Anatomy of a Castle – Other Interior Spaces

The Church, Ludlow Castle

We’ve looked at the main spaces within the castle, but there are still a few more, smaller, places worth thinking about.

The buttery and the pantry were located next to the hall. To my great disappointment, I discovered that the buttery didn’t store butter. Instead it was where wine and ale were kept. ‘Buttery’ is derived from ‘bottle’. Water couldn’t be drunk, so people had to make do with wine and ale – at every meal. Ale didn’t travel well and was always drunk close to where it was made. There might even have been a brewster in the castle. Not only did ale not travel, but it also went off quickly. That meant it had to be brewed often.

Unless it was specifically brewed for a celebration of some kind, ale was very weak. Wine, on the other hand, was very potent. Much of it came from Gascony, where the English kings were the dukes from the eleventh to the fifteenth century.

The pantry was the room where the bread was stored. The word is derived from the Anglo-Norman ‘paneterie’, which came from the Latin ‘panis’ – bread. It was a large room. Everyone ate bread every day and slices of bread (trenchers) were usually used as plates.

Outside in the bailey there were some other buildings.

Many castles had their own churches or chapels. Old Sarum had a whole cathedral.

That was a bit unusual, though. One of my favourite castle churches is the round church, built in the Templar style, at Ludlow, which you can see at the top of the post.

One of the main purposes of a castle was to house mounted soldiers. When the lord moved to another location, the garrison would stay behind. The number of soldiers remaining there would depend on the escort needed for the lord’s own personal safety whilst travelling and the type of threat, if any, facing the castle he was leaving.

The soldiers weren’t the only ones who used horses. When the lord travelled, his goods would be carried in carts, pulled by horses. The lord and his family would also have their own horses for hunting or for visiting their local estates.

Where there are horses, there are stables. Sadly, medieval stables must have been made from wood, for there doesn’t seem to be any trace of them at the sites I’ve visited. There is a brick stable block at Kenilworth Castle (now a tea room), but it’s Tudor.  The horses who resided there must have thought they were in heaven.

The mews where the hunting birds were kept would also have been wooden. Men with even a modest amount of wealth kept birds for hunting.  Rich men had many birds and a falconer to train and look after them.

In a similar vein, many castles had dovecotes. These were usually circular and housed pigeons. Many were built from brick or stone and some survive. Pigeons were bred to be eaten.

And what of Hollywood’s favourite part of the castle: the dungeon? Well, as you’ve probably come to realise, there wasn’t a lot of space for keeping prisoners. The photograph below is of the prison at Portchester Castle.  There aren’t any schoolchildren inside to give you an idea of the scale, but the plaque and the stones should be enough to tell you that it’s small. It’s just in front of the keep and, as you can see, above ground level.

The Prison, Portchester Castle

It’s the only prison I’ve come across.

Sources:

Castle by Marc Morris

 

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

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