Introduction to castles, Детальна інформація

|Warwick Castle was founded in 1068 and was rebuilt and updated a |

|number of times. Today it combines castle ruins, largely of the |

|fourteenth century with one of the finest great houses in England. |

|Two small projecting towers, which date to the late fifteenth century|

|are said to have built as artillery platforms. Warwick Castle rises |

|like a precipice above the River Avon. On this natural cliff William |

|I founded a motte castle in 1068, on lands seized from a nearby Saxon|

|convent. A wooden tower built on the motte was evidently still there |

|in the reign of Henry II, by which time a polygonal shell enclosure |

|had been raised round the motte top. Only fragments of the shell |

|enclosure now remain, incorporated in the rebuilt shell, which is of |

|much later date. |

|Late in the fourteenth century, by which time some additional |

|buildings such as the great hall and residential blocks had been put |

|up in the bailey, the castle passed to Earl Beauchamp who initiated a|

|fresh programme of works. These were substantially what can be seen |

|today. They included restructuring the great hall and a range of |

|other buildings on the south-east, a water-gate, and on the west |

|front a high and stout defensive curtain leading from a gatehouse to |

|a very tall polygonal tower, known as Guy's Tower, which is 39.4 |

|metres tall. The gatehouse is a remarkable building: a pair of towers|

|above the doorway passage, which had portcullises and murder-holes. |

|Projecting from the east side of the gatehouse is a tall rectangular |

|building leading to another tower. |

|This latter tower is 45.2 meters tall and capped by a two-fold system|

|of battlements with machicolation all round below the battlements. It|

|is called Caesar's Tower. The three main storeys in the tower are |

|each vaulted, and have stone fireplaces. |

|The castle is completed by curtain walling and further, much smaller,|

|flanking towers. The wall at the west leads up the motte to the |