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Castles Are Defensive Homes
- Castles combine fortified military features with domestic, aristocratic living spaces rather than being purely military forts.
- If contemporaries called a building a castle, it usually functioned as a residential stronghold in its society.
Castles Rise With Fragmented Power
- Castles emerged in Western Europe around the year 1000 as smaller, private fortified residences for new local lords.
- The Norman Conquest then spread castle-building across England in a tidal wave after 1066.
Motte-and-Bailey Was The Default
- The common early type in England was the motte-and-bailey: an artificial mound with a tower and a lower enclosed bailey for service buildings.
- Most early castles were earth-and-timber and only later converted to stone where lords invested heavily.