Status Updates From Life in a Medieval Castle

"'Her hair was golden with love-locks; her eyes blue and laughing; her face most dainty to see, with lips vermeil than ever was rose or cherry in the time of summer heat; her teeth white and small; her breasts so firm that they showed beneath her vesture like two rounded nuts; so frail was she about the girdle that your hands could have spanned her,..." This was from a 13th century romance? It could've fooled me!

"In some castles rainwater from gutters above or from a cistern or diverted kitchen drainage flushed the shaft." I would hope so! The smell would've been terrible! I love that there's a reference from Henry III to send word ahead to a residence make sure that their privies were cleaned out before he arrived.

"A latrine was corbeled...with a long shaft reaching nearly to the ground. This...arrangement sometimes proved disastrous in siege, as at Château Gaillard, Richard the Lionhearted's castle on the Seine, where attackers obtained access by climbing up the latrine shaft." Lol, I want to find an Instagram skit of this now. It sounds perfect.

"When the lord traveled, the tub accompanied him, along with a bathman who prepared the baths." Lol. Reminds me of my DnD game where my "frog prince" type character needed to take constant baths or else he dried up. It was necessary for the group to bring along some container to fill with water so he could take baths. Now it actually had some basis in history!

They had peepholes back then? Lol

In historical movies and shows, at least the ones that I've seen, they like to depict castle interiors to be bare, walled, and grey. In reality, the vast majority of lords with castles were just as interested in interior decorating as we are today!

"In the bailey near the kitchen the castle garden was usually planted, with fruit trees and vines at one end, and plots for herbs and flowers — roses, lilies, heliotropes, violets, poppies, daffodils, iris, gladioli. There might also be a fishpond, stocked with trout and pike."
Well, that does sound like Redwall.

"The ancestor to the fireplace was the central open hearth, used in ground-level halls in Saxon times and often on into later centuries." You actually see in an example of this in Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in Edoras where Eowyn is sleeping.

Sealing an oath of fealty with a kiss is certainly not depicted anymore! Lol

"The sheriffdom, or shrievalty, was even more a focus of conflict as the fractious barons strove to occupy themselves or place it in friendly local hands. By the thirteenth century the office had become one of the most embattled prizes of the baronial-royal conflict..." thus why a lot of the depictions of the Sheriff of Nottingham tends to put him as an extension of Prince John or an independent baron against Robin.

"Trial by combat, by which the defendant or his champion fought the accuser, survived longer."
You actually see this a lot in Game of Thrones.

"[The lord] drew his revenues from it, and used his nonfarming lands for hunting." That's why England has very little, if any, in terms of large, predatory animals like bears, wolves, lynxes, and boars. Myths and legends permeate still to this day of the Hound of Baskervilles, the Blackmoor Panther, or other such creatures that people think have lived to this day or were accidently reintroduced.

"A more deeply ingrained trait of the lords of the castles was their love of land...No lord, however fond of fighting, could afford to neglect their estates. Many twelfth and thirteenth-century lords passed up perfectly good wars and even stubbornly resisted participating in them because it meant leaving their lands. Few English lords...participated in the Crusades."

It's interesting just how much of an impact language can have. The Normans, being originated in France, spoke French as the elite language. The native Saxon language was a combination of French, Germanic, Norwegian, and early Gaelic depending on where you were. Over the centuries, French would be dropped in place for English, which combined all of these together. Now English is the most prominent language.

I'm actually very familiar with John and his son, William, Marshall and their histories thanks to Instagram.

"Strongbow's only son dying in childhood, his daughter Isabel became heiress for the immense holdings of the Clare family in Western England, Wales, and Ireland." That's HUGE!

Hmm, Tintern Abbey. There's no picture of it so far, so I guess I will have to look it up and see if it is close to resembling Redwall.

The description of how feudalism worked in England is quite interesting. No fantasy book or series has come close to this level of description with the exception of A Song of Ice and Fire.

Just from the picture, Caerphilly Castle is one of the best-looking and defensible ones in Wales!

It's interesting that this page highlights the disadvantages of a rectangular-walled castle but it was this style that was used in Redwall. Round-walled castles were superior because they provided overlapping fields of fire and a rounded construction could withstand efforts by sappers and battering rams better than a square.

It's interesting that the Crusades helped to spread knowledge of the construction of stronger stone fortifications throughout all of Europe.

I like that small detail that it wasn't just important city-sites or towns that caused castles to be built, but villages and towns would spring up around a built castle to support it.

Thus, William begins the tradition of granting land, castles, and titles to Normans loyal to him that would be carried on by medieval kings and queens.

Indeed, castles were a status symbol almost as much as mansions are today. Those with the money and resources to build and maintain it were the ones who lived and owned it.

Interesting. First I've heard of the Romans building over a fortification that pre-ceded them during the Iron Age.

Motte-and-bailey castles were the norm in England and continental Europe during the 1000s. Stone castles that were large and intricate wouldn't be built till later. The motte-and-bailey castles were essentially mounds of earth built up high with a stone or wooden fortification at the top, and surrounded by a wooden palisade and ditch. They were easy to make and easy to destroy.

Indeed, William of Normandy, or William the Conqueror, is one of the few exceptions to the rule of battles in the Medieval Era. Wars and battles were fought during the campaign season which was from late spring to early fall to allow people to plant and harvest. If you lost a battle or war, you lost a large portion of your workforce. They were costly to maintain too.

It's good to know that the authors realize that there is a measure of difficulty when it comes to studying castles due to lack of preservation for many and many castles have fallen into ruins. They are going to be drawing from one of the most preserved castles in England, Chepstow Castle, located in the Welsh border on Monmouthshire.