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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]
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 ...
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 European castles, it is more common to have flanking towers on either side of the gatehouse.
Yett hanging in the main entrance of Blackness Castle, Scotland, showing attached bolts and pierced construction.Wrought in 1693. [1]A yett (from the Old English and Scots language word for "gate") [2] is a gate or grille of latticed wrought iron bars used for defensive purposes in castles and tower houses. [3]
The Severin Gate in Cologne. In German, a "Torburg", lit. "gate castle", is a relatively autonomous and heavily fortified gateway of a castle or town.Medieval castle gateways of this type usually have additional fortifications in front of them.
A watergate (or water gate) is a fortified gate, leading directly from a castle or town wall directly on to a quay, river side or harbour. In medieval times it enabled people and supplies to reach the castle or fortification directly from the water, and equally allowed those within the castle direct access to water transport.
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 ...
In the more recent castle science literature the rope lift is rarely seen as a method of reaching an elevated entrance. [3] In the 19th century, August Essenwein saw the rope lift as a common entry system. For example, in his numerous artist's impressions of medieval castles, people can often be seen being hauled up towers using a simple lift.