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Portcullis at Desmond Castle, Adare, County Limerick, Ireland The inner portcullis of the Torre dell'Elefante in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy A portcullis (from Old French porte coleice 'sliding gate') is a heavy, vertically closing gate typically found in medieval fortifications. [1]
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]
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. Boiling oil was rarely used because ...
Machicolations were more common in French castles than English, where they are usually restricted to the gateway, as in the 13th-century Conwy Castle. [5] Within France, machicolation is more common on southern castles. One of the oldest extant examples of machicolation in northern France is at Château de Farcheville which was built from 1290 ...
A gatehouse is a type of fortified gateway, an entry control point building, enclosing or accompanying a gateway for a town, religious house, castle, manor house, or other fortification building of importance. Gatehouses are typically the most heavily armed section of a fortification, to compensate for being structurally the weakest and the ...
Castle: 14th century: 10 March 1988: 1154034: Ford Castle Flagpole Tower and forecourt wall to north: Ford Castle Portcullis Gate, Armoury Tower and forecourt wall: Ford Castle, Ford, Northumberland: Castle: 1791
A concentric castle is a castle with two or more concentric curtain walls, such that the outer wall is lower than the inner and can be defended from it. [1] The layout was square (at Belvoir and Beaumaris ) where the terrain permitted, or an irregular polygon (at Krak and Margat ) where curtain walls of a spur castle followed the contours of a ...
A postern is a secondary door or gate in a fortification such as a city wall or castle curtain wall. Posterns were often located in a concealed location which allowed the occupants to come and go inconspicuously. In the event of a siege, a postern could act as a sally port, allowing defenders to make a sortie on the besiegers. Placed in a less ...