Castles During The Medieval Ages

Castles were a major step in the development of the medieval days from earlier times to later times. They had many different ways that they played their part. They also had many different ways that they were built, depending on the time frame they were made in. With castles came many laws that had to be followed. Laws back then were very different from laws that are made today. Castles didn't just start from the middle of thin air. Straw houses were one of the most popular houses that were made in the medieval time period. Straw houses were made by putting square straw bales on top of each other making them into a wall at whatever height you wanted. The roof was supported by a light weight wooden frame that kept the house intact. The roof
of the house was made out of straw, dry vegetation, or whatever they could find (Havlidis, 2015). This type of roof was called a thatched roof, which was commonly used on many different kinds of houses, not just straw houses (Havlidis, 2015, 4). The reason that most people used straw houses was because straw was easy to come by after they had reaped all the wheat for food. Straw houses are hard to come by nowadays because they are very biodegradable and are also very flammable (Havlidis, 2015).
The next house upgrade was the wattle and daub houses which were woven strands of sticks with daub covering it as insolation. Wattle is daubed with a sticky material usually made of some combination of wet soil, sand, clay, and animal dung or straw. These houses also had timber frames and thatched roofs just like the straw houses. People chose this kind of house because it was somewhat easy to make and materials were easy to find. It was also a step-up from the average straw house. We are still able to find remains of these houses today (Havlidis, 2015,).
Another kind of house that was used was the cob house. This kind of house was made by having a clay-based subsoil with sand, straw, and water. The earth mixture was then laid onto a stone foundation on the floor and wall to patch holes (Havlidis, 2015, 4). The next popular house material was clay and brick. The clay and brick houses were very popular in the Italian peninsula states since Roman times. A roofing item that was commonly used was slate. Slate was commonly used on roofs on houses that belonged to the rich people. This type of shingle was put on by nailing them onto a board with copper nails that would have been used back then. If the roof was installed right, it would have been a long lasting roof that would last you 80-100 years. A couple other kind of houses are the Lime Mortar, stone, and castles (Havlidis, 2015).
Logs and lumber were a huge part of making houses and castles. Almost every house had to have something to do with lumber, whether it was the frame or whether it was the floor. In England, oak wood was mostly used do to its tolerance to rain and humid weather. Lumber wasn’t just used in houses, it was also used for bridges and castle doors that were called toll bridges. Castle comes from the latin word castellum (Howarth, 1992). “A castle was the center of power that dominated all the local area.” Castles were not only used for defence, but they were also used to show people in newly conquered territory that the castle owner had power (Howarth, 1992).” The first castles were made out of wood and designed to be erected quickly so nothing would try and take it down or stop construction. The castles made out of wood were called motte and bailey castles. The wooden castles were made by piling dirt, or motte, into a big mound and digging a trench around it that was surrounded by timber towers with wooden walls connecting them together, and inside the timber towers would be the castle. The design of the castle was to keep enemies out and keep the people of the town in and safe from battle. A lot of this kind of wooden castles were also called fort-villages, because the actual village was inside the walls that protected the castle (The Age of Knights And Castles, 2011).
The other kind of castles were the stone castles.
The first stone castles started in Greece and were the first castles ever made even before wooden castles. Stone castles were mostly built where an old wooden castle or village was at so they didn't have to do any dirt work (The Age of Knights And Castles, 2011). Because stone castles were made out of stone they could only support tiny windows. The stone castles got very cold in the winter because the thick stone could never be fully warmed up by the sun. The only way the people had to heat the castles was to make fire places. Fire places worked by heating the stone as well as the chamber itself (Howarth, 1992). Fireplaces didn't come around until the middle of the medieval period. Castles didn't start improving until 1200s. Castles were very dark and needed candles to light them up. (Moris,
2016).
Stone castles were the more favored choice out of the two types of castles, as they were a lot stronger than the wooden castles. The strongest part of the stone castles were the central tower that was found in the center of the castle. The only bad side to the central tower was that if you were to go and dig the corner out it would probably fall over. Another tower design was two towers that had a bridge that connected the two together, so if one of the towers was damaged or taken over during battle they could go to the other tower and cut the rope bridge that connected the two and continue fighting on in battle. A lot of the castles, when they were built, would have a gate house that would either keep people in or keep intruders out. At every gatehouse there would be a gatekeeper. The gatekeeper's job was to raise the gate if an intruder was spotted. By raising the gate, the intruders were forced to cross the trench which was usually full of water.
The one thing that a castle always had staying in it was a lord, or King, and usually a lady, or Queen, with his family, servants, horses, dogs, and fighting men (Howarth, 1992). The lord was in charge of what went on at the castle. The lady was the favored one in the castle because she was always pretty. It was said that a great lady would always have lots of maids helping her at the castle doing whatever needed to be done, so she didn't have to do any labor work (McAleavy, 2003). The lord and the lady were one of the few people to have rooms in the castle. Their rooms were called solar chambers, which came from the word solitude, and also because their room was at the top of the castle where you could see the “solar system.” The room was a favorite to them because it was the only privacy the two of them had in the whole castle (Havlidis, 2015). Lords were sometimes summoned to supervise or even participate in military activities which meant that he would leave the castle which put the lady in charge (Moris, 2016). The lord was the only person that got a chair in a castle, everybody else had to stand when they were in the chair room, even the lady (Howarth, 1992).
Most great nobles and members of the royal family saw very little of their own children. At an early age the children were sent to another household where they were to learn their manners before they were sent back home to their families. “Castles would have had a lot of children of noble birth in attendance upon the lord and the lady.” Young men were trained to hunt and fight in warfare at an early age so they were prepared when they were needed. “In the early middle ages formal education played little part in the upbringing of children.” Childhood didn't last long for members of the great nobility because they had to learn to grow up fast so they could help their family (McAleavy, 2003).
A major place in castles was the great hall. The great hall was the focus of daily life. This was where everyone ate and spent most of their free time at. The great hall was also where the workers at the castle slept because they were not given a room, so privacy was hard to come by (Howarth, 1992). The great hall was the focus of hospitality, celebration, dances, plays, and poetry recitals. During the plays there would have been seating arrangements. The least important people were seated by the exit doors on wooden benches at the back of the hall. The more important people were seated on a raised deck in the front of the hall (McAleavy, 2003).
With castles came many servants. Castle workers never really had an easy job. All large households employed a number of messengers. Being a messenger was an important but hazardous occupation. Many were killed during their time of work because they were either delivering military news or something that someone didn't want anyone to hear. The next workers were the servants of the chamber, which provided personal service to the royal family, such as dressing them and the care of clothes. The lady would have had many maids that would help her get dressed every day, even just to walk around the castle. Another kind of servant were the outdoors servants, which would maintenence the castle and clean the horse stables and get the horses ready for if the lord and the lady were going to go anywhere. Another important worker was the cook. The cook was the man that made all the food that everyone in the household ate, so if it wasn't good he would be fired. The cook also got paid more than most of the other workers that worked at the castle. A large number of the people that worked at the castle were people that had to help with catering and preparing food for the lord and his guests. The lord would always have a lot of people invited over to eat so he needed a lot of people to clean, set the tables, and prepare the food for him and his guests to eat (Law And Order, 2000).
With a lot of people that came over and ate all the time they had to have a lot of food that could be cooked, so a lot of it was donated by the community as a gift to them, so sometimes they had way too much food, and it would end up going bad before they could eat it. How they would fix this problem was by giving a lot of food out to the town so they could eat it before it went bad. A lot of the time many of the servants that worked at the castle had to stay and work during holidays, because that was when the lord had lots of people and family over to eat to celebrate whatever holiday they were in.
Castle servants, even though the work that they did was hard sometimes, were privileged members of society. If you were to work in the castle you were looked up to in the community. Also, if you helped in the castle no matter what you did you were paid. It may not have been the best pay, but it was still good pay for that time period.
Castles were nice for the era that they were made in, but they would be considered very nasty in the world today. Castles were incredibly cold, cramped, smelly, and were lacking privacy. Lots of castles were homes to many rats, because they had no way of killing them off. The rats could make homes in any of the cracks that would have been made during construction of the castle. Also in the castle there would have been 100-150 people all the time including the lord's family, the servants, friends, children, and any other pedestrians.
With that many people you would of had to have bathrooms in the castle, and sanitation was not very good at the time either.
The bathrooms were just a small antechamber that had a bench with a hole in it, that was the toilet, or garderobes. The waste that came from the people would fall into a big cesspool. Over the summer the cesspool would get really hot and would make the castle smell really bad. People back then didn't really care too much for privacy either, so the bathroom had no walls and were wide open, so you would be sitting right next to someone with nothing to give you privacy (Moris, 2016). In the castle you would have people that slept on the floor on straw, so the straw would get everywhere in the castle and would make a mess (The Age of Knights And Castles, 2011). In the medieval times you could also tell who were the rich and the poor. You could easily tell this by looking at the house that they lived in. if their house was dull and ragged, it was a poor person that lived in it. If it was made out of expensive material, then it was a wealthy person that lived in it (Smith,
2007).
With castles came laws and punishments for bad behavior. Some of the justices in the medieval era were death, stoning, torture, humiliation, and hanging. The medieval era holds codes of law just like we do today (Smith, 2007). There were policemen back then just like today. Policemen back then used dogs and monkeys and were armed with staffs for protection (Law And Order, 2000). Policemen also investigated just like we do today by questioning people to get answers. One important law they had back then was that treason against the king would lead you to being stoned to death (Smith, 2007). The lord and his lady would've also had a number of chambers in their castles that policemen could use to hold prisoners. That was how laws were made and handled in the medieval days (Law And Order, 2000).
Castles made a huge change in the medieval times. Castles started the building blocks to a new architectural world. We went from straw houses to stone houses that lasted hundreds of years. They provided safety to castle owners and the townspeople. They changed the way of life, they changed laws, and they changed the way we look at everyday things like sanitation. Castles are, and will always be, a part of our history.