My first castle sank into the swamp.
The second one did too…
So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp… but the fourth one… stayed up! And that’s what you’re gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands.
Someone should build a castle like this in real life. Like not just refurbish an old ruin a little, but just straight out build a new medieval castle like this. I would pay for a visit.
Kirsten Dirksen has a good video about this castle.
That was a great video!
This project really needs another group of HEMA folks to start forming a raiding party
Modern aristocrats are fucking lame, they never build REAL castles anymore. It’s all that fairy-tale Disney castle shite. Where is the architecture of the brutal ruling warrior-caste we deserve?
I live inside the innerside of castle walls, and we have a dry moat. I love my city xD
I can imagine visiting, so no, it never gets old
Not visit during the time period, but you get the idea ;)
Castles do never get old! In fact, many of them are still around today.
“You look as young as the day you were quarried!”
make a huge, double-page drawing to teach children everything about castles.
Go so far as to draw the holes for hoardings, wooden stairs on the inside, a raised bailey entrance and even accurately showing how a slope of a mote would be dug.
Only 4 things highlighted in the key.
My recollection of these books is you’d have a few pages of this castle, with cutaways.
The 4 things highlighted here would have had a blurb and explanation of importance.
Chances are the next page would be the same castle with some cutaways and more key / description.
These books ruled
Fantastic book I had as a kid: https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Biestys-Cross-Sections-Castle-Richard/dp/1564584674
That drawing … if there was the wherewithal to build such an intricate stone wall with a moat around the outside, I would think there’d be something more than just a simple tower keep. It’s also really small. More likely, with a keep like that, wouldn’t there be a (or a series of) wooden palisade(s) with ditches?
Medieval castles often weren’t ‘planned’ in that sense - the original might have been a full-on traditional motte-and-bailey with a wooden palisade, but as the fortunes of aristocratic families wax and wane, they add (or subtract) from the work of their ancestors as their means allow.
Or it could just be the artist drawing what they liked, idk.
Oh absolutely, and in later eras, a fair amount of the adding-on was less for functional reasons and more for the flex.
I think that if there was an existing stone tower keep, and the ability to build a stone wall like that, the owner would have added more to the keep, and less to the wall. I’m also now thinking that the crenalations (especially on that tower) don’t quite fit. In the age where that kind of tower would have been built, I don’t think they were doing crenalations yet; on something that size, especially in that picture, with that wall, crenalations on the tower would have been purely decorative.
I think you’re underestimating the size of the castle complex; there are multiple buildings within the walls. Also, they’re expensive to build, maintain and use, so it’s not that weird to keep things compact.
