How much does a medieval castle cost?

Answer 1

Doing a little research, I find that the least expensive castles, which were of wooden construction and very simple, cost 20 pounds and up, and the most expensive cost about 15,000 to 20,000 pounds. This was at a time when annual rent on a cottage was about 5 shillings and on a master craftsman's house was about 20 shillings or 1 pound. See the links below.

Answer 2

Short Answer: A great deal.

Slightly longer answer: Lets take Dover Castle in England as an example. Dover was a major royal castle with a both inner and outer stone baily wall and an extensive fortified keep. Initial construction was done under Henry II and cost 6,500 pounds. Richard I and John both made minor refurbishments costing 1000 and 2000 pounds respectively, and Henry III made a major upgrade costing 6,500 pounds. Annual income for the king might have been 5,000 pounds, so these are staggering huge sums of money. Some scholars (such as Jeffrey Singman of Daily Life in Medieval Europe)estimate total construction cost for Dover at 10,000 pounds if it had been constructed in a single effort.

A castle the size of Dover would have taken years to construct, which would defray the cost over time, but even at that such a massive project would have consumed 20% of the royal annual budget for a period of ten years.

Lesser nobles would still have castles, just smaller and less elaborate ones than Dover. A good example of this would be the shell keep. A shell keep is a round stone wall built on the top of a mound or hill, with wooden buildings built along the inside of the stone wall, and a central open courtyard. Another type of keep is the Norman Keep, which is a four walled with buttresses at the corners. These keeps may have a single baily wall, perhaps of stone or also of timber and earth. Early keeps were sometimes timber as well, but these were generally converted to stone over time.

Answer 3

It is going to be over £3,000,000. Your going to have to look on other websites to get that right answer.