posted 03-11-2000 02:23 AM           

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A wicket is a small gate for people. It often was a seperate small doorway beside the main gate but it could also be a small gate within the larger main gate (a bit like a person sized cat flap). This allowed the porter, who controlled who entered the castle, to admit people one by one.
Barbican is a name for the walls built infront of a gate to protect that gate from headone attack. Usually these funneled attackers into a small area where they could be overlooked and easily attacked by the defenders. Since barbicans were the first thing a visitor to a castle would enter they were often eloborate and well decorated to impress. Not all castles have them.
Parados - I'm not sure about I vagually recall that it's some type of screen.
Paraphet - I presume you mean parapet. This is the wall protecting defenders along the top of the walls and towers, basicaly the bit with the battlements.
Battlements - The up and down bits on the top of the walls, where a defender did battle from, much the same as the parapet. The techincal term is crenellations, the openings are called embrasures or crenelles and the solid projections are called merlons.
Buttress - projecting pillar on wall added to strengthen it. Most great norman keeps had these on the corners and sometimes in the midwall. If it's flat against the wall, with no gap between the wall and the buttress it is a pilaster buttress, if there is a gap (as there often is with some gothic churches) it is a flying buttress.
Arch - This is so simple it's difficult to explain. Whenever you need to span a gap in a wall(such as over a door or window) you need someway of holding the wall above the gap up. If you do it with one, straight piece, this is called a lintel. If you span the gap with several pieces you form an arch. The simplest arch is a plain semicircle or round arch, where several pieces are cut to form a semicircle over the gap. There are many other forms of arches; the pointed arch is often seen in churches; the ogee is a good one to know for scrabble, when you have only vowels; the depressed arch; the stilted arch; the lancet; the equilateral arch. Perhaps someone else will find a way of describing these types in words, it would be a lot easier to do with pictures.
Dormer - A vertical window in a sloping roof. If it was sloping with the roof it would be a skylight. Of course, to be vertical it has to have a small roof of it's own.
Gate house. The building around the gate. This was often one of the strongest parts of a castle and the gate house could be very large with many rooms and towers. At it's smallest you would expect a room next to the gate for the porter to check those coming into the castle and a wall walk over the top of the gate so defenders could defend the gate. If a gate had a portcullis it would be worked from the room over the gate which would be part of the gate house.
Garderobe. - The latrine, often a narrow corridor ending with a small wooden (or occassionally stone) seat with a hole in the middle. The hole was over a straight shaft which empted into the moat or a cess pit. No flushing water. No toilet paper either. Called a garderobe because the ammonia from the stale urine helped to keep moths away from the clothes, so clothes were also kept there. Also know as the wardrode.
Gallery - any long room or passage.

Try also the glossery at http://www.pitt.edu/~medart/menuglossary/INDEX.HTM

posted 03-11-2000 04:25 AM           

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Lancet arches or windows are tall and narrow, headed by a sharp or very acute angle, that is shaped like a lancet or narrow bladed knife.
Ogee, difficult to explain in words without confusing, curved and pointed at the head, like an upside down shield , with a change in the curvature to produce an exaggerated point. Originated in Muslim structures such as mosques.
Depressed arch, where the head of the arch is flattened or eliptical rather than rounded or pointed.
Stilted, not 100% on this one, but think it is when the two sides of the arch rise from wall tops rather than straight from the ground.

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[This message has been edited by wurdsmiff (edited 03-11-2000).]

posted 02-09-2001 03:22 PM         

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If you really want to know this two have covered everthing I can think of.

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