What are the features of castle walls?
What are the features of castle walls? The top of the castle walls were the battlements, a protective, tooth shaped parapet often with a wall walk behind it for the soldiers to stand on. The defenders could fire missiles through gaps (crenels). The raised sections between, called merlons, helped to shelter the defenders during an enemy attack.
What are the most important parts of a castle?
The keep was the most essential part of a castle and could be defended even after castle walls had been breached. Keeps were originally called donjons, the French term for stronghold. The basement was sometimes used as a prison or dungeon, which became too easily confused with donjon, so the term keep was adopted.
What are the pointy bits on a castle called?
The spires are essentially just big spikes atop the turrets; they may have lighting rods, weather vanes, radio antennae, flags or other decorative features attached. Or they can be just big spikes - what makes them spires is that they are above the roof of the turrets and pointy.
What do castles usually have?
The wall exhibits features common to castle architecture: a gatehouse, corner towers, and machicolations. A keep was a great tower and usually the most strongly defended point of a castle before the introduction of concentric defence.
What is a parapet on a castle?
A parapet fortification (known as a breastwork when temporary) is a wall of stone, wood or earth on the outer edge of a defensive wall or trench, which shelters the defenders. In medieval castles, they were often crenellated.
What are the things on castle walls?
Battlements were most often found surmounting curtain walls and the tops of gatehouses, and comprised several elements: crenellations, hoardings, machicolations, and loopholes. Crenellation is the collective name for alternating crenels and merlons: gaps and solid blocks on top of a wall.
What is the most iconic feature of a castle?
Walls. One of the most important features in a castle was its walls. Whether made of wood, stone or brick, they provided a barrier to enemy attackers. They typically included wall walks, which were used by the defenders to resist attempts to scale the walls or to shoot missiles at the besiegers.
Why are castle walls slanted?
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.
What should a castle have?
A typical European castle was like a little village inside, with kitchens, workshops, gardens, stables, and a chapel. This castle is built of stone, but many early castles were wooden.
Why did a castle have strong high walls?
Attackers had to climb over them to get closer to the castle. The walls of the castles were very high making it hard for attackers to climb over.