Hermitage Castle

[sandramatthews8]

Having a go at my first castle design nice and simple.Sorry about the poor pics,cant afford paper,ink and a new digy camera so the camera has to wait. Brian

[bf109]

looks great!! love medieval buildings

[Thomas Meek]

Nice! The pictures are fine.

I like the way the walls are thicker at bottom. There's a word for it, "batter" I think, or maybe that's what enemies did to them...

You say it is your first castle design. Looks pretty good so far.

[sandramatthews8]

Thomas, I think the lower slope on castle walls is called a glacious or something like that. Maybe someone who knows more about castles can help us out.The arched "doorways are not doorways or porticus,Ithink thats their names,the doors were just arond the corners in side of this opening and the area with in it had lots of arrow slits forming a kill zone that was hard to retreat from and because of the small area it was also hard to attack the door.The small arched door was driven into the castle I believe in the 1800 to gain access to the bythen ruins.Hopefully someone can shed some more light on this. And hopefully I'll get it finished sometime soon

[AlanG]

Hi Sandra and Thomas

The word "batter" simply describes the way that the wall thins from bottom to top, so that one or both faces slope back towards the core.

A "glacis" is strictly a bank raised outside the walls of a castle, with a gap between. This is partly to protect the walls from cannon shot, and partly to make it harder for attackers to reach the relative safety of the base of the walls. Glacis tend to be associated with more modern castles than this one, because of their association with artillery.

However, I have seen the use of the word glacis to describe a wall with a massive sloping front on older castles.

So I think you are both right ("EVERYBODY has won, and all must have prizes")!

Alan

[sandramatthews8]

Thanks for that Alan that has cleared that up.So now Thomas and I would like our prizes lol.