Who lived in medieval castles and why?

Answer 1

In England the medieval knight lived in a manor house not in the castle. A number of farms supported one manor house. One manor house supported one knight. England had about 6,000 manor houses. It took a number of manors to support a castle. The baron living in the castle might also be a knight. The solders living in the castle were not generally knights.

Answer 2

Actually, they were big cold rooms. When castles were first built they had one purpose and that was defense. People didn't have much privacy nor did they expect it so they mainly did everything in the great hall. Eventually individual rooms were built, but even these were cold and uncomfortable. One reason the great hall was used so much that is where the fire place was and usually that was the only heat source. We have a romantic view of castles, but it wasn't until much later that they began to have the opulent furniture and beautiful things.

Answer 3

Castles were built by local unskilled laborers, stone masons, carpenters, and engineers. The ancillary staff included cooks, teamsters, soldiers, and so on. Depending on the type of castle, there could be dozens of people to hundreds of people involved, and construction could go on from weeks to years.

Castles that were in use had soldiers living in them. Castles being used as the residence of a lord had that person and his family. A castle could be the home of a royal family. But in times of peace, most members of the nobility preferred to live in a manor house, and most members of the royal family preferred to live in a palace.

Answer 4

Castles were forts, of a sort, and most of the occupants were soldiers.

Most of them were actually rather small, and some consisted of just a single tower. They were mostly cramped places with insufficient room for anyone to live there, and certainly not enough room to have a pleasant life. The rooms were poorly ventilated, very poorly heated, and dark. They had the advantage of being safer than other structures in times of war, and they usually had large grain stores so people could hunker down in them for a long time.

There were a few castles that were rather large. These had barracks for soldiers, and a few places where craftsmen, such as blacksmiths, could live and work. They had kitchens, and stables. They had apartments where members of the nobility could live.

Nevertheless, even the large castles were not as comfortable as nice manor houses, and most were only occupied during times when the nobility felt threatened in some way.

There were a very few castles that became the seats of nobility, though it would be better to describe most of these buildings as fortified manor houses. The were mostly a product of the later parts of the middle ages.