How were castles built / constructed in the medieval period?

this episode of shanna versity is brought to you by my stupendous awesome supporters on patreon if you'd like to support university on patreon visit patreon.com forward slash a diversity [Music] greetings I'm Chad and the subject of this video is an important one in the series of videos that I've been making about castles where I've looked at how castles were invented the methodology and thought process that happened historically to give rise to these amazing structures why they were built which covers the military usefulness and functionality of castles in historical context and in this video I'll be sharing how they were actually built constructed the techniques they used in the methodology they followed it needs to be said that this is actually a very large subject because the techniques obviously changed and evolved and advanced throughout the medieval period and then there are the smaller details about the specific tools that were used rather I'm going to be speaking in a more general sense to the standard construction principles that you would expect to see within the medieval period and one of the largest subjects which I'll need to leave for another video is how castles were designed because that is a very big subject in and of itself and of course it's very crucial through this topic in how castles are built because the design is going to influence the construction techniques to a large degree but like I said that needs to be for another video though I have mentioned elements of that subject in other videos for instance principles of castle design where I give a tour of a castle that I'd modeled in a 3d program but we're going to start from the point where they're actually ready to lay the stones in the ground and build this castle it's already designed and the construction is now underway how did they go about doing this well first of all they needed a lot of money to get the resources and being close to where those resources can be collected is also a fairly important thing the further the castle is away from say the quarry where the stone is collected increases costs quite significantly one of the most wonderful things about this subject how castles were built is the grand experimental archaeological project of get alone and regards to pronunciation I've heard waddle on and get Ilan but Gilliland seems to be the way it is pronounced by the French so I'll go with that we are here at get-along castle in Burgundy where we are building a medieval style castle using the same tools techniques and materials that would have been used in the early 13th century yodelin castle is a project that I have been watching with keen interest for several years now is an authentic medieval castle being built in the modern day with medieval techniques and tools and equipments it is one of my lifelong dreams to visit that castle and I fully intend to in the future and a lot of the pictures that I'll be showing in castle construction are actually taken from get a lot because we see the process happening in real time so if you're interested in this subject please go look up get-along castle I will leave links in the description below now castles in history were generally built out of wood stone or brick a type of construction methodology I'm going to be covering is primarily the stone and brick castles because it's difficult to try and figure out how the wooden castles were built because basically none have survived they were made out of wood I have made a whole video talking about the prevalence of wooden castles and that they'll probably more wood castles then stone castles within the medieval period it's the video entitled to castles time forgot and exploring the possible construction techniques for wood castles is in or of itself its own video now in regards to stone and brick castles stone was generally the more prevalent type though brick castles certainly existed historically and we start with the foundations now the foundation is important because if you don't have a good foundation these are heavy structures okay they can actually start to sink into the ground and so one of the first things that they want to do is to dig through the dirt into something more solid hopefully hitting bedrock now when I say hitting bedrock I do not believe they had the technology to dig hundreds of meters down into the soil to try and find bedrock no they would only do that if the bedrock was actually somewhat close to the surface maybe yet if they're just building on a stone foundation or a hill with a very large kind of rock content within the ground and if they can't hit bedrock or then there are other certain techniques that they can try and do to make this building more stable this is one of the reasons why the bottom of Castle walls and towers were flared out they were a bit bigger in diameter compared to the rest of the building rising up you see all this building creates pressure on the ground pushing down and the smaller the surface area that this pressure is applied to the deeper it will push into the ground so if you can increase the surface area the footprint that this weight is pressing down on there is more ground to support it alternatively the flared portion of this foundation could be built under the ground itself of course they'll need to dig down in a straight line and then fill it in and the appearance would be that this wall or tower is simply going up in a straight line with no flared base of course whenever you build anything out of stone or brick you need something to bond those bricks and stones together to make a solid unit and this is where water comes in now medieval mortar was primarily made out of lime slime baked in a kiln to create quick climb quick climb is then mixed with sand and water which results in a chemical reaction making mortar this mortar did need to be made in fairly large quantities to build a castle an interesting thing that I've observed are looking at castle walls is that the surface layer of stone is usually placed with more care and precision together and with less water than the stone on the inside some of the reasons for this is that the stone facing the outside is the more likely stone to fall off due to erosion and so placing them tighter together with other stones will help hold them in place the internal stone structure can't fall outwards if any part of the stone wall is going to fall off it's going to be the stone on the outside and so placing them in a more stable interlocked pattern is very important in contrast to this the stone placed inside the surface stones are generally placed more randomly and have a higher mortar content this is very evident when you look at castle ruins that are suffering from erosion and see the contrast between the surface stone and the internal stone and in fact you can also see this on get a lot I also think it's a time-saving process as well if every internal stone was placed as carefully as the surface stones it would take a lot longer but with the internal stone when you have one rock that's not fitting perfectly with the rock underneath that you can just put more mortar in and fill the gap of course this construction method was only needed on those walls of significant thickness which basically meant any wall that was facing the outside of the castle because those were the walls that needed to be thick castle walls had to be of this thickness for its defensive value to withstand bombardment but also stone doesn't really have good insulative properties and so if you want good installation on stone you need a very thick wall and even then it's probably still not great now I've actually said the opposite to that in one of my previous videos because I was fed misinformation which don't know annoys me where I said that start has good insulator properties and no it's quite the opposite one of the ways you can increase the insulator properties of a castle is to line the inside walls with wood this wasn't done in every instance in fact more often than not the inside walls of castles were whitewashed with a lime based paint and then painted on top of that with fancy murals and such this is why castles have the reputation of being cold damp and dark which is largely true because the windows on castles unless they were facing inside walls of the Bailey were very small because a window large enough for a person to climb through was a defensive weakness and the other part to this is that not every castle war was massively HICC only those walls that were facing the outside the walls out facing the inside for instance those buildings that were built hugging the curtain wall oftentimes those walls were as thick as what you would spec to find on a normal stone structure 30 to 40 centimetres or half a foot but most walls are medieval castles this is the walls of the keep and the curtain walls were at least a metre thick and in many cases even thicker and because these walls are so thick a window on a medieval castle wasn't just a window most windows were small unless a large one wouldn't be a defensive weakness but to fit that window in there needs to be an actual alcove built into the wall itself that's supported by an archway above of course as this stone wall is getting built and is being raised higher there comes a need for scaffolding to get to that elevation and place the next stone the scaffolding was made out of temporary Timbers and to get the heaviest stones up to where they needed to be medieval timber cranes were constructed to do this these medieval cranes were powered by humans in large rotating wheels another very interesting scaffolding technique that is both used here in God Allen and we can see evidence of on many medieval castles are a thing called pot lug holes as the castle is being built up square holes were left in the walls to be able to insert timber beams and these holes were placed one after another in a line enabling a platform to be fixed into the wall as it was going up and the remnants of this necessary scaffolding technique can be seen on castle walls as I mentioned by these square holes just sitting there right out on the wall and the pot lug holes on the upper walls were often used to be out of fit in hoardings hoardings are additional timber fortifications that can be placed on top of castle walls and taken off they are kind of the genesis or origin of machicolations giving a platform for the defenders to be able to stand up over the castle wall and shoot directly down at anyone assaulting the castle wall base with the height of the castle walls now constructed we come to the roofs of course the roofs of castles were more often made out of timber what I mean to say is a timber beam constructed roof with tiles on top these tiles could be wooden shingles ceramic tiles or even slate stone slate is a type of stone that shatters in thin kind of sheets and was also used as a roofing material the way the timber beams of these roofs were supported were by internal Corbin's a Korbel is a type of stone that protrudes out of a stone wall providing support for something on top it is through corbelling that supports the extended parapet of castle walls you know what I'm talking about people and they also supported not only the roofs of castles but the intermediate floors because castles are often very high and had several storeys so you have this really big chunky core ball just sticking outside of the wall which would support a really big chunky beam which then is able to support a full floor on itself these types of internal core balls were also used to support stone ceilings through vaulting our vote in the architectural sense is a stone ceiling made through an arch stone rig included has terrible tensile strength but incredible compressive strength and an arch is a way in which you can employ stone to span a distance by redirecting the downwards weight that comes to us from gravity into the sides then around the curve into the supports placing the entire structure under compression instead of tension and with this you can actually crisscross the arches with one another which evenly distributes the weight into the sides just like a regular arch does to the point that you can actually make fairly complex stone ceilings but besides the main stone supports in these vaults are supported by corbels in walls or just pillars that run all the way down to the ground this material limitation in the poor tensile strength of both stone and brick is what has created some of the more beautiful elements of medieval stone architectures the employment of these beautiful arches this is the same with the use of corbels but even just making doorways you see unless you're making an arch you can't actually span the top of a doorframe with individual bricks because they'll just fall apart and fall down and so you actually need a solid stone block that spans the whole distance forming the actual frame of the door and this is how both doors and windows were made on medieval castles are made with a full stone frame of course the whole thing wasn't solid stone it had individual parts but those individual parts were very large blocks or bricks in and of themselves and then of course we have the very impressive and also complex timber joinery work for the framing of the roof beams and also every other timber component of the castle and considering the distances in which these wooden frame Druce needed to span some very impressive timber joinery work was developed to make these timber roofs specifically timber roof trusses with King posts roof beams principal rafters struts and collar ties and fitting these Timbers together in rather complex angles was a genuine feat of engineering and impressive woodworking you see males in the medieval period were much larger than the nails we have the modern-day and rather expensive as a result each individual nail needed to be handmade by a blacksmith our good friend Nicholas Lloyd from the YouTube channel Lindy beige has shown us the process of making metal nails that medieval way at a blacksmith in these videos where is actually learning how to make a sword in the traditional way nails are of course much easy to make compared to other things that need to be made out of metal in the medieval period but when you need to make several thousand of them the material cost required and the work involved was so much greater than in the modern day and it also created a limitation and so much of the timber work that went into medieval construction including castles needed to be done through timber joinery work fitting these beams together through complex joins and then using nails wherever it was needed and there we go this has been the broad overview in how castles were constructed if you're interested in other significant subjects regarding medieval castles how they are invented why they were built what they were like I have a whole castle playlist available for you to enjoy at your leisure and if you want to catch my future videos on castles as well as my other videos on swords Knights medieval anything fantasy and how these things are incorporated into pop culture please remember to subscribe and click the bell notification so you won't miss a video thank you very much for watching and I do hope to see you again and until that time [Music]

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 1,225,398

Keywords: castle, castles, medieval, fortress, construction, building, built, citadel, build, fort, middle ages, stone, sword, swords, knight, knight's, guedelon, keep, tower, gatehouse, machicolations, crenelations, merlon, crenilations, experimental archeology, history, historical, education, living history, reenactment, defences, fortifications, skyrim, game of thrones, top ten, top 10, katana, longsword, greatsword, hema, historical european martial arts, potlug holes, mortar, masonry, bricklaying, stonework, gothic, architecture

Id: pu3O70GeQFY

Length: 14min 59sec (899 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 27 2018