GLOSSARY

Assart A clearing made in the forest, or other unploughed land, bringing it into production. Often separated from village settlement and occupied by farmers who were personally free (not serfs), paying rent and living in isolated farmsteads.

Bartizan An overhanging corner turret providing machicolations for defence of the ground beneath.

Bawn A word derived from the Irish for a cattle enclosure, which came to mean the walled enclosure attached to a tower-house.

Bretasch (Latin bretagium) A wooden tower.

Caput The chief place of an estate, whether a barony or an individual manor, where the lord lived or which was the centre of its administration in his name.

Chamber A room meant primarily for living in by the lord or upper members of his household, normally equipped with good windows, a fireplace and access to a single latrine. Chambers may be linked into suites with an outer great chamber, for daily life, connected to an inner private chamber for sleeping.

Crannog An artificial island, usually c. 30 m (100 ft) across, constructed of wood and stones in a lake in order to provide a platform for a defended house. Frequently found throughout Ireland in the medieval period and also in Scotland.

Great tower The pre-eminent building of a castle. In its military aspect (expressed by the use of the sixteenth-century term keep) it is the strong tower, containing all the essential rooms of the castle, grouped in a tower used as the place of last resort in a siege. It may have a more formal and longer lasting domestic role (expressed in the French donjon) accommodating the lord’s inner household in a dominating tower.

Gate house A structure uniting the gate passage and two projecting towers, protecting and flanking it on either side, into a single building; its unity is often visible in the joining of the space over the passage with the interior of one or both towers, at first-floor level. It contrasts with both the gate tower, where the passage is contained within a single tower, occupying virtually all the ground-floor space, and with an arrangement whereby the gate is placed between two towers but the elements are not united into one building.

Hall The formal centre of the wider life of the castle; the large room where public feasts, courts, etc. were held by the lord. It is identified by its size, rectangularity and the display of large windows, fireplace, decorative stonework and, often, access to multiple latrines.

Hourds Wooden structures oversailing the wall-top to allow rocks to be dropped on the base of the wall below. When carried out in stone, they are known as machicolations.

Justiciar The chief governor in place of the king.

Liberty A lordship where the lord, not a royal official like the sheriff, was responsible for most normal administration of justice.

Machicolation A line of small arches or corbels projecting from the front of a wall top. A wall, built on the arches, protects men dropping rocks, etc., on to the base of the main wall from holes between the arches or corbels.

Motte A high mound of earth surrounded by a ditch, in the British Isles almost always round and artificially constructed (not a natural hill) as the strong point of a timber and earthwork castle. As height is its principal quality for defence, it may be defined as needing to be at least 2 m (6 ft 6 in) high above the surrounding land around the entire perimeter.

Rath or Ringfort A circular enclosure of the early medieval (‘early Christian’) period in Ireland, providing space for the house of a single family. Usually the enclosure is defined by a bank and external ditch, but it may also be made by levelling a hilltop to produce a scarp around most of the perimeter (platform rath). With time its interior may be raised to give a raised rath, although the entrance remains marked by a causeway over the ditch and a ramped access to the interior. If the enclosure is defined by a dry-stone wall, it is termed a cashel.

Ringwork A term coined in the 1960s to describe castles of earth and timber which were small enclosures without mottes.

Shell-keep A wall enclosing the top of a motte, often to provide a ring of buildings or a tower.

Tower-house A small castle of the late middle ages, where the lord’s household accommodation is contained within a stone tower and any other buildings are quite separate, even if contained within a walled enclosure, and are, in Ireland at least, very rarely of stone. The tower is more or less defensible as a unit.

Western Transitional style The style of church architecture transitional between Romanesque and Gothic, found in Connacht; defined in Leask, 1960.