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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]
Keep at Warkworth Castle. A keep (from the Middle English kype) is a type of fortified tower built within castles during the Middle Ages by European nobility.Scholars have debated the scope of the word keep, but usually consider it to refer to large towers in castles that were fortified residences, used as a refuge of last resort should the rest of the castle fall to an adversary.
A motte and bailey castle. The motte is the hill with the fortified keep on top; the bailey is the larger, fenced area. Philosopher Nicholas Shackel, who coined the term, [1] prefers to speak of a motte-and-bailey doctrine instead of a fallacy. [3] In 2005, Shackel described the reference to medieval castle defense like this: [2]
The rural motte-and-bailey castles followed the traditional design, but the urban castles often lacked the traditional baileys, using parts of the town to fulfil this role instead. [73] Motte-and-bailey castles in Flanders were particularly numerous in the south along the Lower Rhine, a fiercely contested border. [74]
Constructed around 1120-1137 by Amaury III of Montfort, the keep or donjon is the only vestige of the medieval castle of Houdan. It is a massive tower isolated from the town in the west, once used as a water tower. The tower is cylindrical, 16 metres in diameter and 25 metres in height.
The King ordered the construction of a fortress at Vincennes with high walls and towers surrounding a massive keep or central tower, 52 meters (172 feet) high. The work was started in about 1337, and by 1364 the three lower levels of the keep were finished. Charles V moved into the keep in 1367 or 1368, while construction was still underway.
The design of the keep has attracted much historical interest. [18] Traditional explanations for its unusual plan argued that the castle was a transitional military design, combining both the circular features of later castles with the square angled buttresses of earlier Norman fortifications. [18]
Beaumaris Castle in Wales was built in the late 13th century and is an example of concentric castles which developed in the late medieval period. Badajoz Castle of Topoľčany in Slovakia Medieval fortification refers to medieval military methods that cover the development of fortification construction and use in Europe , roughly from the fall ...