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Topic: Please Help

Dazed&Confused
Member

posted 12-02-1999 03:46 PM

I am doing an 8th grade report on Castles and I would really like some help. I need to write a paper that will last about 2 to 4 minutes being read aloud and I was asking if you could give me any really good info about Castles in particuallar. What were they mainly made out of. What kind of defense did they provide against attackers, How many men usually were stationed in a Castle what were some main rooms in them. You know the list goes on I would really appriciate some help. Thank You.

E-mail me LiteHouzer@yahoo.com

Philip Davis
unregistered

posted 12-02-1999 09:37 PM

The first thing you should understand about castles is that they had many functions. Castles were the homes of land owning lords. So they had all the things you would expect for a rich persons home; bedrooms for the lords, his guest and servants; a great hall for feasting, parties and business meetings (and also used as a court room).
However not all lords were equal in their wealth or in how much land they owned and this is reflected in their castles. A great lord, like William the First, king of England had many castles of various sizes. His greatest was the White Tower in London, built of stone with many rooms http://www.hrp.org.uk/tol/indextol.htm . However most other castles in the time of William were small motte and bailey castles built of earth banks with wooden buildings and fences.

If you look at some of my responses in other parts of this forum I have given some more details of the types of rooms in castles.

The size of the garrison varied enormously. I a great castle when the lord was in residence he may well have had many hundreds of supporters around. However when the lord was away at another castle the garrison could be very small. King John's medium sized castle at Odiham was held by a garrison of just 3 knights and 10 men against an army of thousands for over a week.

I'm not to surprised that your confused by castles - there are thousands of them, all different, and they had many functions. hopefully when things start to be a little clearer you'll begin to find them intriguing as well.

Try looking at http://www.nationalgeographic.com/features/97/castles/enter.html