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Murder holes at Bodiam Castle. A murder hole or meurtrière is a hole in the ceiling of a gateway or passageway in a fortification through which the defenders could shoot, throw or pour harmful substances or objects such as rocks, arrows, scalding water, hot sand, quicklime, or boiling oil, down on attackers.
Reconstructed wooden hoarding around the Cité de Carcassonne, France. A hoard or hoarding was a temporary wooden shed-like construction on the exterior of a castle during a siege that enabled the defenders to improve their field of fire along the length of a wall and, most particularly, directly downwards towards the bottom of the wall. [1]
Cutaway of a medieval wall. The machicolation is labelled G. In architecture , a machicolation or machicolade [ 1 ] ( French : mâchicoulis ) consists of an opening between the supporting corbels of a battlement through which defenders could target attackers who had reached the base of the defensive wall beneath.
The reason wood fell into disuse as a material is that it is quite flammable. Soon stone became more popular. Stone castles took years to construct depending on the overall size of the castle. Stone was stronger and of course much more expensive than wood. Most stone had to be quarried miles away, and then brought to the building site.
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 10-week dig, part of a city regeneration project that began in April, starts at the newest redevelopments of the castle site, according to an April 12 news release from Wessex Archaeology ...
The group’s “most surprising” find was a 6-inch stone penis that was found buried in one of the layers of ruins, archaeologists said in a news release. Phallic symbolism isn’t common in ...
Castle Rushen's portcullis chamber with so-called murder holes to attack intruders trapped between the two portcullis. The keep of Castle Rushen's first line of defence is an outer wall, 25 feet (7.6 m) high and 7 feet (2.1 m) thick.