What rooms are inside REAL medieval castles?

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can make it'd be awesome if you could consider supporting me on patreon one dollar a video that would be phenomenal yeah but what about dragons fatally [Music] ratings I'm shad and let's talk about the inside of medieval castles specifically the type of rooms that you would expect to find now thanks to fantasy and pop culture and such castles can be very misunderstood things when in reality most castles were much smaller in fact there was a very large majority of them that really only had one to two rooms inside and when I say small I'm being serious about that there are many castles that are technically just watched house because someone's living in them they're a full fledged castle and over half the castles built within the entire breadth of the medieval period are actually made out of wood or a composite between stone and wood well with those misconceptions here's another one to clear up and it's that many people believe that castles are supposed to have certain rooms for instance the throne room all castles are supposed to have a throne room and many of the other classic iconic rooms that you think castles supposed to have say like the dungeon no the way to get a good baseline for the minimum requirements as to the type of rooms you would expect to find within a real historical medieval castle is to understand what a real maybe you'll cast was which is a private fortified medieval residence with exceptions of course not every structure that is identified as a castle within the medieval period falls into this strict definition but most do so the first and primary part of this is of course their residence and what is the minimum requirements for a medieval residence well basically it's a single room so what I'll do in this video is kind of start at the minimum requirement and then build our lay up kind of expanding upon this castle concept which as it gets bigger we have the opportunity to add more rooms in and as we do that I can identify to you what - the most common type of rooms that you would expect to find within a medieval castle depending on its size because size really is a most determining factor in this consideration so now let's go back to the minimum requirement which like I said is a single room within this room you would expect to find a half to be out a cook a bed to sleep in which probably be double the size for the whole family to sleep in having an individual bed for every individual person is quite the you know extravagance but once we get rich enough and the castle gets big enough and maybe isn't an extravagance that we can afford but in this minimum level no single bed that'll do the job a table to eat at also very useful and then separately this may be a chest of some kind for storage you have to understand that in the medieval period people didn't spend a lot of time indoors of course that certainly changed during the winter time but still even during the winter time there's a lot of work that you need to do outside a home was primarily for shelter during the nighttime and when it was cold in regards to what you would expect to find on the outside I only briefly touch on because that's not necessarily the subject of this video but there are a couple of essential things that you would need to help sustain this home that being a place to store food and it could actually be on the inside of the castle if there's enough room a place to store firewood ready for the winter and a place to keep your animals and for food you certainly need it to be in shelter and regarding animals and firewood that helps to have shelter for those as well and if you have those things covered and your main personal shelter is fortified and defensible you do have a legitimate medieval castle in its most basic iteration and there are many real medieval castles that we've identified that are as basic as this many didn't even have walls around them but if you had an additional wall around that keep well you've just added the defensive ability because now those things that are sitting on the outside like your food firewood and animals have proper protection as well a good water source is very important and this can be via well or a nearby lake river stream whatever regarding a place for you to go do your business you know when nature calls you don't actually need a toilet within or even in the direct vicinity of your castle because if there's a nearby stream you can go and do your business there but if you don't have access to anything like that a simple hole in the ground will do the job for you kind of like the classic drop dunning and then you can work up from there in terms of levels of luxury for instance having a shelter over the place where you need to do your business very helpful and beneficial especially when it's raining or particularly cold and moving it in to where you actually sleep and live an additional luxury it's not necessary but that's one of the first kind of things you can consider when adding on to your castle a toilet so then if you had additional money resources to build a larger castle what are some of the other rooms that you want to add in first of all you want might not necessarily want to add anything to the keep itself just yet there are other external buildings that you'll probably want to cover first for instance a stable you have shelter for your animals by having a more dedicated shelter for your more expensive animals like your horse that's a fairly good investment but now looking back to they keep one of the first kind of additions that you want to add is a separation in functionality because the single room is kind of doing all the jobs that you'll need to your home to do it's your kitchen at your bedroom it's your dining area and it's also the place where you receive guests and visitors and so the first separation can be any number of these things you can separate a room to just have the half kitchen and the bedroom and then have the dining and visiting area separate to that which would essentially kind of make it the most basic type of hall that you would have on a castle but you can kind of mix and match these functionalities instead of having to half in with the bedroom which you would kind of want because of warmth you cannot separate it so the hearth is in the dining area where when you receive guests you have warmth but then you might want to add in an additional fireplace for the bedroom this simple division in the functionality of the single room into two is actually already quite the extravagance and it can create a bit of separation between the Lord and his servants guests and whatever where they are allowed into the public area which is kind of the small Grand Hall that they have on this castle but not allowed into the Lord's bedroom in fact this basic separation between the Lord's private part of the castle and the part where he receives his servants and vassals and such is one of the more basic and fundamental designs of many castles that have this advanced step above just being really a single room having this division and there are many arrangements in castle designs which handle this where the whole the entry part where they're receiving guests is expanded and becomes much much larger their own bedroom doesn't need to be massive but if they're going to be raising a family it will help to have a little bit of a larger space for their spouse and children and then the next stage to this is to separate the kitchen from wherever the kitchen just so happened to be located if it was in the bedroom or the Great Hall a separate section where if you're wealthy enough to have a cook where they can work and prepare the food and then in addition to this if you have a separated garderobe which is the medieval toilets you have a fairly decent castle and remember this most basic level is also acceptable for many of the early medieval kings as well don't think that always only pour lesser Lords that had these types of castles know perfectly fine for many kings as well there is an additional function in some of these rooms that people might not fully realize for instance the hall or the public section of the castle this would be the main dining room so the Lord would eat here with whichever servants are privileged enough to eat with the Lord if the king had his own personal retainers and this can be one or two soldiers and of course they would also be considered knight depending on situation but just one or two - even up to five six and ten they would generally eat in the Great Hall with the king depending on how rich high up the king is and how much of a class distinction there is between the Lord or King and certain types of servants and then after eating this room would also function as the guest room collapsible kind of cots which could be set up temporarily would be brought in and this is where the retainers would sleep which kind of makes this Great Hall the barracks essentially of this basic type of castle and it's also in the guest room for visitors when the castle grows large enough to be out accommodate additional rooms there isn't a strict set list of well you would most certainly want this room next I'll really come down to the personal preference of the Lord as to what type of room he would want added onto and out of the list of the common types of rooms that you could find in the castle that would logically be added at this stage of expansion would be say a chapel if it was particularly important to the Lord because one Lord might want a dedicated chapel for this space that is able to accommodate for or he might want what is called a solar a solar is an interesting kind of division in functionality once again where before when were looking at the smallest type of Castle a single room had the functionality of everything and then as we expanded upon that castle there was no separate area distinct from the dining room where the family could spend their personal time other than the bedroom a solar is essentially the medieval equivalent of the lounge room this is the place where the family simply spends their time and it's actually quite common for a bed to be located within the solar even if they have a dedicated separate bedroom on top of that now depending on the available room a I have within the castle the chapel doesn't need to be located within the Cape there are many cases where dedicated chapels were built in a separate building to the keep within the bailey meaning the external walls of the castle itself also as the Lords wealth to build a larger castle increases also increases a probability that the external Bailey will probably have more room within it as well which gives the opportunity to build a separate dedicated barracks for the retainers to sleep in which means they might not necessarily be sleeping within the Great Hall for a castle of this size and this also applies to any permanent servants that was serving the Lord now what type of servants could the Lord have well that would largely depend on the preferences of the individual Lord and what type of servants they would want over another do they want a permanent dedicated cook they wanted Chamberlain to handle the affairs the finances to hiring a firing of staff though generally that would be handled by the Lords wife but if the Lords wife was wanting to dedicate her time to other pursuits well the Chamberlain might be a good idea the interesting thing about servants within a castle is that they kind of fulfill the same dual purpose as we see the rooms within a castle depending on the castles size a small vikas all the more jobs you would expect the individual servants to fulfill for instance the cook could also fulfill the role of the scullery maid who is basically the cleaner of the castle they also might fulfill the role of a livery maid to help the lady dress and undress the retainer might also fulfil the role of a manservant to help the Lord dress they even might fulfil the role of a squire and the squire is there of course to help the Lord in and out of his armor and do many other jobs as well as being trained in the Knightly arts and the squire himself can be fulfilling many additional roles that other servants could have filled if the Lord had more money to hire additional servants because the more wealthy the Lord is the more prestige he has the more prestige his closest servants are to the point where his Squires would be treated as kind of Lords in and of their own right with their own servants and this of course depends on time period and geographical location because the medieval period was a very diverse thing and depending on how many servants the Lord has also helps determine if there needs to be a dedicated sleeping quarters for them within the castle or within a building external to the keep yet located within the castle walls if there's no dedicated sleeping quarters the servants well guess what they would sleep with in the Great Hall just like the retainers would but as the castle increases in size they can be a dedicated servants quarters within the castle itself and this can be a single room with several servants sleeping within it this servants quarters would usually always be located close to where they would be doing their work for instance the kitchen but an important distinction between the servants sleeping quarters and the lord sleeping quarters maintaining the separation of class was a significant thing in the medieval period so at the moment we kind of have a castle with a dedicated Great Hall which also function as the main dining room and also guest room a kitchen with possibly servants quarters are joining its storage rooms garderobe the main bedroom for the lord and his family and a separated kinda living room known as the salah here we have a very legitimate and what would be considered generously sized medieval castle many of the standard medieval castles are actually even smaller than this with only two to three rooms and that being what we were looking at before Great Hall a bedroom maybe a kitchen possibly storage as well most medieval castles actually as basic as this and on the larger end of the spectrum we have the castle where the function of those rooms have been kind of separated into additional the best example I can give that this castle that we're looking at here is actually on the larger end of medieval castles is by looking at the White Tower itself the place where many an English King has lived in the past here I've imported a model of the White Tower from the Sketchup warehouse and then scaled to size off one of the floor plans I was able to find on the internet and consider this the White Tower is regarded as one of the very largest castle keeps of medieval Europe that's more so in regards to the early in high Middle Ages because in the late Middle Ages castles did get bigger still it was rare and exceptional to have a king bigger than the White Tower as we see here and in comparison to this castle that would be now to see grow in this video the White Tower is only 40 percent larger and it is one of the biggest and then the next thing that we can confirm by looking at the White Tower is how the internal divisions work because you will notice that they're very basic and very similar to the divisions that were able to put on the castle featured in this video the White Tower is divided into three sections on four consecutive levels the lowest level or undercroft of the keep was used for storage and as a dungeon and even in some cases a torture room the next floor which was the only entry point of the castle when it was originally built because of course this Cape has changed over time well this floor was actually kind of the barracks of the castle this is where the castles garrison lived and it was a very defensible feature because that meant anyone trying to get to the Lord had to actually fight through a barracks or garrison of men located right here there is also speculation that a four building kind of like a small Barbican or entry hall was actually fixed just outside this door entry but that's no longer there I expect there would have been something like that just to add an additional defensive feature to the entry point of the king the only access to the upper kind of livable portion of the Cape was through this barracks at this stairwell that explored the Cape has an inbuilt Chapel very common the next section of kind of room on this floor was where the court was held while the main room this large apart here was the banquet hall and this right here in and of itself is actually kind of an extravagance separating those two functions we're on many other castles the banquet hall could easily be located within at the Great Hall at so additional spiral staircases started on this floor as well leading up to the floor above the third and final floor of the keep is interestingly far more basic than people really would have considered that a king would want first of all there is kind of a hallway that rings the external barrier of this upper floor this is actually a defensive feature giving access to all the arrow loops that circle that keep itself it's kind of like a void in the floor to the chapel beneath this section of castle is kind of like the personal council chamber for the King while the one underneath it was his private living quarters essentially the King only had one private personal room within this keep where his whole family would live and that is the whole internal layout of the White Tower this was the actual residence of many a medieval King and what's so interesting about it it is far smaller than many people realize now of course have to understand as the kings of England grew in wealth additional buildings were built around the White Tower enabling it to house more servants more soldiers more guests and more rooms for the use of the king and his family but when they keep was the sole main primary building this is what they had was this the largest type of castle within the medieval period not at all castles of course were able to come even larger but they start to become the minority in terms of what was the standard medieval castle and what rooms would you expect to find in castles even larger well it's just an additional separation and also duplication of the type of rooms that we already have a second bedroom a third bedroom and maybe even a guest room so visitors don't need to sleep within the Great Hall and temporary beds more servants quarters separating the dining function from the Great Hall so you have a dedicated banquet hall and a Great Hall like what we saw in the White Tower a dedicated guard room a schoolroom where the children receive their lessons from their tutors separate from having them done inside the actual bedroom of the Lord a dedicated bathroom and when I say that I mean a medieval type of bath room a room where the baths are located because of course as the Kings got richer and richer their castles got larger and larger but these are only the castles of the kings and the most wealthy Lords the castles of the average Lord in the medieval period even towards the late medieval period were still in a much more modest size and then the homes are the most wealthy Kings started to get so large and lose their military fortified functional purpose to the point that they evolved into palaces and they weren't castles anymore although some palaces were built in kind of like a castle Victorian neo-gothic style but that of course was after the medieval period and of course we should remember that these castle like palaces are not properly fortified they're not military structures and in this sense they are not the same type of castle as the true authentic medieval castle which was always a type of military structure but that's going into the difference between the neo-gothic castle and the medieval castle these are actually two separate distinct things within this video I've been able to show you the types of rooms you could expect to find within the standard medieval castle but what about the massive medieval castles the largest of the large what type of rooms or layout would you expect to find within them well if you'd like to see a floor-by-floor breakdown of a castle that would have been considered massive within the medieval period and how the room selection and internal layout can be done please go watch my video principles of castle design on a guard epic tour and analysis and in that video you'll see many of the rooms that were talked about in this video just contextualized in a finished design sorry thank you very much for watching I hope you have enjoyed and I hope to see you again until that time [Music]

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 1,749,580

Rating: 4.8888259 out of 5

Keywords: castle, castles, white tower, tower of london, keep, donjon, medieval, fortress, middle ages, knight, knight's, sword, swords, longsword, hema, european, sketchup, fantasy, top ten, game of thrones, dungeons and dragons, rpg, roleplaying game, video, game, dnd, D&D, tower, gatehouse, machicolations, crenelations, crenilations, crenulations, historical european martial arts, skyrim, history, historical

Id: Y5mb2Zcw6mc

Length: 21min 7sec (1267 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 06 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/mecheye]

This is very useful!

Great find!