PlaymoFriends
General => News => Topic started by: Martin Milner on March 23, 2011, 17:25:34
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I'm reading a book about castles, and just learnt that Duke William used a pre-fabricated wooden castle during his invasion. It was carried over in big barrels on his ships (like viking longships) and assembled by the first evening!
There were only half a dozen castles in England before the Norman invasion, three of those on the Welsh Border and one in Wales itself, all motte and bailey and probably mostly timber in construction. The Normans introduced serious castle building to England, and there are still 1,500 identifiable castle sites in England today.
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I'm reading a book about castles, and just learnt that Duke William used a pre-fabricated wooden castle during his invasion. It was carried over in big barrels on his ships (like viking longships) and assembled by the first evening!
That will up the demand for the big barrel when it comes out again in DS.
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Hey you could make a nice diorama of this with the ships and the pre-fabed walls from the western sets
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Martin
I can recommend a good book on this - "Castle" by Marc Morris. It is tied in with a UK Channel 4 TV series of the same name. It is an excellent general reader's book on the subject. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Castle-History-Buildings-Medieval-Britain/dp/033043246X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300912300&sr=1-2 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Castle-History-Buildings-Medieval-Britain/dp/033043246X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300912300&sr=1-2)
I know of four preNorman castles in the UK - three in Herefordshire (near the border with Wales) - Ewyas Harold, Richard's Castle and Hereford and one in Essex at Clavering. These were built by Normans invited into England by King Edward in the mid 11th Century. I visited Richard's Castle last summer and the motte was completely overgrown.
Duke William built his first castles in England at Hastings, Romney and Dover during his invasion. These castles were motte and bailey in design. There is a reconstructed one in France www.ville-saint-sylvain-anjou.fr/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=20 (http://www.ville-saint-sylvain-anjou.fr/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=20) The are hundreds of mottes remaining in England and some more in Wales. The wooden structures of some were later rebuilt in stone, such as Clifford's Tower in York or the keep in Pickering castle (also in Yorkshire) http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/pickering-castle/ (http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/pickering-castle/)
For the Playmobil enthusiast it might be possible to make something similar with viking buildings or Western forts.
Playmofirth
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Can’t access Playmobil DB (ADT this week), but there was a set of a wall for archers. The Duke probably used some variation on this for the outermost walls of the castle. Tsar Peter would use them again latter on (though he was using muskets, rather than bow and arrow).
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Can’t access Playmobil DB (ADT this week),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADT)
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Can’t access Playmobil DB (ADT this week)…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADT)
ADT
Not From Wikipedia
ADT may stand for
Active Duty for Training (http://Null.net), intended to enhance or refresh existing skills that support military operations or future mobilizations. Emphasis is supposed to be placed on those skills most likely to be needed during the first 3Ø days after mobilization.
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i am sure duke william used system-x. 0)
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I'm reading a book about castles, and just learnt that Duke William used a pre-fabricated wooden castle during his invasion. It was carried over in big barrels on his ships (like viking longships) and assembled by the first evening!
Hi All,
I think the story of the pre-fab castle needs to be treated with a certain amount of scepticism. If I recall correctly, the medieval source that mentions this was written 50 or so years after then events of 1066. While there may have been some people still surviving from the generation that took part in the invasion, I'm not sure that the chronicler wasn't simply recounting what sounded to him like a good story about Duke William. None of the accounts written closer to the events of 1066 (including one by William's own household priest) mention the pre-fab castle.
That having been said, I have no problem with the idea that William may have brought over some pre-fab timber panels that could have been used as defensive structures around William's camp. Whether such structures could be called a 'castle' is another question. And given the number of men, horses, other equipment and at least some food that had to be transported, I do wonder whether there would have been space on William's ships.
But the general point that the overwhelming majority of the structures now called castles that got built by William's followers in the generation after 1066 were constructed of earth and timber (not stone) is quite correct. But then many of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy also had compounds enclosed by ditches, earthen banks and fences or hedges. Whether those ought to be called castles as well is something that divides scholars.
OK, sorry for the rant, but I did my PhD on earth-and-timber castles built in tthe first generation after 1066, so this is a subject near and dear to my heart.
Cheers,
AndrewL
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Right, so…
Set #3889 “Archers Wall” (http://playmodb.org/cgi-bin/showinv.pl?setnum=3889) features essentially a small wood “wall” through which archers can shoot; Peter the Great used essentially this scheme to build a “portable” castle during his invasions of either Germany or Poland (I can’t remember which). He’d set them in a series of V’s around the main camp. The Romans did something very similar using baileys and what we might now call an “abatis.”
I included a very crude image of how the castle was built; Each red spot should be treated as a tent or other protective construct, or a fighting position.