How Castles Work

In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss the most famous fortified structure in the world -- the castle. Tune in to learn all about castles, from murder holes to modern fortresses.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh.
There's Chuck Jerry's over to my right. That would make
this Stuff you Should Know the most overheated, cramped, smelly,

(00:22):
sweaty podcast on the market. I thought you can say overrated,
no overheated, because we were number three today in front
of Mr Ricky Javas right, and since I don't recognize
Alvin and the Chipmunks as a podcast, we're technically number two,
right behind Ira Glass. Oh yeah, big surprise. We love
Ira Glass. Let's just say that because people are gonna say,

(00:43):
why don't you like this American life? I know that's
the that's the problem with having such a substantial library
of podcast So when we go back, like fifty episodes
and revisit a joke, only the really hardcore s Y
s K listeners know what we're talking about. You know.
The people send an email and they get fifty episodes
back and they're like, h right, I wish I would

(01:03):
have held my tongue. Can we get on with this? Yeah,
let's do it. Chuck did you ever? Were you ever?
In the he man arguably the most homo erotic action
figure created that was I was a little old for that. Well,
it was right in my wheelhouse, as you would say.
And I had a little toy that I like to
call Castle Gray School because that's what the manufacturers called it.

(01:26):
Do you have you seen this? I've heard of it all.
It was. It was pretty awesome. The cartoon was horrendous.
Did you watch the cartoon? I was, I was too
old for that. How many times do you have to
go over my age? I don't know. Have you ever
heard of the Base City Rollers? I know them personally. Um. Anyway,
I had this little toy called Castle Gray School, and
it was this big plastic castle and it was pretty awesome.

(01:47):
It had embattlements, it had um tower, had towers, had
it even had a little overhang hanging off the back
um and then the the front entrance the tunnel was
a mouth with fangs coming down. And it was just
generally one of the cooler toys I own, to tell

(02:08):
you the truth. And now that I've read how castles work,
I could where I'd go back in time, stand next
to my younger self and be like, this is the tower.
This is Carl called the pork cullis, this is a
murder hole, and don't start smoking. Yes, that's I would
say that to young self. Oh my god, if there's

(02:30):
one thing I could go back and change, well, if
I had like three or four things I could go
back and change, smoking would definitely be one of them. Yeah,
it'd be taller. Uh oh wait, things you can really change.
I don't. Time travel is no effect on your height.
I would tell myself to grow taller. Okay, just when
I still have the chance. Yeah, So let's talk castles, Chuck, okay, Josh.

(02:53):
The word castle, like everything almost it's Latin, comes from
the word castell um, which means a fortified place. That's
exactly what it is, and the French shortened it lazy
French people that they are from castellum to castle it
means the same thing. Uh. And castles are actually very
specific buildings. There's very specific speed features to them that

(03:16):
make a castle of castle um. They're generally European, although
there are some castle castles found in like the Middle
East in Japan, but for the most part they were
European in origin. In Germany, ten thousand of them in
Germany alone, and they only actually existed for about five
hundred years. Are they only underwent construction for about five

(03:39):
hundred years during the High Middle Ages from the tenth
to fifteen centuries. Yeah. So let's talk about the history
of castles, and and not just historic castles, but the
beginning of castles. Where did they come from? Chuck? Well, Josh,
they evolved from the ancient walled cities back in like
Troy and Babylon and Jericho. They would have big walls

(03:59):
around on their cities for fortification. So it of all
from that into Uh. The first ones were called a
grod I believe is how you pronounce that, or a groad,
and that consisted of basically wooden and earthen walls and
then a gate with a moat around it. And that
would become one of the hallmarks of the castle was
the moat. Yeah, you have to have a moat or

(04:20):
else it's just not a castle. It depended on the terrain.
Sometimes if you're on like a rocky peak, you didn't
have a moat because you couldn't and you didn't need it.
But most castles are known for having moats. Yeah. That's
thank you for the correction, Chuck, love to be corrected. Uh,
There's another kind of castle that um eventually became part

(04:41):
of the modern and by modern I mean High Middle
Ages castle called a bird Freed, which you may suspect
as German, but it's actually based on a Roman design
that they would use these watch towers along their frontier,
and those became the towers of later castles. Uh right, Josh.

(05:02):
I believe that brings us to number three, which was
the Motte and Bailey castle. And that consisted of a
mound which is the Mott, and that's within the open
courtyard which was the bailey, and that, of course, as always,
is enclosed by a wall and a fortified gate. That's
the key. Right. So you put all these things together,
fill them with bloodthirsty knights and pooping horses, and you

(05:24):
have the castle as we as we recognize and love it,
the whole property. Yeah. Okay, so Mr smarty pants, you
don't always have to have a moat, right, but most
of them did have modes, right, So you had a
moat which is really just a ditch dug around the
outer wall of the castle. Yeah. What I love about castles, dude,
sorry to interrupt, is everything is so rudimentarily genius. He

(05:48):
sounded like me just now. It was all just genius.
But it was so basic. They were like, well, we
don't people get in, so let's take a big ditch
around it. Well, let's build a big door with a
big brace behind it. Yeah. Yeah, and if you there
seems to be a lot of um murderousness during this time.
It was very violent time. Um, so the most of

(06:08):
the technology and ingenuity was based towards effectively killing people
in the most horrific ways you could imagine. Right, So
the moat that was used to keep people out right,
and if it were you could fill it with water.
Everybody filled it with sewage human and otherwise. Right, you
don't see that in the movie. No you don't, because
I can you imagine how badly that smelled. Um. And

(06:29):
if you had you could keep it dry, although again
you would fill it with sewage anyway, and if you
kept it dry likely you would um bury sharpened steaks
coming out at all angles. So you could push people
into it and be like sinauris sucker, That's what they
would say in Japan. Yeah, so you got your moat,
you got your drawbridge, which you know lower the drawbridge

(06:51):
extends over the moat, you can get in and out
of the castle, and you've got that. You have the
outer walls, right, and the outer wall actually, um, all
castles have outer wall, some have inner walls. We'll get
to that in a second. But the outer walls are
actually two walls, right, um. So you have the one
wall and then a space and then another wall, and
then in between the two walls you fill with you

(07:12):
backfill with rubble or stone or gravel or something to
really make these things just like brick houses right right.
And then some castles even had an outer outer wall
called a shield wall, which was even taller, right, so
people could walk along the inside wall, right and not
have their head lopped off with the flaming arrow exactly,
which is true. They yeah, they did. That was a

(07:34):
lot of things were made of wood, um, especially in
the early days of castles, and this would would probably
be pretty well, it's like a big tinder box is
what you were walking around in, So flaming arrow goes
a long way. Yeah, it's very effective. Right. There were
also um overhangs that were initially made of wood that

(07:55):
I found pretty cool. Remember I mentioned Castle Gray School
had um a. Generally these things were called hoardings, and
they would have um arrow loops, which are basically just
narrow slits so you can shoot through right, and they
would hang over the front of the castle, so when
people were storming the front of the castle, um you
could you could shoot them with arrows the arrow loops.

(08:17):
But they also had the coolest sounding things of all time,
murder holes. Murder holes were holes, but you could shoot
arrows um. So basically, if you're standing on a hoarding,
there are holes in the floor, so you could shoot arrows. Also,
you could pour hot oil, hot metals, hot whatever exactly.

(08:39):
And the way that the entrances were arranged the when
you're walking in the entrance of the castle, right, you've
crossed over the drawbridge and now you're walking in the tunnel.
Um there's arrow loops on either side of you, and
then above there's murder holes. So if you were able
to breach the drawbridge and the gate, you were subject
to having sorts of hot, horrible stuff poured on you

(09:02):
and you were in big trouble, not fun. Uh. The
other thing they had to for for defense and for protection.
While defense is in defending yourself was the crenelation. Like
you know, when you see the top of the tower
and it's one block is higher, then the next block
is low, the next block is higher. That was actually
uh purposely done that way, so you could, you know,

(09:23):
soldiers could hide behind those blocks, peek around the corner
and fire and arrow, and then hide behind the tall
block again. Right. And I would argue that crenelations are
the most readily recognizable design of castle for sure. About
you know, the little sand castle molds, even those have
crenilations on them. If if they don't have the crenilations,
it's really just a big rectangle, Chuck, you were talking about,

(09:45):
um guys hiding behind the blocks of crenelation and then
moving to the side and shooting an arrow. They also
designed staircases in a clockwise circular fashion. Coolest fact of
the show right here, Do you want to take your buddy?
May I? Yes? Please? Okay? Uh, you're right clockwise while
going up. This is because at the time soldiers were

(10:07):
right handed. The fault with their right hand swung the
sword of the right hand. Um, if they were left
handed by nature, they were taught to fight with their
right because why because left handed people were considered evil
at the time. Actually, the word sinister means left handed,
so weird, so they design it counterclockwise going up. So
if you're flying up the stairs to go fight somebody,
you had room on your right hand side to swing

(10:28):
your weapon and it wouldn't hit the wall. Don That
in That the coolest fact of the whole thing. It is.
And also if you're running up the stairs and you're
an archer, you can draw and you have plenty of
room to draw an arrow and shoot it out of
one of the arrow loops that too. Yeah, so Chuck,
that's the outer wall. We've got the crenelations, we've got
towers built into it, we have holdings in different variations

(10:52):
on the holding right. Uh, and then you have the
inner wall. Right inside the outer wall, you would have
what's called a bailey, right, which is basically is a
big open courtyard. So anytime you see nights jousting like
the heart throb Heath Ledger in a Night's Tale r
I P right um, what they where where that joust
was taking place was actually inside the outside wall of

(11:16):
the castle. Yeah, and here's the thing you want to
We'll talk about the sieges later, but once you storm
into the castle. It's kind of like, great, we're inside,
but it's also like, oh boy, we're inside, because now
you're trapped, and all the little dudes up there in
the tower and on the walkways all of a sudden
just turned around and start firing flaming arrows down at
your head. Right, Because at the very least the castle
would have an outer wall and then some sort of

(11:38):
tower or inner fortification. A lot of castles actually had
an outer wall, then the bailey, and then an inner wall,
and then within that was the tower. So yeah, you
were just your toast basically if you made it in
and and you weren't, if you were feeling under the weather,
that they that was the day you died. U the courtyard, Josh.

(11:58):
They also use it as a marketplace ace, and they
had festivals and fairs, they did soldier drilling, train horses.
And then later once uh you know, castles later on
became more for like the kings and the noblemen and
less military in nature, and they were used for like
gardens and fountains that kind of thing, right, And uh
that when the nobleman actually lived in the castles, which

(12:19):
they did, but for the most part, castles were originally
made for military purposes, but then as the military technology advanced,
castles became much less strong or able to withstand attacks.
So the what was originally called the keep, actually what
was originally called the Don john right became the keep,

(12:39):
and the Jean or the Don Johnson it was usually
pastel um the uh, that became the keep, and that's
where the lord of the manner, the whoever owned the
feudal surfs lived right. The other thing, because obviously you
need a lot of people to keep up a castle,
to work the kitchen, blacksmiths, carpenters. There were residential apartments inside, yeah,

(13:05):
which you never really think about, you know, the fact
that they had people living there on site. So it's
sort of like a little live workplace scene way back
in the Middle Ages. I just assumed that feudal lord
slaughtered all the workers afterwards, exactly. Yeah, um the uh.
They're also Chapels Chuck. And there's a castle in Scotland

(13:27):
and the name escapes me right now, but it is
supposedly the most haunted castle in the world and the
reason why is one of the things that happened there
was the feudal lord, the the person who owned the castle.
His brother was saying mass in the chapel of the castle,
and he came in and murdered his brother, beheaded him

(13:49):
while he was saying mass. It's probably bad luck that,
I don't think. I think running over gravestones is on
par with that with your car. Yeah, it's pretty bad stuff. Yeah.
That chapels they had lived in priests many times because
they went to church every day. Back then. They had
the Great Hall inside the castle, which is what you
you know when you see them drinking the meat and

(14:10):
feasting at the big table. It's in the great hall.
They had storage obviously for their food and uh, the
horse food and all that kind of stuff. And little
known fact inside the keep, most rooms were heated with
a fireplace. Yeah, I saw that that was worthy of
putting in here. I thought that was interesting, Chuck. One
of the things that I hadn't thought of until I

(14:31):
read the article. It makes complete sense, is that um
castles needed to have a self sufficient water supply. So
you had to have a well within the castle walls,
right Why Well, because if you were trapped in there
and we'll we'll get to the siege later on. Oh
that was my segue into the seas. Well. You need

(14:52):
to have your water because when people siege, they kind
of basically surround you and say, no one's coming out
to get anything, right for months long time, so you
better have your water and your food. And they said
it just like that. I think, Actually, I thought you're
gonna mention the dungeon. That's what I didn't know. You're
moving on. Well, yeah, the dungeon was originally up high
when it was called the Don Johnson like you said, uh,

(15:14):
and then that became the keep and the dungeon was
moved down low down. So that was just another interesting
fact I thought was dungeons used to be like in
the upper reaches. Yeah, you always think of dungeon is
below the ground, right, but they're harder to escape from exactly, dude, binga. Uh.
The other thing they had, Josh, besides the wells because
they needed to get their water, was they used cisterns

(15:35):
to collect rainwater. Very green living type of thing going on, right,
Very smart to do so though. Yeah. Um so, Chuck,
we were talking about sieges, remember remember that. Yeah, back
to sieges. So, uh, let's say that you are you
having a standing army within your castle and you're a
feudal lord, and may you may or may not have
just murdered your brother who while he was saying mass.

(15:56):
But otherwise everything's hunky dory. And then all of a
sudden and in eating army from another nearby lord uh
comes up. So you basically batten down the hatches. To
use a metaphor that doesn't really make any sense whatsoever
because it's nautical in nature. Um, but basically, you you
you try to fight them off as much as possible.

(16:16):
But also you've got all of your entrances closed and guarded,
and you've got people ready with hot oil at the
murder holes and all that, and like we said, this
can last for months or years. Yeah, the impression I
got was that a lot of times there was never
any fighting going on when they did the surround and
wait you out technique, right, and it actually led to
the fewest casualties because a lot of times the invading

(16:38):
army could negotiate the surrender of the castle. Well true,
but the other side of the coin is, if you're
going to be the army that surrounds the place, you
gotta have your food and water too, right, So people
inside the castle would use flaming arrows, catapults with flaming
boulders maybe um, and shoot them into the countryside to

(16:58):
set it on fire so the the invading army couldn't
go get supplies from it, right yeah, and or for
a dround and hunting that kind of stuff. But you
could see some some invading army guy going the berries, right,
they're on fire. That's what we counted on. Uh. The
other cool thing too, if you were the invading army,
you could catapult and this is not just for monty python.

(17:21):
You could catapult like a dead cow, diseased cow, or
diseased human or disease dead human into all I guess
a disease live humans. All bets are off. I'm not
dead yet, and you can catapult them over the wall
and all of a sudden, this bovine diseased animal is
just like splattered in the middle of your keep and

(17:41):
you're in big trouble. Yeah. Uh. And I think probably
the other reason that laying siege to well just waiting
that kind of siege um was favored. It was because
the whole reason you're attacking this castle is probably get
the castle, I would think, so, so you want as
little damage under the castle as possible, because if it

(18:04):
took five I think or two to ten years to
build a castle, yeah, you don't want to wait that time.
You just go wait for some other schmow to build
his and invade it and then take it. Yeah, it's
a good idea. Yeah, that's the broadwater way, right, Uh,
one of the other ways, Josh. And this, this you
would think is right out of the cartoons, but actually happened.
To get into a castle as you would use a

(18:26):
scaling ladder and you would put a big, tall ladder
and you would climb up it. But just like in
the cartoon, you could just go up there and push
the ladder off. What's the dudes are on it if
you were strong enough, or you could shoot the flaming
arrows at their head, which is our our favorite technique,
throw objects down, pour hot oil on them, same deal, right. Uh.
To get around this, you could create a um what

(18:48):
are they called chuck A siege tower. Yeah, build your
own portable tower and you have some a bunch of
soldiers inside and they are waiting while some other soldiers
own on the ground or pushing this tower right up
against well as close as they can get to the
castle and then the door opens and guys come streaming out. Yeah, dude,
they would lower a plank across, you know, like a

(19:10):
pirate ship would do. And let's say when they pulled
up to another pirate ship and they would storm that
way from up top. Yeah. I think that appeared in
like the the last Lord of the Rings movie. No,
I don't even say that. Yeah, they use that device
in the Last Lord of the Rings movie. But Josh,

(19:31):
that is not my favorite. And when I was talking
about rudimentary genius, the battering ram, Oh yeah, you build
big door, we take a big pole smash door. You know.
It's funny. The fuzz still use that today. Oh yeah,
those little metal things. I want one of those. You
can get one. You can. Also you should probably dispose
of the complimentary brass knuckles that come with your order there, right.

(19:54):
Uh so, yeah, the battering ram obviously was It was
a big tool for the invading army and um some
of them were covered in like shields to prevent the
flaming arrow from hitting their head. Some were wide open,
and then to defend it once again, the rudimentary genius,
they would like put they would slide like padding down
in front of the door. They're like, oh, here they
come in the battering and let's slew this mattress up

(20:15):
against the door, which again I think that that's used
in modern storming techniques by the fuzz and criminals. They
would shoot flaming arrows into the door as well. Yeah,
because it was would so catch the door on fire
and maybe you can weaken it a little bit. I
think anytime there was wood, flaming arrows came into play, right,
Ye always had to have a flaming arrow at the ready.

(20:36):
Um castle's actually entered Decline, well, at least for military purposes,
because of the invention of something we call the cannon. Yeah,
once you had superior firepower, it doesn't matter how big
your wall is exactly. Oh, we've left out one siege
technique that I thought was awesome. The tunneling. Yeah, you're
gonna say that. They would this this sieging army would
dig a tunnel all the way under the sele walls, right,

(21:01):
and then they would they would use timber supports to
hold the thing up while they were digging. When they
finished digging, they would come back out set the tunnel
on fire. The timber supports would burn and the the
wall above would collapse because there was no longer any support.
Pretty cool and that awesome. Yeah that I didn't It
didn't make sense to me at first, but then I
got it. So this is what you had to do
to make a wall collapse. Then the cannon comes along

(21:23):
and all you have to do is shoot a couple
of cannonballs in the same place and then the wall collapses. Right,
So castle's kind of fell out of use. But strangely enough,
history repeated itself. It actually came full circle because remember
we were talking about the the predecessors of castles were
earthen walls and would and that's what we went back

(21:45):
to because earthen walls, we found, could sustain the impact
of a cannonball. So like colonial forts, yeah, yeah, they
were made of earthen walls and wood, and they kind
of replaced it, well, not replaced, but as far as
a military outpost replaced the castle exactly. And they were
also really speedy. Apparently the colonial army could put up

(22:06):
a four in basically twenty four hours instead of two
to ten years. Yeah or thirty years, right, Oh, is
that how long some of them took? That's how long
one in the in Arkansas was taking. Oh yeah, let's
talk about this guy. This um. Another freshman named Michelle
Guillot and mary Lynn Martin worked on a project in

(22:28):
France called Project Guildon so out of my league with France,
and they they are basically building a castle in the
Bordeaux region of France using the old techniques. It started
expected to take about twenty five years. And I went
to the website day and it looks pretty rad. It

(22:48):
looks pretty cool so far, it's like more than one
third finished and it's open to the public. It's open
well that's how they're paying for it with the tourist money. Yeah,
which is pretty cool. And they use all ancient tools,
not ancient, but yeah ancient. No, not ancient, historic, but
you could make the case that it's ancient, like wooden calipers. Um.
They have a rope with knots tied in it to

(23:09):
measure things out. They they're corrying the limestone by hand,
carving the bricks by hand. They're transporting it from the
quarry to the site by um horse, not just a horse,
but a horse drawn wagon, right, And that's actually in
the article. And then We got an email from Dana
in Arkansas who said, who turned us onto this guy?

(23:30):
Before I read the article. He's actually doing the same
thing in Arkansas. Now, yeah, he said, I would build
one in Bodo and Arkansas random. It is random, but
it looks like it's gonna be awesome. Yeah, And it's
called the Ozark Medieval Fortress and it opens actually in
May of this year for the public, and I think

(23:52):
for like fifty bucks, you can go see the thing
in progress and once again, it's like a fifteen twenty
year project. Or you can go to a major regional
mall and have a nice chicken dinner at medieval times,
or you could go see the first the Hearst Castle.
They're like some rich dudes. Later on in the twentie century,
he said, you know, I want Maya castle. What says

(24:13):
that I own the labor of of America Castle. Herst
Castle is awesome, though you ever been there? I haven't.
I've seen pictures. Really cool. And there's a castle in
my neighborhood. Yeah, there's a castle and Oakhurst. Have you
ever seen it? Jerry? Yeah, it's like, you know, a
five minute walked from my house. I walked by there
with the dogs all the time. Sweet. It's like a

(24:34):
you know, small house and it's got the tower and
it's built up rock. I'll have to go check it out. Yeah,
I could probably find a picture of it. And there
a castle that's uh a mausoleum that used to be
in the one of the mall parking lots Evandale Mall
parking lot. Oh now that that was. It's a walm
right now. But it wasn't a castle, but it was
a stone mausoleum. Okay, close enough. Yeah, I just this castle, No,

(24:56):
curst is kind of cool. But every time I walk
the dogs by there, some dude like pours hot oil
on me. So that's kind of off putting. Nice one, Chuck.
Anymore needs to be said after that, I don't think so.
So if you want to learn more about castles and
see some cool pictures of castles, actually there's a bunch
left in this article we didn't cover. Um, you can
type in castles in the handy search bar at how

(25:18):
stuff works dot com, which means it's time for listeners.
Mail Josh, I'm gonna call this uh email from Anna.
She seems pretty cool and I think Anna is from
there was there Colon email from Anna Colon. She seems
pretty cool? Or was that? Or she seems pretty cool?

(25:39):
She does? I think she's polish said that inherently makes
her coola. Hi, Josh and Chuck, I have to thank
you for the Hiccup podcast. Does it reminded me of
how special I am in my twenty seven years on
this planet. So she's either twenty seven or she's been
living on Earth twenty seven years. She's Martian and she's forty. Uh.

(26:00):
I've acquired exactly two superpowers, one of photographic olfactory memory,
which I've had since childhood, and to the ability to
cure my own hiccups just by thinking about them, which
I perfected once I was of legal drinking age. The
latter superpowers made for a hilarious party trick. Basically, if
I get hiccups while imbibing of the sweet Sweet booze,

(26:20):
That's how I knew we'd like her. All I have
to do is pause for a second, concentrate on just
the hiccups, and they go away within just a few moments.
Of course, strangers at parties don't know this, so I
can pretend that I am plagued by uncontrollable hiccups, And
the only way I'll get cured is if, say, for instance,
someone does a keg stand or a guy gives me
a kiss. Pretty smart, wildly. Now, I know that with

(26:43):
great power comes great responsibility, so I have resisted the
temptation to use this ability for evil so far. My
only hope is that I don't become so blinded with
power that I turned to the dark side and use
my hiccups to start a major war of influence on
an election, or influence an election anyway. How about a
future podcast on burp ing. Anna says that, and she

(27:07):
says cuteous to Chuck for having good taste of music.
Have you seen the Flaming Lips myself this year? And
her email signature she's written before has a Charles Bukowski quote.
It's the other way, and that she's cool. What is
the best part of a writer is on paper? The
other part is usually nonsense nice, and it's probably followed
by a hiccup and a bourbon. Well thanks for that, Anna,
we appreciate the email. It's pretty cool. Uh. If you

(27:29):
have a special power, if you have a great Bukowski quote,
or if you can tell us your age in Martian years.
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