Knowing the parts of a castle is always helpful to me. When I get time, I would like to make a drawing and label the actual parts!
- Bailey – The ward or courtyard inside the castle walls, includes exercise area, parade ground, emergency corral.
- Bawn – An enclosed area of mud or stone walls for keeping cattle.
- Burough – A town with trading privileges.
- Castle – A fortified house or stronghold, residence of a nobleman.
- Curtain Wall – A connecting wall hung between two towers surrounding the bailey.
- Drawbridge – A heavy timber platform built to span a moat between a gatehouse and surrounding land that could be raised when required to block an entrance.
- Dungeon – The jail, usually found in one of the towers.
- Great Hall – The building in the inner ward that housed the main meeting and dining area for the castle’s residence.
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Gatehouse
Gate House – The complex of towers, bridges, and barriers built to protect each entrance through a castle or town wall.
- Hill Fort – Fortified site often on summit of a hill, usually with series of ditches and ramparts, many with stone walls. Dates from Iron Age. Many later castles were built within these fortifications.
- House – A castle, tower or fortalice, especially where these have been extended or modified; also mansion.
- Inner Curtain – The high wall the surrounds the inner ward.
- Inner Ward – The open area in the center of a castle.
- Keep – A strong stone tower; main tower; donjon; stronghold.
- Motte and bailey – A defence system, Roman in origin, consisting of an earth motte (mound) carrying a wooden tower with a bailey (open court) with an enclosing ditch palisade.
- Outer Curtain – The wall the encloses the outer ward.
- Outer Ward – The area around the outside of and adjacent to the inner curtain.
- Palace – An old Scottish term for a two storey hall block.
- Royal castle – A castle held by a keeper or constable for the monarch
Building Terms
- Bartizan – An overhanging battlemented corner turret, corbelled out; sometimes as grandiose as an overhanging gallery; common in Scotland and France.
- Bastion – A small tower at the end of a curtain wall or in the middle of the outside wall.
Bastions
- Battlement – Parapet with indentations or embrasures, with raised portions (merlons) between; crenelations; a narrow wall built along the outer edge of the wall walk for protection against attack.
- Burg – German stronghold.
- Buttress – Wall projection for extra support; flying – narrow, arched bridge against the structure; pilaster – gradually recedes into the structure as it ascends.
- Concentric – Having two sets of walls, one inside the other.
- Crenel – The low segment of the alternating high and low segments of a battlement.
- Crenelation – Battlements at the top of a tower or wall.
- Loophole – Narrow, tall opening, wallslit for light, air, or shooting through.
- Merlon – The high segment of the alternating high and low segments of a battlement.
- Moat – A deep trench usually filled with water that surrounded a castle.
- Motte – A mound of earth on which a tower was built; artificial conical earth mound (sometimes an old barrow) for the keep.
- Palisade – A sturdy wooden fence usually built to enclose a site until a permanent stone wall can be constructed.
- Parapet – Low wall on outer side of main wall.
