Castle Quest - Reply to Topic

Forum:	Castles In General & Medieval History
Topic:	Arrow Loops?!!?

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T O P I C R E V I E W
smb23 Please, I know it sounds very strange, but is there another name for an arrow loop, it has been driving me and my friends wild. We are sure that there is a french name.
Please help!
duncan crosslet loophole?
Philip Davis A crosslet loophole was one of several types of arrow loops. In my favourite castle book, Castles of the British Isles, Plantagent Somerset Fry discribes several others; Fish tail bottom, crosslet with fishtail bottom, top crosslet with fishtail bottom, slit with rectangular oillet. I doubt that this is a complete list of the designs of arrowloops.
Sidney Toy give loopholes the alternative name 'Meurtrières'. However R. Allen Brown uses the term meurtrières as the same as 'murder holes' (The holes in the roof of a gateway from which the defendes could throw things down on attackers-or poor water on to fire set to burn down the gate.) and calls loops loops.
Both Toy and Brown also call murder holes 'Machicolations' and both also use this term to refer to the overhanging stone parapet with holes in the floor that you get at the top of some castle walls, gates and towers, notable Bodium and Warwick in England and Raglan in Wales. (These holes were designed for droping things on attackers such as stones, however not boiling oil which would have cracked the stone of the castle, more readily available would have been caustic quick lime which burns flesh but doesn't affect stone.)
My guess is that when the castles were built the term meurtrières was used by some to mean arrow loops, some to mean murder holes and by some to mean both. Language was much less standardised in the days before dictonaries.