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Murder holes at Bodiam Castle. A murder hole or meurtrière is a hole in the ceiling of a gateway or passageway in a fortification through which the defenders could shoot, throw or pour harmful substances or objects such as rocks, arrows, scalding water, hot sand, quicklime, or boiling oil, down on attackers. Boiling oil was rarely used because ...
In architecture, a machicolation or machicolade [1] (French: mâchicoulis) consists of an opening between the supporting corbels of a battlement through which defenders could target attackers who had reached the base of the defensive wall beneath. A smaller related structure that protects only key points of a fortification is called a bretèche.
A battlement, in defensive architecture, such as that of city walls or castles, comprises a parapet (a defensive low wall between chest-height and head-height), in which gaps or indentations, which are often rectangular, occur at intervals to allow for the launch of arrows or other projectiles from within the defences. [1]
A style which became prevalent in Italy in the century following 1500, now usually called 16th-century work. It was the result of the revival of classic architecture known as Renaissance, but the change had commenced already a century earlier, in the works of Ghiberti and Donatello in sculpture, and of Brunelleschi and Alberti in architecture ...
The invention of the arrowslit is attributed to Archimedes during the siege of Syracuse in 214–212 BCE: [2]. From Polybius's (c. 200–118 BC) The Histories (Book VIII, Ch. 5): "Archimedes had had the walls pierced with large numbers of loopholes at the height of a man, which were about a palm's breadth wide at the outer surface of the walls.
Niche with a sculpture by Antoine Coysevox, in the Les Invalides, Paris. In architecture, a niche (CanE, UK: / ˈ n iː ʃ / or US: / ˈ n ɪ tʃ /) is a recess or cavity constructed in the thickness of a wall for the reception of decorative objects such as statues, busts, urns, and vases. [1]
A wattle and daub house as used by Native Americans of the Mississippian culture. The wattle and daub technique has been used since the Neolithic period. It was common for houses of Linear pottery and Rössen cultures of middle Europe, but is also found in Western Asia (Çatalhöyük, Shillourokambos) as well as in North America (Mississippian culture) and South America ().
The Yeoman's House, Bignor, Sussex, a three-bay Wealden hall house. The hall house is a type of vernacular house traditional in many parts of England, Wales, Ireland and lowland Scotland, as well as northern Europe, during the Middle Ages, centring on a hall. Usually timber-framed, some high status examples were built in stone.