What was castle life in medieval Europe?

Answer 1

Castles were of different types, all built for military defense.

The early ones were motte-and-bailey. These consisted of a hillock called a motte, with an enclosed area at the top, in which there was a structure called a keep. The keep usually had one or more rooms to store food. At the foot of the motte was another enclosed area called the bailey, which was open and could be used for anything from grazing horses to pitching tents.

The enclosures and structures in the motte-and-bailey castle were often made of wood, though with time stone came to be preferred. The purpose of such a castle was purely military, and the only people who lived there were soldiers and their families, unless there was a war or some sort of unrest going on. Life in such a thing was more like camping out than anything else, except it was probably much less fun.

In time, more permanent castles were developed. At first these were still primarily military, but some consideration was given to housing the lord of the castle and his family. Still, the usual situation was that the lord would only live in a castle if things got bad. Usually the lord and his family lived nearby in a manor. Life in such a castle was still more like camping out than anything else.

In time, kings and lords built castles with more comfortable quarters. They had water, but not running. They had facilities to store or remove waste. They had a keep with a great hall in it, so they could be more comfortable. This was not like camping out.

The great hall, in a comfortable castle, often included offices, storage areas, various kinds of work areas, and living quarters, all in the same room. The various areas were separated by partitioning screens.

The great hall was heated by a fire on a central hearth. There were no fireplaces in most castles, because the age of castles was half over when the chimney was invented, and it took a long time for chimneys to be included in them. The smoke from the fire was allowed to rise through the great hall, and was vented through an opening high in the wall or in the roof. This opening had to be open if there was a fire, so when you hear that castles were drafty, it does not mean that they windows did not close tightly - it means that the wind blew through the living quarters.

Cooking in the best castles was done outdoors or in kitchens that were vented in the same way as the great hall. Kitchens were often in separate buildings.

Later on, when the fire places were introduced into castles, people such as the great lords could sleep in their own, heated rooms, separate from the great hall. This was the height of luxury.

One other point about really great castles was that they often housed chapels, small fields with gardens, orchards, and so on. So they got to be almost as nice as a manorial village to live in. In fact, if you were in a noble family and wanted to be comfortable, you lived in a manor house.

There is a link below.

Answer 2

Living in a castle was different than how you live now. There was no heat in the castle so it was very cold and damp, also there was no electricity so it was dark. People walked around with sticks that had fire on top of them(they are called candles), and they had those sticks in the halls.

Answer 3

AnswerIt was stinky cold and drafty. There was one heat source, a fireplace in the great room, and most things were done in this room. People ate here, slept, met, played games, and sometimes stabled their horses. Once a year rushes or straw was spread on the floor and this got pretty bad with bugs, dog feces, and rotten food before it was replaced. The air also had the scent of fat or tallow because the candles burned were made of tallow ( bees wax was too expensive) and there would also be would also be woodsmoke in the air from the fireplace. People would smell of the woodsmoke, not bathing, and tallow. A pretty hefty combination of scents. A castle was meant for defense and not for the comfort of the people living in it. It isn't until much later that rooms will be added, more heat, and a few comforts of other things. AnswerThere was a lot of variation in castles, and there was a lot of variation in what they were like. Medieval castles were seldom built to be comfortable, and many were not built to be inhabited by anyone but a small garrison, except in emergency. A few were built to be fortified residences of feudal lords.

In the early days, a castle was a fort on a hilltop, called a motte, with wooden walls. It was really nothing but a military camp. Such a castle could be built in a few weeks, even if the hill had to be constructed artificially. Such a castle did not last long, because the wood rotted quickly.

Later castles were built of stone. Such a castle had a big building called a keep, which would be very difficult to take over in an attack even if the rest of the castle fell. The keep had grain storage rooms, cisterns of water, and places where people could sleep, but without much regard for comfort, because the hope usually was than it would be unnecessary for anyone ever to sleep there. It often had a large room called the great hall, which might be partitioned for offices, living quarters, and so on.

Most castles had an area called a ward or bailey, which was a large enclosed open area. Smaller buildings were often built in this area, and these could include workshops, stables, garrison buildings, a large building to hold the great hall outside the keep, a chapel, and even a house for the family of the feudal lord. It could also have gardens and orchards, if the castle was large. The wall around this is referred to as a curtain wall. Caerphilly Castle, in Wales, has 30 acres, or 12 hectares, enclosed in its curtain wall.

The curtain wall had a gatehouse, which was heavily defended and hard to get to with large equipment, such as a battering ram. Various things were devised to make it easy to defend, and the best known of these is probably a drawbridge.

Around the walls, there was usually a moat. This was sometimes filled with water, but often just a big ditch. Some castles were built on islands in lakes or on mountains, and these did not need a moat. The idea of the moat was that the people in the castle wanted to make it as hard as possible for anyone to get over the walls, so they made it as hard as possible to put a ladder against the walls. There were also devices used to put armies over walls, including towers on wheels, called siege towers, that could be pushed up against a wall that had no moat, and a moat made it hard to use such a thing.

There is a common misconception that castles were heated with fireplaces, and that fireplaces were also used for cooking. This is true for some castles, but chimneys were invented in the 12th century, and it took a while for the really to catch on, so most castles were built without them. So the fireplaces were really just hearths that were open on at least three sides and rather poorly vented. Cooking was done outdoors, if weather permitted, or in a separate, well ventilated, kitchen building in the ward. Heating was done using hearths or braziers. These could be in the middle of a room with a hole in the overhead roof for the smoke to get out, but in castles, they were often built against the stone walls and had smoke canopies to guide smoke out through a hole in the wall.

Clearly, a castle was not designed to be cozy.

As an aside, there seems to be a rather lively debate going on about the subject of throwing straw on the floor and allowing it to stay for a long time, getting increasingly vile with time. The debate centers on whether this would have been possible to do with the clothes medieval women wore and on the fact that there is no medieval picture showing this. I searched quite a while looking for the source of this, and it seems to be a letter the Dutch humanist Erasmus wrote to a friend about the accommodations he was finding as he travelled through England, some time after the Middle Ages ended. The section talking about this reads to me as humorous, describing a badly run stable and claiming it to be the sleeping quarters he encountered. Erasmus did have a reputation for humor.

Answer 4

During the Middle Ages, nobles often chose heavily fortified castles as their domiciles due to the near-constant threat of war they endured. While the structure of these castles varied, most incorporated some form of central keep, which was the primary residence of the castle's lord.

These buildings were lavishly furnished, depending upon the personal wealth of the owner, and were often well-appointed with grand banquet and dancing halls, offices, multiple bedrooms and lounges, and impressive kitchen facilities. These kitchens were necessary to prepare the rich foods they enjoyed, which were typically salted (for preservation purposes) meats enhanced with spices. These residences were beneficial to the local economy due to the amount of servants they employed to tend to the needs of the nobles living there.

The upper floors consisted of more sitting rooms and grand bedrooms. They would have worn brightly-coloured clothing made from expensive materials such as silk and velvet, primarily as a means of distinguishing themselves from the lower classes, who could not afford coloured clothing of good-quality construction.

Outside of the keep, servants quarters, stables, blacksmiths and other facilities essential to keeping these veritable towns alive could be found, usually built into the castle walls themselves. Most of these structures were made from wood and have not survived to the present day, though when visiting a reasonably well-preserved castle you can usually tell where these buildings would have connected to the stone walls.

It is important to note that during the Middle Ages castles were not intended to be extravagant manor houses, like Warwick Castle and similar places have since become, but were functioning military fortifications. Earlier castles would not have been particularly luxurious even for the nobles.

Obviously, more wealthy nobles could afford more extravagant buildings and furnishings to go inside them. The residents of Warwick Castle, for example, would have had much more pleasant lives than the residents of Beeston Castle.

Answer 5

Well I think as there was no electricity, it would be dark and cold. If you were a child, you would grow up to be a knight if you were a boy

Answer 6

The roles would be The Royal Family, Knights, Nobles or lords

Answer 7

HUZZAH

And Jacobs Rule