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Castles
From the earliest Motte & Bailey Castles to the massive stone Fortresses still standing today
2,974 Questions
How do you upgrade your castle wall on good game empire?
At the bottom of the page, go to the Construction Menu. After civil, military, etc. you should see a tab called "battlements" I forget what level you have to be, but the first upgrade in the battlements tab is castle wall upgrade to level 2.
Hope this helps!!
It depends on how it is designed and what you put in it.
What is the name of the gate that protects the castle?
The portcullis, often there are two by letting attackers in the first but closing off the second and then dropping the first they could be trapped.
Why was the Middle Age kitchen separated from the castle?
Kitchens were frequently separate structures in the middle ages, both in castles and sometimes in town homes as well. This probably was for fire safety. It may also be due to the fact that kitchens were seen as utilitarian structures in the middle ages. Only the wealthy had a separate kitchen (most common people cooked at a fireplace or a central hearth). Those who could afford a kitchen could also afford servants to cook. In a sense the kitchen was the cook's workshop, and may have been removed from the social areas and private quarters of the main residence as such. People did not socialize in kitchens or entertain guests there, as might happen in a modern home.
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Chimneys were invented in the 12th century in northern Europe, and did not catch on very fast because they were expensive and required maintenance. The result was that most castles, and other buildings, of the Middle Ages did not have chimneys. Since a fireplace requires a chimney, there were also no fireplaces in most buildings. This presented quite a problem for the medieval builder. The solution usually used was to put a fire on a hearth in the middle of a big room, the great hall, and let the rest of the building be left unheated. Smoke went out through a hole in the roof, or large open windows.
Kitchens represented a special problem for dealing with smoke. In a castle or monastery, there was the potential to have a lot of people to feed, and this meant a lot of fuel was being used. A lot of smoke was produced, and this had to be ventilated. Usually, the kitchen was a separate building with very large open windows for that reason.
There was an alternative, and some castles and manor houses used it. This was to have a hearth set up beneath a plaster structure that gathered the smoke and vented it through a hole in a wall or in the roof. The structure was called a smoke canopy. It made possible a kitchen hearth placed against a wall, and with this setup it looked a bit like a fireplace with a chimney.
Some castles or manor houses had multiple kitchens, each for a different purpose. One typical setup was to roast meat in one kitchen in a separate building or outdoors, bake bread in an oven either in a separate building or outdoors, and have different kitchens for different purposes in rooms of the house or castle, as venting situations allowed.
There is a link below to an article on the smoke canopy, with a picture of one.
What was the only place in a castle that has windows?
Windows in a castle in the middle ages were rare. On the second floor, where the royal family stayed, there might be a few windows. The only other window like things were small openings in the wall for arrows to be shot at enemies.
What did a maid of a medieval castle do in a day?
Maids were used for dirty tasks such as cleaning chamber pots, doing laundry, kitchen work, and cleaning.
The crown used lesser nobility and their children to take care of them and this was considered an honor. The queen had ladies in waiting that were the daughters of nobility. They took care of the wardrobe, dressing the queen, seeing to her toilet, and all of her needs. The king had similar helpers with male nobility. One reason the noblity found this to be an honor because it put them into the court and allowed them to find a husband or wife, to make political connections, and to be at the heart of the power. Many would go back and forth between courts of different kings/queens.
Square or shell keeps were built in stone why?
To make them stronger and stone is a very strong material
How many dungeons were there in Nottingham castle?
I live in Nottingham, and have been to the dungeons before, but I was only 6 and am now 15, so I remember very little. To what I remember, I think it was three or four, one being an oubliette of some sort and another a torture chamber, but I admit to having a bad long-term memory, so please don't trust this as a fact.
Ellie
it is located on a hillside near the village of tongwylise in the north of Cardiff in wales
What did the peasants do for the castles in the Middle Ages?
Many, perhaps most, peasants of the middle ages were serfs. Serfs were not slaves, as they could not be bought or sold or even told what to do, but they were workers who had an obligation to provide part of their crops to their overlord, and they were not permitted to move off their land without permission.
Other peasants were tenant farmers, who owed a portion of their crops as rent.
Typically, they were given small plots of land to grow food for themselves, and they farmed other plots communally with their neighbors.
In times of war, the men could be called to military service. In England and Wales, this meant that the peasants were often required to be armed at all times, war or not, practice archery, use their bows to protect their fields from vermin, which they could eat, and compete in matches on Sundays. In some other countries, the peasants were not allowed to be armed. The effect of this was that the English tended to win battles with this policy (Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt begin examples) , but had to be careful of how they treated their peasants.
Peasants dressed simply, ate simply, and lived simply. Their houses tended to have wattle and daub wall sections, or be made of field stones with holes filled with daub. They often had thatched roofs. There were no fireplaces and chimneys until late in the period, as these had not been invented. So a fire was built on the dirt floor, and the smoke went out through openings under the peaks of the roofs.
They tended to be very religious. And they tended to be very clean, because they believed the condition of the body was a reflection of the condition of the soul. In the later part of the middle ages, they could see morality plays at the churches.
Music and storytelling were both arts the peasants were exposed to, as itinerant musicians and story tellers worked everything from courts and cities to fairs and crossroads for handouts.
They had the ability, in many places, to decide to leave the life they were raised in to become monks or nuns, but their lives as such would not have been very different, as the monasteries would be likely to use them as agricultural workers of their own, or as cooks or clothes washers.
Some ran away from their overlords. Sometimes a king might want a city built where runaways could find legal refuge. But this was not all that easy to do. And after the Black Death, when peasants were needed by overlords, they were able to get deals from overlords who would illegally tempt them off the land they were bound to in exchange for some concession.
They did not get much money, but they were allowed to sell the fruits of their labors in the fairs.
