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Towers come in numerous varieties and serve several purposes. Here we will look at the following:
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The Keep or Donjon
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An old and simple system is the Motte
and Bailey, familiar to many from school history lessons.
A defensive tower built on top of a mound is surrounded
by a fence and an outer ditch. The tower may be made
of wood or stone and the mound may be natural or man-made.
The motte is the mound, and the Bailey is the fence.
A baileywick - "fenced-town" - was originally
the area circumscribed by the bailey and controled by
a Bailiff.
This Motte and Bailey model is recognisable at the forerunner of any catle or fortified town. The keep remains as a citadel and the baily becomes a surrounding wall or encient.
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Incidentally, when castles fell out of use in Tudor times, they were often used as gaols (jails). The donjon in particular became associated with prisons, and the name became attached to places of imprisonment. This, combined with memories of seigneural and ecclesiastical torture chanbers, seems to be resonsible for the word donjon developing into the English word dungeon - no longer a tower, now a place of underground imprisonment. |
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Towers and Curtain Walls
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The Romans discovered that walled fortresses were more easily defended if towers were built into the defensive walls. These towers made it easy to give covering fire for the walls. Although the upper parts are later, the the Roman pattern is preserved in the inner wall or enceint at Carcassonne. Left - a drawing of how it would have looked in Medieval times Right - as they look today |
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Battlements, Hourds & Chemins de Rond
Castle and City walls were often crenalated - giving defenders cover when not firing on the attackers. The purpose of a hoarding was to allow the defenders to improve their field of fire along the length of a wall and, most particularly, directly downwards to the wall base. They were wooden structures build on the top of walls. Like all defensive wooden structures they were covered in fresh animal skins to keep them fireproof.
| In peacetime, hoardings could be stored
as prefabricated elements. In some castles, construction
of hoardings was facilitated by putlog holes that were
left in the masonry of castle walls.
Some medieval hoardings have been reconstructed - including the Chateau Comptal at Carcassonne. Hourds were later replaced machicolations, which were an improvement on hoardings, not least because masonry does not need to be fire-proofed. Machicolations are also permanent and siege-ready. We have a faint reminder of hourds in our modern hourdings - now used for advertising. |
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Echaugettes
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Not all towers reach down to the ground. some are built into walls, emerging from the curtain wall or from a corner. Here are a couple of examples. |
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