Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Fortifications

 The weakest portion of any wall is the gate. An opening that is blocked by doors, portcullis, or other device, the gate lacks the necessary strength to withstand massive blows. Castle walls routinely were a dozen feet thick, gates only inches so. To bolster the strength of the gate, castle builders fortified the gate with towers and walls built outside the existing wall. The towers flanked the neck, a tunnel leading to the main gate, added gates inside the neck and defended it with murder holes. Anyone breaking through the first gate of the barbican, would find themselves pushing against a second gate, the actual city gate, and exposed to enfilading fire from left, right and above.

 
The Neck

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have been surfing online more than 2 hours today, yet I never found any
interesting article like yours. It is pretty worth enough
for me. In my view, if all website owners and bloggers made good content as you
did, the net will be much more useful than ever before.


my homepage :: military payday loans

Anonymous said...

HI!
I'm preaching a sermon on Sunday about city gates and I would love to use your pictures and content as part of that sermon. I am a traveling speaker so I could be using this content on multiple occasions in multiple locations. May I have your permission to use them? I would, of course, credit you and your blog in the slides! :D

Plywood Memories from Gencon to Vegas

  Out trip to Gencon took us up through the Arkansas Delta country, and into the boot of Missouri, across the Big Muddy and on into the spra...