey , surrounded by a protective ditch and palisade . Relatively easy to build with unskilled labour, but still militarily formidable, these castles were built across northern Europe from the 10th century onwards, spreading from Normandy and Anjou in France, into

4200-662: Is a particularly western and northern European phenomenon, most numerous in France and Britain, but also seen in Denmark, Germany, Southern Italy and occasionally beyond. European castles first emerged between the Loire river and the Rhine in the 9th and 10th centuries, after the fall of the Carolingian Empire resulted in its territory being divided among individual lords and princes and local territories became threatened by

4340-522: Is not medieval in origin. The word motte is the French version of the Latin mota , and in France, the word motte , generally used for a clump of turf , came to refer to a turf bank, and by the 12th century was used to refer to the castle design itself. The word "bailey" comes from the Norman-French baille , or basse-cour , referring to a low yard. In medieval sources, the Latin term castellum

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4480-400: Is usually intended to exclude smaller mounds which often had non-military purposes. In England and Wales, only 7% of mottes were taller than 10 metres (33 feet) high; 24% were between 10 and 5 metres (33 and 16 ft), and 69% were less than 5 metres (16 feet) tall. A motte was protected by a ditch around it, which would typically have also been a source of the earth and soil for constructing

4620-565: The Angevins , it is argued, began to build them to protect against the Viking raids, and the design spread to deal with the attacks along the Slav and Hungarian frontiers. Another argument is that, given the links between this style of castle and the Norman style, who were of Viking descent, it was in fact originally a Viking design, transported to Normandy and Anjou . The motte-and-bailey castle

4760-558: The Bass of Inverurie to smaller castles like Balmaclellan . Motte-and-bailey castles were introduced to Ireland following the Norman invasion of Ireland that began between 1166 and 1171 under first Richard de Clare and then Henry II of England , with the occupation of southern and eastern Ireland by a number of Anglo-Norman barons. The rapid Norman success depended on key economic and military advantages; their cavalry enabled Norman successes in battles, and castles enabled them to control

4900-479: The Bastille in the 1370s, for example, combined a now traditional quadrangular design with machicolated corner towers, gatehouses and moat; the walls, innovatively, were of equal height to the towers. This fashion became copied across French and in England, particularly amongst the nouveau riche , for example at Nunney . The royalty and the very wealthiest in France, England and Spain, however, began to construct

5040-632: The Holy Roman Empire , as well as the Low Countries it controlled, in the 11th century, when these castles were popularized in the area that became the Netherlands . The Normans introduced the design into England and Wales. Motte-and-bailey castles were adopted in Scotland, Ireland, and Denmark in the 12th and 13th centuries. By the end of the 13th century, the design was largely superseded by alternative forms of fortification, but

5180-456: The Holy Roman Empire , which then spanned central Europe. They now typically took the form of an enclosure on a hilltop, or, on lower ground, a tall, free-standing tower (German Bergfried ). The largest castles had well-defined inner and outer courts, but no mottes. The motte-and-bailey design began to spread into Alsace and the northern Alps from France during the first half of the 11th century, spreading further into Bohemia and Austria in

5320-529: The Low Countries encouraged castle building in a number of regions from the late 12th century to the 14th century. In Flanders , the first motte and bailey castles began relatively early at the end of the 11th century. The rural motte-and-bailey castles followed the traditional design, but the urban castles often lacked the traditional baileys, using parts of the town to fulfil this role instead. Motte-and-bailey castles in Flanders were particularly numerous in

5460-570: The Tour Jeanne d'Arc , with most built in his newly acquired territories. The first of Philip's new keeps was begun at the Louvre in 1190 and at least another twenty followed, all built to a consistent standard and cost. The architectural idea of circular keeps may have come from Catalonia , where circular towers in castles formed a local tradition, and probably carried some military advantages, but Philip's intention in building these new keeps in

5600-578: The Union of Lublin , the founding act of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . As a consequence of the wars in the 17th century ( The Deluge ), the castle fell into disrepair. Only the oldest sections, the keep and the chapel, remained intact. After Lublin fell under Russian rule following the territorial settlement of the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the government of Congress Poland , on

5740-639: The castle in Norwich and 27 for the castle in Cambridge . The second and third waves of castle building in the late-11th century were led by the major magnates and then the more junior knights on their new estates. Some regional patterns in castle building can be seen – relatively few castles were built in East Anglia compared to the west of England or the Marches , for example; this was probably due to

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5880-481: The keep and the gatehouse usually the first parts to be upgraded. Shell keeps were built on many mottes, circular stone shells running around the top of the motte, sometimes protected by a further chemise , or low protective wall, around the base. By the 14th century, a number of motte and bailey castles had been converted into powerful stone fortresses. Newer castle designs placed less emphasis on mottes. Square Norman keeps built in stone became popular following

6020-591: The terpen gave way to hege wieren , non-residential defensive towers, often on motte-like mounds, owned by the increasingly powerful nobles and landowners. On Zeeland the local lords had a high degree of independence during the 12th and 13th centuries, owing to the wider conflict for power between neighbouring Flanders and Friesland. The Zeeland lords had also built terpen mounds, but these gave way to larger werven constructions–effectively mottes–which were later termed bergen . Sometimes both terpen and werven are called vliedburg , or " refuge castles ". During

6160-427: The "first storey was on the surface of the ground, where were cellars and granaries, and great boxes, tuns, casks, and other domestic utensils. In the storey above were the dwelling and common living rooms of the residents in which were the larders, the rooms of the bakers and butlers, and the great chamber in which the lord and his wife slept ... In the upper storey of the house were garret rooms ... In this storey also

6300-518: The 10th century onwards – a combination of documentary and archaeological evidence places the first such castle, built at Vincy , in 979. These castles were initially built by the more powerful lords of Anjou in the late 10th and 11th centuries, in particular Fulk III and his son, Geoffrey II , who built a great number of them between 987 and 1060. William the Conqueror then introduced this form of castle into England when he invaded in 1066, and

6440-632: The 1150s, although they continued to be erected in Wales and along the Welsh Marches . By the end of the 12th century, England and Ireland saw a handful of innovative angular or polygonal keeps built, including the keep at Orford Castle , with three rectangular, clasping towers built out from the high, circular central tower; the cross-shaped keep of Trim Castle and the famous polygonal design at Conisborough . Despite these new designs, square keeps remained popular across much of England and, as late as

6580-648: The 1170s, square Norman great keeps were being built at Newcastle . Circular keep designs similar to those in France really became popular in Britain in the Welsh Marches and Scotland for only a short period during the early 13th century. As with the new keeps constructed in France, these Anglo-Norman designs were informed both by military thinking and by political drivers. The keep at Orford has been particularly extensively analysed in this regard, and although traditional explanations suggested that its unusual plan

6720-460: The 11th century, either as part of motte-and-bailey designs or, as part of Hohenburgen castles, with characteristic inner and outer courts. Bergfriede , which take their name from the German for a belfry , had similarities to keeps, but are usually distinguished from them on account of Bergfriede having a smaller area or footprint, usually being non-residential and being typically integrated into

6860-452: The 12th and 13th centuries a number of terpen mounds were turned into werven mottes, and some new werven mottes were built from scratch. Around 323 known or probable motte and bailey castles of this design are believed to have been built within the borders of the modern Netherlands . In neighbouring Denmark, motte-and-bailey castles appeared somewhat later in the 12th and 13th centuries and in more limited numbers than elsewhere, due to

7000-415: The 12th century onwards, was the shell keep , a donjon annulaire in French, which involved replacing the wooden keep on a motte, or the palisade on a ringwork , with a circular stone wall. Shell keeps were sometimes further protected by an additional low protective wall, called a chemise , around their base. Buildings could then be built around the inside of the shell, producing a small inner courtyard at

7140-524: The 12th century, however, the influence of France and the various military orders was encouraging the development of square keeps in Christian castles across the region, and by the second half of the century this practice was spread across into the Islamic kingdoms. By contrast, the remainder of Europe saw stone towers being used in castles, but not in a way that fulfilled the range of functions seen in

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7280-445: The 13th century was another development that removed the need for a keep. Castles had needed additional living space since their first emergence in the 9th century; initially this had been provided by halls in the bailey, then later by ranges of chambers alongside the inside of a bailey wall, such as at Goodrich . But French designs in the late 12th century took the layout of a contemporary unfortified manor house, whose rooms faced around

7420-492: The 14th century to a castrum-curia model, where the castle was built with a fortified bailey and a fortified mound, somewhat smaller than the typical motte. By the 12th century, the castles in Western Germany began to thin in number, due to changes in land ownership, and various mottes were abandoned. In Germany and Denmark, motte-and-bailey castles also provided the model for the later wasserburg , or "water castle",

7560-565: The 16th century, the English word keep has commonly referred to large towers in castles. The word originates from around 1375 to 1376, coming from the Middle English term kype , meaning basket or cask, and was a term applied to the shell keep at Guînes , said to resemble a barrel. The term came to be used for other shell keeps by the 15th century. By the 17th century, the word keep lost its original reference to baskets or casks and

7700-419: The 17th and 18th centuries or incorporated into gardens as an alternative to follies . During the 19th century, keeps became fashionable once again, and in England and France, a number were restored or redesigned by Gothic architects. Despite further damage to many French and Spanish keeps during the wars of the 20th century, keeps now form an important part of the tourist and heritage industry in Europe. Since

7840-478: The 17th century onwards, some keeps were deliberately destroyed. In England, many were destroyed after the end of the Second English Civil War in 1649, when Parliament took steps to prevent another royalist uprising by slighting , or damaging, castles so as to prevent them from having any further military utility. Slighting was quite expensive and took considerable effort to carry out, so damage

7980-407: The 17th century, causing a further move away from the use of keeps. Buildings in this style usually required considerable space for the enfiladed formal rooms that became essential for modern palaces by the middle of the century, and this style was impossible to fit into a traditional keep. The keep at Bolsover Castle in England was one of the few to be built as part of a Palladian design. From

8120-512: The 20th century caused damage to many castle keeps across Europe; in particular, the famous keep at Coucy was destroyed by the German Army in 1917. By the late 20th century the conservation of castle keeps formed part of government policy across France, England, Ireland, and Spain. In the 21st century in England, most keeps are in ruins and form part of the tourism and heritage industries, rather than being used as functioning buildings –

8260-800: The Castilian Crown during the period. Henry IV of Castile responded in the 15th century by creating a sequence of royal castles with prominent keeps at the Castle of La Mota , Portillo , and Alcázar of Segovia : built to particular proportions, these keeps became known as a key element of the Valladolid school of Spanish castle design. Smaller versions of these keeps were subsequently built by many aspiring new aristocracy in Spain, including many converted Jews , keen to improve their social prestige and position in society. The French model of tall keeps

8400-637: The Castle Chapel was the location of a German court. Many prisoners were sent from the castle to concentration camps , including nearby Majdanek . Just before withdrawing on 22 July 1944, the German prison officers and SS massacred over remaining 300 prisoners. After 1944, the castle continued as a prison of the Soviet secret police and later of the Soviet-installed communist regime of Poland and, until 1954, about 35,000 Poles fighting against

8540-532: The Conqueror , as the Duke of Normandy , is believed to have adopted the motte-and-bailey design from neighbouring Anjou. Duke William went on to prohibit the building of castles without his consent through the Consuetudines et Justicie , with his legal definition of castles centring on the classic motte-and-bailey features of ditching, banking and palisading. By the 11th century, castles were built throughout

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8680-481: The Edwardian designs at the end of the 14th century. In the 15th century, the fashion for the creation of very expensive, French-influenced palatial castles featuring complex tower keeps spread, with new keeps being built at Wardour , Tattershall , and Raglan Castle . In central and eastern England, some keeps began to be built in brick, with Caister and Tattershall forming examples of this trend. In Scotland,

8820-456: The Italian for to hold or to keep . By the 19th century, Victorian historians incorrectly concluded that the etymology of the words "keep" and tenazza were linked and that all keeps had fulfilled this military function. As a result of this evolution in meaning, the use of the term keep in historical analysis today can be problematic. Contemporary medieval writers used various terms for

8960-515: The Levant. More recent historical analysis, however, has emphasised the political and social drivers that underlay these mid-medieval changes in keep design. Through most of the 12th century, France was divided between the Capetian kings, ruling from the Île-de-France , and kings of England, who controlled Normandy and much of the west of France. Within the Capetian territories, early experimentation in new keep designs began at Houdan in 1120, where

9100-560: The Magyars and the Norse. Against this background, various explanations have been put forward to explain the origins and spread of the motte-and-bailey design across western and northern Europe; there is often a tension among the academic community between explanations that stress military and social reasons for the rise of this design. One suggestion is that these castles were built particularly in order to protect against external attack –

9240-437: The architect Anthony Salvin was particularly prominent – as illustrated by reworking and heightening of the keep at Windsor Castle , while in France, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc reworked the keeps at castles in locations like Pierrefonds during the 1860s and 1870s, admittedly in a largely speculative fashion, since the original keep had been mostly destroyed in 1617. The Spanish Civil War and First and Second World Wars in

9380-562: The best-known castle design, they were not always the most numerous in any given area. A popular alternative was the ringwork castle, involving a palisade being built on top of a raised earth rampart , protected by a ditch. The choice of motte and bailey or ringwork was partially driven by terrain, as mottes were typically built on low ground, and on deeper clay and alluvial soils. Another factor may have been speed, as ringworks were faster to build than mottes. Some ringwork castles were later converted into motte-and-bailey designs, by filling in

9520-472: The building of motte-and-bailey castles in Normandy accelerated as well, resulting in a broad swath of these castles across the Norman territories, around 741 motte-and-bailey castles in England and Wales alone. Having become well established in Normandy, Germany and Britain, motte-and-bailey castles began to be adopted elsewhere, mainly in northern Europe, during the 12th and 13th centuries. Conflict through

9660-491: The buildings we would today call keeps. In Latin, they are variously described as turris , turris castri or magna turris – a tower , a castle tower , or a great tower . The 12th-century French came to term them a donjon , from the Latin dominarium "lordship", linking the keep and feudal authority. Similarly, medieval Spanish writers called the buildings torre del homenaje , or "tower of homage ". In England, donjon turned into dungeon , which initially referred to

9800-559: The castle's Chapel of the Holy Trinity was built as a royal chapel. In the first decades of the 15th century, King Władysław II Jagiełło commissioned a set of frescoes for the chapel. They were completed in 1418 and are preserved to this day. The artist was a Ruthenian , Master Andrej, who signed his work on one of the walls. Because of their unique style, mixing Western and Eastern Orthodox influences, they are acclaimed internationally as an important historical monument. Under

9940-405: The castle. Wherever possible, nearby streams and rivers would be dammed or diverted, creating water-filled moats, artificial lakes and other forms of water defences. In practice, there was a wide number of variations to this common design. A castle could have more than one bailey: at Warkworth Castle an inner and an outer bailey was constructed, or alternatively, several baileys could flank

10080-535: The centre of the ringwork to produce a flat-topped motte. The reasons for why this decision was taken are unclear; motte-and-bailey castles may have been felt to be more prestigious, or easier to defend; another theory is that like the terpen in the Netherlands, or Vorburg and Hauptburg in Lower Rhineland, raising the height of the castle was done to create a drier site. The motte-and-bailey castle

10220-570: The centre. The style was particularly popular in south-east England and across Normandy, although less so elsewhere. Restormel Castle is a classic example of this development, as is the later Launceston Castle ; prominent Normandy and Low Country equivalents include Gisors and the Burcht van Leiden – these castles were amongst the most powerful fortifications of the period. Although the circular design held military advantages over one with square corners, as noted above these really mattered from only

10360-437: The characteristic pilaster buttresses added little real architectural strength to the design. Many of the weaknesses inherent to their design were irrelevant during the early part of their history. The corners of square keeps were theoretically vulnerable to siege engines and galleried mining , but before the introduction of the trebuchet at the end of the 12th century, early artillery stood little practical chance of damaging

10500-455: The construction of Holyrood Great Tower between 1528 and 1532 drew on this English tradition, but incorporated additional French influences to produce a highly secure but comfortable keep, guarded by a gun park. These tower keeps were expensive buildings to construct, each built to a unique design for a specific lord and, as historian Norman Pounds has suggested, they "...were designed to allow very rich men to live in luxury and splendour." At

10640-516: The construction of a smaller design than that later seen on the sites concerned. Taking into account estimates of the likely available manpower during the period, historians estimate that the larger mottes might have taken between four and nine months to build. This contrasted favourably with stone keeps of the period, which typically took up to ten years to build. Very little skilled labour was required to build motte and bailey castles, which made them very attractive propositions if forced peasant labour

10780-519: The corners reinforced by pilaster buttresses ; some keeps, particularly in Normandy and France, had a barlongue design, being rectangular in plan with their length twice their width, while others, particularly in England, formed a square. These keeps could be up to four storeys high, with the entrance placed on the first storey to prevent the door from being easily broken down; early French keeps had external stairs in wood, whilst later castles in both France and England built them in stone. In some cases

10920-502: The creation of local fiefdoms and feudal landowners, and areas without this method of governance rarely built these castles. Yet another theory suggests that the design emerged as a result of the pressures of space on ringworks and that the earliest motte-and-baileys were converted ringworks. Finally, there may be a link between the local geography and the building of motte-and-bailey castles, which are usually built on low-lying areas, in many cases subject to regular flooding. Regardless of

11060-432: The date for the first motte and bailey castle, at Vincy , back to 979. The castles were built by the more powerful lords of Anjou in the late 10th and 11th centuries, in particular Fulk III and his son, Geoffrey II , who built a great number of them between 987 and 1060. Many of these earliest castles would have appeared quite crude and rustic by later standards, belying the power and prestige of their builders. William

11200-461: The defeat of the royal armies at the battles of Crécy in 1346 and Poitiers in 1356, which caused high levels of social unrest across the remaining French territories. Charles V of France attempted to restore French royal authority and prestige through the construction of a new range of castles. The Château de Vincennes , where a new keep was completed under Charles by 1380, was the first example of these palace fortresses . The keep at Vincennes

11340-482: The design spread through south Wales as the Normans expanded up the valleys during the subsequent decades. In a motte-and-bailey design, a castle would include a mound called a motte, usually artificially constructed by piling up turf and soil, and a bailey, a lower walled enclosure. A keep and a protective wall would usually be built on top of the motte. Some protective walls around a keep would be large enough to have

11480-463: The dwelling and common living-rooms of the residents in which were the larders, the rooms of the bakers and butlers, and the great chamber in which the lord and his wife slept...In the upper storey of the house were garret rooms...In this storey also the watchmen and the servants appointed to keep the house took their sleep." In the Holy Roman Empire , tall, free-standing, wooden (later stone), fighting towers called Bergfriede were commonly built by

11620-413: The earthworks remain a prominent feature in many countries. A motte-and-bailey castle was made up of two structures: a motte (a type of mound – often artificial – topped with a wooden or stone structure known as a keep ); and at least one bailey (a fortified enclosure built next to the motte). The constructive elements themselves are ancient, but the term motte-and-bailey is a relatively modern one and

11760-460: The emerging new gunpowder weapons was made in these keeps, although later in the century gunports were slowly being added, as for example by Charles VI to his keep at Saint-Malo . The French model spread into Iberia in the second half of the century, where the most powerful nobles in Castile built a number of similar tall keeps, such as that at Peñafiel , taking advantage of the weakness of

11900-452: The enclosure is a citadel, or keep, which commands the whole circuit of the defences. The entrance to the fortress is by means of a bridge, which, rising from the outer side of the moat and supported on posts as it ascends, reaches to the top of the mound". At Durham Castle , contemporaries described how the motte-and-bailey superstructure arose from the "tumulus of rising earth" with a keep rising "into thin air, strong within and without" with

12040-453: The end of the 12th century onwards; the major reason for adopting a shell keep design, in the 12th century at least, was the circular design of the original earthworks exploited to support the keep; indeed, some designs were less than circular in order to accommodate irregular mottes, such as that found at Windsor Castle . During the second half of the 12th century, a range of new keep designs began to appear across France and England, breaking

12180-423: The entrance stairs were protected by additional walls and a door, producing a forebuilding. The strength of the Norman design typically came from the thickness of the keep's walls: usually made of rag-stone , these could be up to 24 feet (7.3 metres) thick, immensely strong, and producing a steady temperature inside the building throughout summer and winter. The larger keeps were subdivided by an internal wall while

12320-408: The first documentary evidence of a native Welsh castle being at Cymmer in 1116. These timber castles, including Tomen y Rhodywdd, Tomen y Faerdre , Gaer Penrhôs , were of equivalent quality to the equivalent Norman fortifications in the area, and it can prove difficult to distinguish the builders of some sites from the archaeological evidence alone. Motte-and-bailey castles in Scotland emerged as

12460-461: The first such construction in Langeais in 994. Several were built in England and Wales after the conquest; by 1216 there were around 100 in the country. These massive keeps could be either erected on top of settled, well-established mottes or could have mottes built around them – so-called "buried" keeps. The ability of mottes, especially newly built mottes, to support the heavier stone structures,

12600-630: The grandest castles built during the period. In the 15th century, the protective function of keeps was compromised by improved artillery . For example, in 1464 during the Wars of the Roses , the keep of Bamburgh Castle on the Northumberland coast, previously considered to be impregnable, was defeated with bombards . By the 16th century, keeps were slowly falling out of fashion as fortifications and residences. Many were destroyed in civil wars between

12740-426: The higher peaks where mottes were unnecessary. In Flanders, a decline came in the 13th century as feudal society changed. In the Netherlands, cheap brick started to be used in castles from the 13th century onwards in place of earthworks, and many mottes were levelled, to help develop the surrounding, low-lying fields; these "levelled mottes" are a particularly Dutch phenomenon. In Denmark, motte and baileys gave way in

12880-460: The identification of these earthwork remains can be contentious. A small number of motte-and-bailey castles were built outside of northern Europe. In the late-12th century, the Normans invaded southern Italy and Sicily ; although they had the technology to build more modern designs, in many cases wooden motte-and-bailey castles were built instead for reasons of speed. The Italians came to refer to

13020-519: The inclusion of large keeps; the final replica keep to be built in this way was at Penrhyn between 1820 and 1840. Where there was an existing castle on a site, another response across 19th-century Europe was to attempt to improve the buildings, bringing their often chaotic historic features into line with a more integrated architectural aesthetic, in a style often termed Gothic Revivalism . There were numerous attempts to restore or rebuild keeps so as to produce this consistently Gothic style: in England,

13160-403: The initiative of Stanisław Staszic , carried out a complete reconstruction of the castle between 1826 and 1828. The new buildings were in the English neo-Gothic style, completely different from the structures they replaced, and their new purpose was to house a criminal prison. Only the keep and the chapel were preserved in their original state. The castle was a prison for the next 128 years: as

13300-400: The keep of Windsor Castle being a rare exception. In Germany, large numbers of the bergfried towers were restored as functional buildings in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, often as government offices or youth hostels , or the modern conversion of tower houses, which in many cases have become modernised domestic homes. Motte-and-bailey castle A motte-and-bailey castle

13440-473: The keep usually amongst the first parts to be upgraded, while in other cases new keeps were built from scratch in stone. These stone keeps were introduced into Ireland during the 1170s following the Norman occupation of the east of the country, where they were particularly popular amongst the new Anglo-Norman lords. Two broad types of design emerged across France and England during the period: four-sided stone keeps, known as Norman keeps or great keeps in English –

13580-480: The keeps, and galleried mining was rarely practised. Similarly, the corners of a square keep created dead space that defenders could not fire at, but missile fire in castle sieges was less important until the introduction of the crossbow in the middle of the 12th century, when arrowslits began to be introduced. Nonetheless, many stone Norman keeps made considerable compromises to military utility. Norwich Castle , for example, included elaborate blind arcading on

13720-543: The later periods. Larger mottes took disproportionately more effort to build than their smaller equivalents, because of the volumes of earth involved. The largest mottes in England, such as that of Thetford Castle , are estimated to have required up to 24,000 man-days of work; smaller ones required perhaps as little as 1,000. Contemporary accounts talk of some mottes being built in a matter of days, although these low figures have led to suggestions by historians that either these figures were an underestimate, or that they refer to

13860-809: The less feudal society. Except for a handful of mote and bailey castles in Norway, built in the first half of the 11th century and including the royal residence in Oslo , the design did not play a role further north in Scandinavia. The Norman expansion into Wales slowed in the 12th century but remained an ongoing threat to the remaining native rulers. In response, the Welsh princes and lords began to build their own castles, frequently motte-and-bailey designs, usually in wood. There are indications that this may have begun from 1111 onwards under Prince Cadwgan ap Bleddyn , with

14000-540: The mid-medieval period. In France, they were not built after the start of the 12th century, and mottes ceased to be built in most of England after around 1170, although they continued to be erected in Wales and along the Marches. Many motte-and-bailey castles were occupied relatively briefly; in England, many had been abandoned or allowed to lapse into disrepair by the 12th century. In the Low Countries and Germany,

14140-416: The more prestigious Höhenburgen built on high ground, but this is usually regarded as unlikely. In many cases, bergfrieds were converted into motte and bailey designs by burying existing castle towers within the mounds. In England, William invaded from Normandy in 1066, resulting in three phases of castle building in England, around 80% of which were in the motte-and-bailey pattern. The first of these

14280-409: The motte, as at Windsor Castle . Some baileys had two mottes, such as those at Lincoln . Some mottes could be square instead of round, such as at Cabal Tump (Herefordshire). Instead of single ditches, occasionally double-ditch defences were built, as seen at Berkhamsted . Local geography and the intent of the builder produced many unique designs. Various methods were used to build mottes. Where

14420-429: The mound itself. A keep and a protective wall would usually be built on top of the motte. Some walls would be large enough to have a wall-walk around them, and the outer walls of the motte and the wall-walk could be strengthened by filling in the gap between the wooden walls with earth and stones, allowing it to carry more weight; this was called a garillum . Smaller mottes could support only simple towers with room for

14560-417: The mound; the tower could potentially be built on the original ground surface and then partially buried within the mound, the buried part forming a cellar beneath; or the tower could be built first, and the mound added later. Regardless of the sequencing, artificial mottes had to be built by piling up earth; this work was undertaken by hand, using wooden shovels and hand-barrows, possibly with picks as well in

14700-405: The need for a keep in the same castle. The classic Edwardian gatehouse, with two large, flanking towers and multiple portcullises, designed to be defended from attacks both within and outside the main castle, has been often compared to the earlier Norman keeps: some of the largest gatehouses are called gatehouse keeps for this reason. The quadrangular castle design that emerged in France during

14840-528: The new communist government (especially cursed soldiers ) passed through it, of whom 333 died. In 1954, the castle prison was closed. Following reconstruction and refurbishment, since 1957 it has been the main site of the National Museum . Keep A keep is a type of fortified tower built within castles during the Middle Ages by European nobility . Scholars have debated

14980-407: The newly conquered territories. The new lords rapidly built castles to protect their possessions; most of these were motte-and-bailey constructions, many of them strongly defended. Unlike Wales, the indigenous Irish lords do not appear to have constructed their own castles in any significant number during the period. Between 350 and 450 motte-and-bailey castles are believed to remain today, although

15120-637: The north of England during the 14th century, at locations such as Warkworth . They were probably partially inspired by designs in France, but they also reflected the improvements in the security along the Scottish border during the period, and the regional rise of major noble families such as the Percies and the Nevilles , whose wealth encouraged a surge in castle building at the end of the 14th century. New castles at Raby , Bolton , and Warkworth Castle took

15260-476: The outer defences of a castle, rather than being a safe refuge of last resort. During the 10th century, a small number of stone keeps began to be built in France, such at the Château de Langeais : in the 11th century, their numbers increased as the style spread through Normandy across the rest of France and into England, South Italy and Sicily. Some existing motte-and-bailey castles were converted to stone, with

15400-459: The outside of the building and appears to have had an entrance route designed for public ceremony, rather than for defence. The interior of the keep at Hedingham could certainly have hosted impressive ceremonies and events, but contained numerous flaws from a military perspective. Important early English and Welsh keeps such as the White Tower , Colchester , and Chepstow were all built in

15540-493: The previous unity of the regional designs. The use of keeps in castles spread through Iberia, but some new castles never incorporated keeps in their designs. One traditional explanation for these developments emphasises the military utility of the new approaches, arguing, for example, that the curved surfaces of the new keeps helped to deflect attacks, or that they drew on lessons learnt during the Crusades from Islamic practices in

15680-419: The quadrangular castle styles of the south and combined them with exceptionally large tower keeps to form a distinctive, northern style. Built by major noble houses, these castles were typically even more opulent than the smaller castles like Nunney, built by the nouveau riche . They marked what historian Anthony Emery has described as a "...second peak of castle building in England and Wales," following on from

15820-419: The reasons behind the initial popularity of the motte-and-bailey design, however, there is widespread agreement that the castles were first widely adopted in Normandy and Angevin territory in the 10th and 11th centuries. The earliest purely documentary evidence for motte-and-bailey castles in Normandy and Angers comes from between 1020 and 1040, but a combination of documentary and archaeological evidence pushes

15960-430: The relatively settled and prosperous nature of the east of England and reflected a shortage of unfree labour for constructing mottes. In Wales, the first wave of the Norman castles was again predominantly made of wood in a mixture of motte-and-bailey and ringwork designs. The Norman invaders spread up the valleys, using this form of castle to occupy their new territories. After the Norman conquest of England and Wales,

16100-476: The rule of the Jagiellon dynasty the castle enjoyed royal favor and frequent stays by members of the royal family. The sons of King Casimir IV Jagiellon were brought up in the castle under the tutelage of Jan Długosz . In the 16th century, it was rebuilt on a grandiose scale, under the direction of Italian masters brought from Kraków . The most momentous event in the castle's history was the signing in 1569 of

16240-526: The same time as these keeps were being built by the extremely wealthy, much smaller, keep-like structures called tower houses or peel towers were built across Ireland, Scotland, and northern England, often by relatively poorer local lords and landowners. It was originally argued that Irish tower houses were based on the Scottish design, but the pattern of development of such castles in Ireland does not support this hypothesis. A tower house would typically be

16380-484: The scope of the word keep , but usually consider it to refer to large towers in castles that were fortified residences, used as a refuge of last resort should the rest of the castle fall to an adversary. The first keeps were made of timber and formed a key part of the motte-and-bailey castles that emerged in Normandy and Anjou during the 10th century; the design spread to England, Portugal, south Italy and Sicily. As

16520-644: The smaller versions had a single, slightly cramped chamber on each floor. Usually only the first floor would be vaulted in stone, with the higher storeys supported with timbers. There has been extensive academic discussion of the extent to which Norman keeps were designed with a military or political function in mind, particularly in England. Earlier analyses of Norman keeps focused on their military design, and historians such as R. Brown Cathcart King proposed that square keeps were adopted because of their military superiority over timber keeps. Most of these Norman keeps were certainly extremely physically robust, even though

16660-519: The south along the Lower Rhine , a fiercely contested border. Further along the coast in Friesland , the relatively decentralised, egalitarian society initially discouraged the building of motte and bailey castles, although terpen , raised "dwelling mounds" which lacked towers and were usually lower in height than a typical motte, were created instead. By the end of the medieval period, however,

16800-476: The subsequent years. This form of castle was closely associated with the colonisation of newly cultivated areas within the Empire, as new lords were granted lands by the emperor and built castles close to the local gród , or town. motte-and-bailey castle building substantially enhanced the prestige of local nobles, and it has been suggested that their early adoption was because they were a cheaper way of imitating

16940-407: The terrain. The bailey would contain a wide number of buildings, including a hall, kitchens, a chapel, barracks, stores, stables, forges or workshops, and was the centre of the castle's economic activity. The bailey was connected to the motte by a bridge, or, as often seen in England, by steps cut into the motte. Typically the ditch of the motte and the bailey joined, forming a figure of eight around

17080-462: The top of the mound." At Durham Castle , contemporaries described how the keep arose from the "tumulus of rising earth" with a keep reaching "into thin air, strong within and without", a "stalwart house...glittering with beauty in every part". As well as having defensive value, keeps and mottes sent a powerful political message to the local population. Wooden keeps could be quite extensive in size and, as Robert Higham and Philip Barker have noted, it

17220-498: The traditional Bergfriede , which still remained distinct from the domestic keeps used in more western parts of Europe, with the occasional notable exception, such as the large, residential Bergfried at Eltville Castle . Several designs for new castles emerged that made keeps unnecessary. One such design was the concentric approach, involving exterior walls guarded with towers, and perhaps supported by further, concentric layered defenses: thus castles such as Framlingham never had

17360-462: The watchmen and the servants appointed to keep the house took their sleep". Wooden structures on mottes could be protected by skins and hides to prevent their being easily set alight during a siege. The bailey was an enclosed courtyard overlooked by the high motte and surrounded by a wooden fence called a palisade and another ditch. The bailey was often kidney-shaped to fit against a circular motte but could be made in other shapes according to

17500-487: The western European keeps. In the Low Countries, it became popular for the local nobility to build stand-alone, square towers, but rarely as part of a wider castle. Similarly, square stone towers became popular in Venice, but these did not fulfil the same role as western keeps. In Germany, rectangular stone castles began to replace motte-and-bailey castles from the 12th century onwards. These designs included stone versions of

17640-511: The western fashion. In the second half of the 14th century, there was a resurgence in the building of keeps. In France, the keep at Vincennes near Paris began a fashion for tall, heavily machicolated designs, a trend adopted in Spain most prominently through the Valladolid school of Spanish castle design. Meanwhile, tower keeps in England became popular amongst the most wealthy nobles: these large keeps, each uniquely designed, formed part of

17780-522: The wider the ditch was dug, the deeper and steeper the sides of the scarp could be, making it more defensive. Although militarily a motte was, as Norman Pounds describes it, "almost indestructible", they required frequent maintenance. Soil wash was a problem, particularly with steeper mounds, and mottes could be clad with wood or stone slabs to protect them. Over time, some mottes suffered from subsidence or damage from flooding, requiring repairs and stabilisation work. Although motte-and-bailey castles are

17920-646: Was also echoed in some German castles, such as that at Karlštejn , although the layout and positioning of these towers still followed the existing bergfried model, rather than that in western castles. An other impressive 15th century metiterenian castle keep is the keep of the Kolossi Castle , in Cyprus , a three floor square keep, 21 meters high. The 15th and 16th centuries saw a small number of English and occasional Welsh castles develop still grander keeps. The first of these large tower keeps were built in

18060-412: Was available, as was the case after the Norman invasion of England. Where the local workforce had to be paid – such as at Clones in Ireland, built in 1211 using imported labourers – the costs would rise quickly, in this case reaching £20. The type of soil would make a difference to the design of the motte, as clay soils could support a steeper motte, whilst sandier soils meant that a motte would need

18200-402: Was certainly effective against assault, although as historian André Debord suggests, the historical and archaeological record of the military operation of motte-and-bailey castles remains relatively limited. An alternative approach focuses on the links between this form of castle and what can be termed a feudal mode of society. The spread of motte-and-bailey castles was usually closely tied to

18340-483: Was designed to reaffirm Angevin authority in a fiercely disputed conflict zone and the keep, although militarily impressive, contained only an anteroom and a royal audience chamber, and was built on soft chalk and without an internal well, both serious defects from a defensive perspective. During most of the medieval period, Iberia was divided between Christian and Islamic kingdoms, neither of which traditionally built keeps, instead building watchtowers or mural towers. By

18480-471: Was highly innovative: six stories high, with a chemin de ronde running around the machicolated battlements; the luxuriously appointed building was protected by an enceinte wall that formed a "fortified envelope" around the keep. The Vincennes keep was copied elsewhere across France, particularly as the French kings reconquered territories from the English, encouraging a style that emphasised very tall keeps with prominent machicolations. No allowance for

18620-402: Was limited, and many needed to be built on fresh ground. Concentric castles , relying on several lines of baileys and defensive walls, made increasingly little use of keeps or mottes at all. Across Europe, motte-and-bailey construction came to an end. At the end of the 12th century, the Welsh rulers began to build castles in stone, primarily in the principality of North Wales and usually along

18760-517: Was popularly assumed to have come from the Middle English word keep , meaning to hold or to protect. Early on, the use of the word keep became associated with the idea of a tower in a castle that would serve both as a fortified, high-status private residence and a refuge of last resort. The issue was complicated by the building of fortified Renaissance towers in Italy called tenazza that were used as defences of last resort and were also named after

18900-420: Was possible to build "...very tall and massive structures." As an example of what these keeps may have comprised, the early 12th-century chronicler Lambert of Ardres described the wooden keep on top of the motte at the castle of Ardres , where the "...first storey was on the surface of the ground, where were cellars and granaries, and great boxes, tuns, casks, and other domestic utensils. In the storey above were

19040-444: Was some equivalent destruction of keeps in France in the 17th and 18th centuries, such as the slighting of Montaiguillon by Cardinal Richelieu in 1624, but the catalogue of damage was far less than that of the 1640s and early 1650s in England. In England, ruined medieval castles became fashionable again in the middle of the 18th century. They were considered an interesting counterpoint to Palladian classical architecture , and gave

19180-489: Was the establishment by the new king of royal castles in key strategic locations, including many towns. These urban castles could make use of the existing town's walls and fortification, but typically required the demolition of local houses to make space for them. This could cause extensive damage: records suggest that in Lincoln 166 houses were destroyed in the construction of Lincoln Castle , and that 113 were destroyed for

19320-513: Was the result of an experimental military design, more recent analysis concludes that the design was instead probably driven by political symbolism and the need for Henry to dominate the contested lands of East Anglia . The architecture would, for mid-12th century nobility, have summoned up images of King Arthur or Constantinople , then the idealised versions of royal and imperial power. Even formidable military designs such as that at Château Gaillard were built with political effect in mind. Gaillard

19460-502: Was used to describe the bailey complex within these castles. One contemporary account of these structures comes from Jean de Colmieu around 1130, describing the Calais region in northern France. De Colmieu described how the nobles would build "a mound of earth as high as they can and dig a ditch about it as wide and deep as possible. The space on top of the mound is enclosed by a palisade of very strong hewn logs, strengthened at intervals by as many towers as their means can provide. Inside

19600-416: Was usually done in the most cost-efficient fashion with only selected walls being destroyed. Keeps were singled out for particular attention in this process because of their continuing political and cultural importance, and the prestige they lent their former royalist owners – at Kenilworth , for example, only the keep was slighted, and at Raglan , the keep was the main focus of parliamentary activity. There

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