To really do a history of castles would be to duplicate the work of a lot of fine historians. Here, it is much more sensible to refer you to their work and to focus on the parts relevant to our own castle planning.

Our favorite source books include Sidney Toy's Castles: Their Construction and History, Colin Platt's The Castle in Medieval England & Wales (currently out of print), and Paul Johnson's Castles of England, Scotland and Wales. See the Bibliography for others that I refer to in the following material.

A Little History Mixed Liberally with Pictures

From the vast fortifications of Greek and Roman times, and the Iron Age hill forts of Northern Europe, there evolved a form of military and residential place known as the castle. When the Norman, William the Conqueror, in 1066, conquered what was to become England, his forces quickly built as many wooden palisades as they could to establish their presence in the former Saxon kingdoms. Many of those fortresses were constructed on sites that had previously been fortified in pre-Roman times, then by the Romans when they tried holding the British Isles, and then by the Saxons who established the first kingdoms there.

As they settled in, the Normans began replacing the wooden palisades with stone. The overall plan of the fortresses was working just fine, so new places were built using the same plan but constructed almost entirely of stone.

In Northern Europe, this overall plan generally manifested as a single main tower with other buildings associated with it. In the mountainous areas there was no shortage of rocky hilltops on which to put fortifications. In the lowlands, however, islands and peninsulas were coveted for their ease of defense.

Examples of European castles.

On the British Isles the Normans dug lots of ditches and created "motte and bailey" fortifications, some on top of old Iron Age hillfort places. A "motte" was the conical hill of dirt that was built as the main defense for the "keep", which was the residence and refuge for the fellow responsible for holding the surrounding territory. The keep was basically a tower with one room per floor and usually 3 or 4 floors.

"Threave Castle from the South-East." Sidney Toy, Castles: Their Construction and History

The "bailey" was the walled area around the keep with another at the base of the motte to protect the keep's support functions: grain storage, workshops for wood and metal, troop housing, a well, sometimes a garden, a chapel, a hall for getting together (the "great hall").

These parts of a castle would appear in various forms throughout the castle building era.

Moats, "water defenses", became a significant part of castle design for a lot of the period.

In the 1100's, Crusaders began their travels to the Middle East where they experienced some different concepts in fortifications. One of the most popular ideas was curtain walls with mural towers: the old palisade idea but with towers along its length from which to fire on attackers. Along with that developed the idea of concentric walls, giving attackers multiple obstacles to overcome just to get into the castle. The tower keep sometimes became part of the wall in this type of structure.

As population increased, then decreased due to plagues, and wealth grew, and titles and prestige developed, the people who built castles became more concerned with comfort and aesthetics. The design of castles began to be left to professional designers who were charged with maintenance of the military might of the castle, but also with the comfort of its residents.

Designers began to create castles that were symetrical or responded to specific other design criteria.

Later developments in weaponry, i.e. muskets and cannon, caused other changes in castle design, and, eventually, made castles obsolete.

We plan for our castle to reflect the era preceeding cannons, with emphasis on comfort and community. The strength of our walls and towers will be aimed more at longevity than defense against archers, trebuchets, or muskets!

Our general plan shape will be that of a shell keep with a not-so-major residential gatehouse, a large tower keep for the main residence, a great hall and major kitchen for large group entertaining and feasting, other apartment residences and a chapel along the walls, workshops on the ground floor and along the south wall, and, possibly, stables, too.