Medieval castle windows#

What are the Different Parts of a Castle?.CASTLE ROOMS AND THE DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE CASTLE.Differences Between A Castle and A Manor House.Storerooms located at various places throughout the castle (housing foodstuffs, treasure, items to be used in a siege, etc.Apartments where guests and family members were housed (consisting of a bedroom and possibly a sitting room, along with a room for the resident's servants).

Medieval castle windows#

A great hall, where banquets, meetings, and celebrations took place (a large open space, vaulted ceilings, a minstrel's gallery, movable screens separating the hall into separate areas, heavy tables and benches, a raised dais for the lord and lady to sit, thrones, a large fireplace in the wall or an open fire in the room's center, fabric hangings on the walls, rushes or straw on the floor, light sifting in through narrow windows high in the walls).

A small garden containing herbs, fruit trees, healing plants, and those used for household purposes, such as covering unpleasant odors or repelling insects.

One or more bakehouses containing ovens.

The buttery, where beer was stored and served (kegs on trestle tables, flagons, stairs leading down to a wine cellar).

Pantries and larders (shelves holding food ready to be served, dried meat hanging from hooks, barrels of food items, bowls of spices, sacks of salt, baskets and bins of vegetables, cheese wheels, clay jars of preserves or pickled eggs).

Kitchens (servants, prep areas, pantries, pots and cauldrons on cook fires, stacks of firewood, spits holding roasting meat, barrels against the walls, wooden shelves and trestles holding baskets of nuts, drying herbs hanging from the ceilings, mortar and pestle, sieve cloths, graters, etc.).

A dungeon, often found in the bottom of the keep or a tower (individual cells, prisoners, torture chambers, guards, rats and vermin).

A chapel (stained glass windows, wooden or stone pews, flickering candles, an upper-story nave where the lord and lady could attend mass separate from the commoners on the lower floor, kneeling prayer benches, the priest's quarters).

Secondary internal walls to protect the important inner buildings of the castle: Parapet walks along the tops of the walls for patrols to stand on Narrow stone stairs along the inside of the walls leading up to the parapets Stables located in the bailey, often along a perimeter wall (stalls, hay-strewn floors, horses and other livestock, tack and equipment, grooms, guards) Slits in the walls for archers to shoot throughĬrenellated battlements along the top of the wallsĪ moat or ditch at the front of the castle with a footbridge over itĪ drawbridge allowing access from the castle to the footbridgeĪ guardhouse or gatehouse at the drawbridge, main gate, or portcullis (housing the constable and the guards on duty along with the armory the upper story often held apartments for the constable and guards)Ĭoncentric courtyards, called baileys, beyond the guardhouse (often used to house people and animals during an invasion, containing a well that provided the castle's water source, housing craftsmen such as coopers and cobblers)

Narrow rectangular or small square window openings A stone curtain wall surrounding the buildings on at least three sidesĬylindrical turrets and towers with flags flying at the tops