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Plan of Rudelsburg castle with its neck ditch (D) L-shaped neck ditch at Csobánc castle (Hungary). A neck ditch (German: Halsgraben), [1] [2] sometimes called a throat ditch, [3] [4] is a dry moat that does not fully surround a castle, but only bars the side that is not protected by natural obstacles.
The moat surrounding Matsumoto Castle. A moat is a deep, broad ditch dug around a castle, fortification, building, or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. Moats can be dry or filled with water. In some places, moats evolved into more extensive water defences, including natural or artificial lakes, dams and sluices.
A fortified tower (also defensive tower or castle tower or, in context, just tower) is one of the defensive structures used in fortifications, such as castles, along with defensive walls such as curtain walls. Castle towers can have a variety of different shapes and fulfil different functions.
A castle could act as a stronghold and prison but was also a place where a knight or lord could entertain his peers. [12] Over time the aesthetics of the design became more important, as the castle's appearance and size began to reflect the prestige and power of its occupant. Comfortable homes were often fashioned within their fortified walls.
In English castle morphology, shell keeps are perceived as the successors to motte-and-bailey castles, with the wooden fence around the top of the motte replaced by a stone wall. Castle engineers during the Norman period did not trust the motte to support the enormous weight of a stone keep.
The rock on which the castle stands is always incorporated into its design. If the rock is easy to work (e.g. sandstone ), rooms, passages, steps, well shafts and cisterns were invariably hacked out of it.
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The shape and structure of a castle were important factors in determining the victor of castle sieges, and the castle layout, or nawabari (縄張) was arranged with the intention of giving the defender an insurmountable advantage. The kuruwa regions were planned for after the basic layout of the castle grounds was decided.