Tag Archives: motte

The Xylo castle #AtoZchallenge
And so arrives the dread X. It so happens xylo is a Greek word related to wood and this leads me to building materials. As I’ve mentioned in a few posts, castles weren’t always made with stone. The early ones utilised wood and lots of earthworks. Even though stone was popular with the Romans, the […]

From motte to moat #atozchallenge
Who hasn’t built a sandcastle on a beach? Well, if you’re like me, when you do, you dig out a circle and pile the sand high, then when the tide rises, you watch the little circular ditch fill with water. Eventually, the castle disintegrates, eroded by the waves. When the Normans brought along their motte […]