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Norman barons built timber castles on earthen mounds, beginning the development of motte-and-bailey castles, and great stone churches in the Romanesque style of the Franks. By 950, they were building stone keeps .
Castles have played an important military, economic and social role in Great Britain and Ireland since their introduction following the Norman invasion of England in 1066. . Although a small number of castles had been built in England in the 1050s, the Normans began to build motte and bailey and ringwork castles in large numbers to control their newly occupied territories in England and the ...
A small number of motte-and-bailey castles were built outside of northern Europe. In the late-12th century, the Normans invaded southern Italy and Sicily; although they had the technology to build more modern designs, in many cases wooden motte-and-bailey castles were built instead for reasons of speed. [95]
If so, the tower was then incorporated into the Norman castle built on the site in the 1070s, instead of being constructed along with it as architectural historians have long assumed. [13] It would thus be almost without parallel in England as a purely secular and defensive Anglo-Saxon structure (see below, Secular architecture).
In Ireland, as in Britain and most of Europe, encastellation was primarily a Norman venture. The first castles were motte-and-baileys built on the expanding frontier of the English Pale and within it to control the local population, according to Gerald of Wales. Stone castles were slow to develop, appearing in the late thirteenth century.
A 19th-century reconstruction of the keep at Château d'Étampes. Since the 16th century, the English word keep has commonly referred to large towers in castles. [4] The word originates from around 1375 to 1376, coming from the Middle English term kype, meaning basket or cask, and was a term applied to the shell keep at Guînes, said to resemble a barrel. [5]
Other castles begun in the 11th century were built on elevated sites that took advantage of the steep slopes for defense, rather than on moats. The central tower became the final defensive layer of the castle, [28] while the main domestic quarters were built against the walls around the perimeter, allowing plenty of room for a variety of functions.
The Normans settled mostly in an area in the east of Ireland, later known as the Pale, and also built many fine castles and settlements, including Trim Castle and Dublin Castle. The cultures intermixed, borrowing from each other's language, culture and outlook.