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Animation showing the operation of a drawbridge. A drawbridge or draw-bridge is a type of moveable bridge typically at the entrance to a castle or tower surrounded by a moat.In some forms of English, including American English, the word drawbridge commonly refers to all types of moveable bridges, such as bascule bridges, vertical-lift bridges and swing bridges, but this article concerns the ...
Particularly large towers are often the strongest point of the castle: the keep or the bergfried. As the gate is always a vulnerable point of a castle, towers may be built near it to strengthen the defences at this point. In crusader castles, there is often a gate tower, with the gate passage leading through the base of the tower itself. In ...
Beaumaris Castle in Wales was built in the late 13th century and is an example of concentric castles which developed in the late medieval period. Badajoz Castle of Topoľčany in Slovakia Medieval fortification refers to medieval military methods that cover the development of fortification construction and use in Europe , roughly from the fall ...
Archaeologists expose parts of the drawbridge and moat at Sheffield Castle.
Plan of the outer and inner baileys of Alt-Trauchburg Castle (Germany). The Graben is the neck ditch, and to its right is the inner bailey, accessible over a wooden bridge. Topoľčany Castle with an inner and an outer bailey. The inner bailey or inner ward of a castle is the strongly fortified enclosure at the heart of a medieval castle. [1]
Although castle has not become a generic term for a manor house (like château in French and Schloss in German), many manor houses contain castle in their name while having few if any of the architectural characteristics, usually as their owners liked to maintain a link to the past and felt the term castle was a masculine expression of their ...
The 12th-century curtain wall of the Château de Fougères in Brittany in northern France, showing the battlements, arrowslits and overhanging machicolations.. In medieval castles, the area surrounded by a curtain wall, with or without towers, is known as the bailey. [4]
The moat surrounding Matsumoto Castle. A moat is a deep, broad ditch dug around a castle, fortification, building, or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. Moats can be dry or filled with water. In some places, moats evolved into more extensive water defences, including natural or artificial lakes, dams and sluices.