POWER

7 Castles: form and function 7.1 How do we know about castles?
FACTFILE
Fireplaces
Fireplaces give you different clues:
•
A large fireplace probably means
a large room.
•
A fireplace with detailed carving
probably means a grand room, or
a private room for an important
person.
•
A fireplace is a good guide to where
the floor was.
The best way to spot a fireplace is to
look for a chimney. In early castles, the
fire was often in the centre of the room,
with no chimney. But for most of the
period you are studying, fires were in
fireplaces against the walls, and they
had chimneys. In the top photo here,
there was a stone hood over the fire
and the smoke would have continued
up through the top of the hood. In the
smaller fireplace, you can see the
remains of the start of the chimney
going straight up.
FACTFILE
Doors and windows
Doors and windows are holes in the
wall, and will always reveal a lot about
the balance between defence and
normal life in the part of a castle you
are looking at.
For doors, look for evidence of hinges
and slots for the locking bar (they
confirm it was a door and tell you
which side it might be locked from).
For windows, look for
the balance between
light and safety (see a
the contrast between
pictures a and b
opposite). Also look to
see how the window
is finished internally
(b has large windows
with window seats –
evidence that this
was probably a
grand room).
locking
bar
hinge
Source 6 Inside the south-west tower,
Goodrich Castle.
Study Source 6.
1 Why is the bottom window so low?
(Hint: either because medieval people were
very strange or because the floor level has
changed over time.)
2 What evidence can you find that there were
changes to the tower at various times.
b
Uncorrected proof
FACTFILE
Toilets
With over 200 people living in
Goodrich, the castle needed a
system for disposing of human
waste. Toilets could just be a bucket
with a seat, carried out and emptied
when needed. But a better solution
was to build permanent toilets
(often called garderobes) and find
a way of transporting the waste
outside the castle. Building a toilet
out from the top of an outside wall
using corbelling was the simplest
way (a). The seat was outside the
base of the wall and waste simply
dropped through. An alternative (b)
was to build a toilet in the thickness
of the wall, with a shaft running
down inside the wall to a cesspit
at the bottom. Look for:
•
corbelled structures on an
outside wall
•
very small rooms, with
evidence of a seat and a
hole underneath it
•
shafts through the thickness
on the wall (c)
•
holes on the outside wall (d)
where waste could fall out, or
where a child could be sent to
climb in and empty the cesspit.
a
b
a
The big questions
When looking at any feature of a castle, there are several important questions you
should always ask:
Was it inside or outside the castle?
Was it indoors or outdoors?
What was its purpose – military, administrative, domestic or ‘services’?
•
Is there evidence that the answer to any of these questions changed during
the life of the castle?
We will look at the military and administrative features later in this chapter.
Domestic features to look out for include the following:
•
The great hall – a big room for feasts and day-to-day living and eating. Look
for evidence of a high ceiling, large windows, a passage to the kitchen at one
end, perhaps with two or three doors into the hall, a door and a passage or
stairs to the private apartments of the lord and lady of the castle.
•
Evidence that these private apartments may have included smaller rooms with
high-quality features such as large windows (perhaps with a window seat),
the remains of a well-carved fireplace and perhaps a private toilet. You may
sometimes find the main private room, called a SOLAR, in plans.
•
Castles usually had more than one set of private apartments. Most had a captain
or governor who lived there all the time. They would need their own private
apartments, as would important guests.
The service features might include a chapel, kitchens, storerooms, a BUTTERY
(originally for keeping wine and beer, but later food as well), stables, toilets and
a prison.
•
Storerooms, the buttery and rooms used as a prison tend to be on the ground
floor (or below in cellars). Look for evidence that the door was shut from the
outside, and no or small windows.
•
Stables would normally be away from the main living accommodation – they
could be quite smelly!
Source 7 A part of the plan of Goodrich Castle.
Source 6
Kitchen
Toilets d
Windows b
Great hall
about 1150 about 1300 about 1450
about 1650
what remains of the top of the north-west wall.
Originally the wall was much higher.
This photograph was 0 taken looking down at 20 m
0 60 ft
c
3 The areas shown in three
photos showing parts of
Goodrich are marked in red
on Source 7 (the photos are
Windows b, Toilets d and
Source 6). What reasons
can you find to support
Source 7 that the blue not
the green area was the
great hall?
d
194 195