The keep and the auxiliary buildings that supported castle life varied from castle to castle. Sometimes buildings (like the chapel, great hall and kitchens) were integrated into the keep, and sometimes they were separated.
The keep was the main residence of the ruling lord. It was made of stone and could be square or circular. Keeps could be attached to walls or freestanding. They had many functions.
Residential apartments contained beds and furnishings. They were usually heated by fireplaces, and light came through glass windows.
The great hall could be located in the keep or in separate buildings. In the earliest castles, like the one described in the epic poem "Beowulf," great halls were used for eating and sleeping. Later, they were used for entertaining and holding court. They usually had high ceilings and large fireplaces. The floors were usually stone or dirt.
Storage of food, beverages and gold was usually in the lower levels of the keep.
Defense (arrow loops, armory, battlements) usually occupied the top levels.
Prisoners were kept in the dungeon (derived from "donjon"). Dungeons were usually in the upper parts of the keep because it made escape more difficult, but they were later moved to the lower levels.
Religion was important in everyday life during the Middle Ages. People went to church every day, usually morning mass. Most castles had their own chapels and priests, either in-residence or visiting. Chapels could be simple rooms in the keep or elaborate separate buildings.
Horses were essential in medieval life. Knights rode them into battle. They pulled carts. They were transportation, like your car. So they needed a garage -- or stables, which were usually located in the bailey.
Because of the threat of fire, kitchens in early castles were separated from the keep in kitchen towers. As brick construction became more common, castle designers moved kitchens into the keep.
Wells and cisterns were collected water for the castle. Often, the ability to access freshwater was a key factor in whether a castle could withstand a siege. Wells could be located within the keep or in the bailey. Cisterns collected rainwater from the roofs. Some castles had rudimentary plumbing that channeled water from cisterns to sinks.
Castles needed many craftsmen and artisans, including carpenters, farriers and blacksmiths, to maintain the buildings and grounds. Their workshops were usually separate buildings within the bailey.
Medieval Sanitation
So what happened when nature called while soldiers were defending the castle during a siege? They had several options:
Toilets were merely holes in the towers. Wastes dropped below -- into the bailey, the base of the outer wall, the moat or cesspools contained within the tower.
The garderobe (or gardrobe) was a room that projected from a wall. A hole in the floor allowed wastes to drop below.
Some castles had sanitary towers in the inner or outer walls. The wastes would drop into a cesspool in a pit.
Castles served a primarily military purpose -- they housed armies and acted as garrisons that controlled a particular territory. Many castles were part of fortified towns and sheltered the surrounding villagers in times of war and siege. As time went on, castles also became residences for lords and kings.
Burning. Early Motte and Bailey castles were constructed of wood, making fire an effective weapon. The fire could be set in a number of ways, usually by either building a fire against the wall or by launching burning arrows into the castle, using archers.
Siege armies used a battering ram to break down a gatehouse door or even smash a castle wall. To shield themselves from attack, they built a covered shed, in which they hung a thick tree trunk on chains suspended from a beam above.
Towards the end of the Middle Ages, castles tended to lose their military significance due to the advent of powerful cannons and permanent artillery fortifications; as a result, castles became more important as residences and statements of power.
The toilets of a castle were usually built into the walls so that they projected out on corbels and any waste fell below and into the castle moat. Even better, waste went directly into a river as is the case of the latrines of one of the large stone halls at Chepstow Castle in Wales, built from the 11th century CE.
The heat fluctuations also cause the mortar to crack. Wind carrying sand slowly eats away at the mortar as well. There are always exceptions to this, but it would appear that a few hundred years is the maximum a castle will survive without maintenance. A very well built castle will last "indefinitely".
When cannons were introduced, castles were not strong enough to withstand the impact of cannon balls so they didn't offer important people much protection. The royal family, nobles and clan chiefs left their castles to live in in more comfortable homes, like grand houses and palaces.
Today, almost no mottes of motte-and-bailey castles remain in regular use in Europe, with one of the few exceptions being that at Windsor Castle, converted for the storage of royal documents. Another example is Durham Castle in northern England, where the round tower is used for student accommodation.
The major weakness of the motte and bailey castle was the likelihood of the keep. rotting or burning down. The solution was to build stone keeps but these could not always be built on the same site since the weight of the stone would sink into the motte.
Those defending the castle would sometimes pour hot sand, boiling water or quicklime on attackers who were using scaling ladders to climb the walls. However, it was more common to pour water to put out fires than dump unpleasant objects on attackers.
None can properly be described as true castles, as there was no medieval period in the Western Hemisphere comparable to that in Europe and castles were obsolete by the time of European settlement. They are primarily country houses, follies, or other types of buildings built to give the appearance of a castle.
They are typically still in use as residences (either by the descendants of the family that originally built/held them, or by families that bought them as the old nobility went bankrupt/died out), although a fair few operate as hotels or museums (and even those that are still lived in often have wings that are open to ...
Trebuchets or other siege weapons might be built inside castle walls to counter the enemy's siege engines. Later, castles were newly built or reconstructed to allow the use of cannon from the walls.
Can you just buy a castle? Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to inherit or be royalty to own a castle. Especially in Europe, castles are bought and sold like any other property. Of course they come in various states, from bold renovation projects to modernised chateaux that are ready to live in.
Medieval castles were often built on hills because of their strategic value and because they formed a natural defense. From a hill, the people in the castle could spot trouble from a distance and have time to prepare.
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