The building business was the only large scale medieval industry. From the 11th century onwards, the use of masonry was stimulated by religious architecture, and building techniques were greatly improved. The building business developed many new specialized crafts and trades. However, projects were often thwarted by lack of manpower and financial restraints. Whatever the locale, it was always extremely costly to conceive, construct and maintain fortifications. Waste, therefore, was to be avoided. Materials of any demolished building were systematically reused for the construction of a new one. Finances were secured by various taxes, tolls and fines. Further funds might be provided by a marriage with an advantageous dowry, a lucky ransom, a fruitful booty after a victorious war, financial support from the suzerain or a loan contracted to a Jewish or a Lombard financier. For want of something better, the lord had to moderate his ambition and try to reduce expenses by exploiting his own stone-quarry, providing timber from his own forest, and fabricating bricks on his own estate.
In the 13th century, construction techniques were still based on experience, passed down orally or by means of primitive manuals to the next generation. Gradually, new ideas began to appear, and although these were not based on established principles—many principles of engineering and methods of construction had yet to be discovered— they proved rational and were improved upon. Master-builders and ingeniatores were all-round specialists who not only designed churches, siege-machines and fortresses, but also directed and organized working sites. Most of them were anonymous, but some were known, even famous: James of Saint George under the reign of the English king Edward I (1272-1307); Sicard de Lordat, serving the count of Foix Gaston III Phebus (1331-1391); Raymond du Temple under the reign of Charles V of France (1364-1380); and Antoine de Chabannes under Charles VII (1422-1461) were competent engineers developing their own styles. Master-builders gradually acquired a high social status and were well paid.
Schools of engineering and architecture did not exist, so master-builders learned their skills through the transmission of techniques and knowledge from one generation to another. Some of them experimented with new techniques and searched for new solutions to construction problems. Nevertheless, the lack of means of construction, the unreliability of calculation, the weakness of methods and the improvised technology sometimes resulted in the disastrous collapse of towers, walls, church bell-towers and cathedrals. In the popular imagination, medieval constructions have a reputation for sturdiness, but this reputation is somewhat ill-founded; many works preserved today have survived only because of later repairs and reinforcements.
In the Middle Ages, a lord planning to build or enlarge his own castle or even to crenellate a wall had first to obtain the right to do so from his suzerain or from the king. It need hardly be said that such regulation, in times when the central government was weak, was apt to be more honored in the breach than in the observance. Hundreds of castles were erected without obtaining royal or ducal permission. Called “adulterine castles,” these works were sometimes dismantled when central authority was restored.
Whether a brand new creation or a renovation or enlargement of an older place, every castle was a unique undertaking with its own problems, which were solved by various adaptations depending on many factors, including the natural site, the local traditions, the architect’s skills and the owner’s resources. The architect and the lord or trustee would decide together the best place to build the castle. Their choice was influenced by various strategic, technical and financial considerations, and nearly always involved a site favoring defense such as a high ground, a spur, a hill, an island or a marsh.
The master-builder, often assisted by a team of master-masons, would then make a design and present to the lord a specification of work to be done (explained by means of a drawing, a map or a model), along with an estimate of the cost and time required for completion. After discussion, negotiation, and bargaining, an agreement was reached and both parties signed a contract. The master-builder himself recruited all specialized workers. Carpenters and tool-makers as well as quarrymen, masons, and stone-hewers were organized in hierarchical associations of free-masons. The common workers were furnished by the lord and raised among his estate’s peasantry according to various feudal rights and fatigues.
As a general rule, activities were possible only during good weather, which usually meant from the beginning of spring until the end of autumn. The number of working personnel involved and the time for completion varied considerably according to many factors, such as the volume of the work, sudden difficulties, bad weather, later modifications, unexpected financial problems or lack of manpower. The formidable Chateau-Gaillard was completed in only two years, from 1196 to 1198; most castles, however, took many years to build. Too, once finished they needed maintenance and even modernization in order to adjust to improved assaulting methods. Today it is hard to establish an accurate date of completion for most castles because of the number of later modifications.
The work site required an important infrastructure. Stones were extracted in a quarry usually created in the vicinity; the diversity of the construction material was thus as large as the geological grounds and contributed to each castle’s individuality. Stones had to be transported to the work site by road or by boat, which in some cases required the creation of a track or a canal. A brick factory, a chalk-oven, stores and other facilities had to be built; tools, materials, wood and timber had to be gathered; workers had to be accommodated in camps and huts.
The ground-plan of the castle was prepared by marking off points and distances with stakes and chains, until gradually the whole outline of moats, towers and walls was pegged out. Crowds of workers then dug ditches or heaped up the motte, removing huge volumes of soil with means which today look ridiculous: shovels, picks, baskets, hampers, wheelbarrows and tip-carts.
When a portion of ditch was dug, masons built strong wall foundations (remember that castles were vertical buildings demanding stability). In good ground conditions large flat stones were tilted inwards to take the thrust of the wall above. When the ground was less stable, masons start with a framed-up timber raft; on marshy ground they had to install timber piles driven deep.
Once the foundations were made, the masons began to build towers and walls. Timber scaffolds were gradually raised as work proceeded, and stones, bricks and other materials were carried up by men or by hoisting devices. Roofs of towers and buildings were made by carpenters, tilers and slaters.
Constantly, the master-builder had to supervise all of the construction, control alignments, check material quality and so on. To all these tasks were added the construction of echauguettes, gatehouse, houses, chapel, lord’s residence, dungeon, and more. And the conception and construction of the castle were even more complicated in mountainous sites where transport was difficult and weather unpredictable. Spectacular difficulties were met in wet or marshy sites.
Religious and military medieval constructions had some techniques in common, but the main concerns in building a castle were durability and the ability to withstand a siege. Foundations and aprons at the base of walls and towers were made of huge stones from 60 cm up to 3 m high. Walls were made of stones usually between 20 and 60 cm high. Building stones varied greatly. Millstone grit and granite were very strong but not easily worked; sandstone was rather friable; chalk was burnt for lime to make plaster; but the best material between these extremes was limestone. It was one of the finest building stones, and masons took advantage of its good weathering qualities, its ease of working, and its consistent texture.
The walls of the castles in southern European countries, especially Spain, Italy and Sicily, were built of adobe (unfired brick dried in the sun), or of a cement made of pressed soil mixed with stone, which formed a hard, resistant material. Bricks about 20 cm high made of baked clay were another common material especially employed in northern Europe where stone was scanty.
Walls were generally made by blocage or blocking-up in the Roman tradition: They were composed of two skins of masonry, one external wall, and one internal revetment, and the space between both was filled with rubble, earth, mortar, pieces of stones, gravel and so on. This technique did not produce as strong a wall as larger and properly fitted stones, but it allowed relatively cheap construction of massive and resilient walls. The stones of the external wall were frequently masonry of squared and carefully dressed blocks called ashlar; they might be also made of bossage, which meant that their external surface was rather rough or hewed with projecting patterns. The bossage may have been intended to make projectiles ricochet or to break the point of a battering ram, but probably its main function was decorative—or possibly deterrent, since it gave an impression of strength.
To increase wall resistance various techniques were used. Tyings and clampings were placements of larger stones within a masonry wall. Clamping might be vertical to form stable columns, or it might consist of horizontal rings or layers in order to strengthen a wall or increase the stability of a tower. The coherence of the wall was reinforced by iron clamps firmly fastening stones together.
A blind arch was a semicircular bow of stones embodied in and supporting a wall. It was also used as relieving vault above any openings that typically weaken a wall such as posterns, gates, windows, loopholes, embrasures and so on. Buttresses were deep pilasters or vertical strengthening masonry applied to places in the wall where pressures and thrusts were the greatest; they were also used to support echauguettes and pepper-pot turrets. The standard medieval staircase was the ordinary spiral sort with a vertical central shaft. Each step was built into the wall at one end, leaving a round lump at the other which became the shaft. This sort of staircase was universal and in general use for hundreds of years. Drainage of rainwater in open spaces such as wall-walks, terraces and platforms was managed with gutters, weepers (holes) and gargoyles (spouts, often fancifully or grotesquely carved).
The main purpose of a fortress was to be sturdy, strong and resistant, but attention was always paid to aesthetic considerations, since fortifications were also prestige objects reflecting the authority and the wealth of their owner. Bossage, clampings, bricks and stones of different colors formed more or less elaborate patterns decorating walls, towers and buildings. The rhythm and style of corbels accentuated the light-and-shadow effects. On top of the walls, the slender silhouettes of echauguettes, chimneys and pinnacles—contrasting with the regular outline of merlons—contributed to the embellishments. The elevation of donjon, gatehouse, towers and walls conferred strength, originality and majestic grandeur. Protective religious items (such as statues of saints and the Holy Virgin) as well as coats of arms and other heraldic ornaments were placed above portals, gates and doors.
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