THE MEDIEVAL TOILET was an experience many today would struggle with.

The most common medieval privy was the cesspit; just a hole in the ground which was sometimes lined with stone or wooden staves. In castles, things weren’t much better. While the powerful and wealthy could afford a somewhat more sophisticated toilet – the garderobe – this was still a far cry from the most basic modern toilet. The garderobe was a small chamber with a platform over a hole in the floor.

The garderobe at Peveril Castle in Derbyshire, as seen from the outside. It is true that one unpleasant way of breaking into a castle was by crawling through the waste shoot and into the garderobe. The most famous example of this allegedly took place during the siege of Chateau Gaillard in 1204. The castle gatehouse was one of the most defensive parts of any medieval fortress. It was a strong, fortified building positioned to defend the entrance to a castle. Gatehouses usually contained multiple traps and obstacles to foil any intruder. These traps included vast metal portcullises, and infamous murder holes.

This is what remains of the garderobe at Ballyloughan castle in Co Carlow:

1. The Castle Garderobe or Toilets in todays speak, with the sewer going directly into the Moat by Geordie 54 173 Goodrich Castle had been a Hill fort since 800BC and the present castle was built before.
2. Prague Castle is around 570m in length and 130m in width on average. If you’re a fan of Gothic literature, it’s likely you’ll find plenty of it based in and around castles. That’s because they are fantastically.
3. Built in 1884, this 4-bedroom, 3-bath castle home has been fully renovated, combining modern amenities with original woodwork and architectural details. The home is located in the Bellevue Avenue Historic District, where affluent summer vacationers, such as the Vanderbilt family, built mansions at the turn of the 20th century.

The garderobe would not have been this grim five hundred years ago. There was almost certainly a platform above the hole and the walls would most likely have been white-washed.

This restored garderobe at Barryscourt Castle, Co Cork, was designed to facilitate two people at the same time, privacy was clearly not a concern:

Below the platform, the hole lead to a chute which dumped waste outside the castle walls.

This is the view looking up a garderobe chute at Ballymoon Castle, Co Carlow:

There are two gardrobe chutes at the base of the tower in the centre of this picture taken at Ballymoon castle. With defence being the primary concern, the garderobe chutes were often covered right down to ground level with access barred by a metal grid. This was designed to stop an attacker climbing up the garderobe chute. However some simply dumped their contents high on the castle wall.

This was the system employed at Liscarroll Castle, Co Cork. The platform to sit on was supported by a stone frame, the remains of which can be seen on the right of the picture below.

There was no chute – instead the waste was dumped directly onto the castle wall through the slit in the bottom right. Aside from displaying faeces right beside the entrance to the castle, this toilet must have been freezing in winter. Situated at least 10 metres above ground level, wind still gusts through the slit:

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The garderobe slit is the horizontal window-like opening on the right of the gatehouse, below the two arrow loops.

The wall below must have been covered with decaying faeces while the aroma in summer can only have been awful.

All images from historian and archaologist Fin Dwyer.

Read more from Fin at IrishHistoryPodcast.ie, on Twitter at @irishhistory, or on Facebook.

What was a typical Medieval castle layout?

Well, there wasn’t a carbon-copy plan that was rolled-out across Europe.

Castle layout depended upon local demands, and the purpose and function of each castle.

For example, a castle built on the turbulent borders of England and Wales might have been built to be as strong and as defensive as possible.

Alternatively, castle in a more peaceful, prosperous part of Southern England may have been designed to culture an air of luxury and magnificence for a local Lord and Lady.

However, many Medieval castles shared similar features – defensive barbicans and deep moats, with a kitchen and a great hall; and a Keep (or donjon) at their heart. This is a plan of York Castle, which shows many of the key elements.

The Medieval Castle Layout of Farleigh Hungerford Castle

So let’s look at the layout of an excellent example of a Medieval castle – Farleigh Hungerford castle, in Somerset, UK. Farleigh Hungerford has many traditional features of Medieval castles.

Although it’s not a totally perfect example (I struggled to find the ‘perfect’ one!), it’s still a very typical demonstration of the conventions and features of Medieval castle layout.

Farleigh Hungerford Castle was, first and foremost, a grand residence for the Hungerford family. However, the design of the castle still included many defensive elements, such as towers, a barbican, a gatehouse and a moat. It did play a small part in the English Civil War.

Here’s an image of the castle today taken from Google Earth. As you can see, it’s now quite ruined indeed. It sadly fell into significant disrepair in the 1700s. Gmod pac3.

The Different Buildings and Areas of a Typical Medieval Castle Layout

This is the layout of Farleigh Hungerford castle, as it would have been in Medieval times. You can compare it to the recent satellite image from Google, which you can see above.

Garderobe Leeds Castle

The Great Hall
Courtyards
Kitchens
Moat and Dam
Bakehouse & Brewery
The Keep
Gatehouse
Barbican
Chapel and Priests’ House
Stables
Dungeons

This medieval castle layout diagram is adapted by from an original by HCHC2009 licence CC-BY-SA-3.0; via Wikimedia Commons.

The Keep

The Keep was traditionally the heart of any Medieval castle layout. It was usually the tallest and strongest tower, situated at the heart of the fortifications.

In Medieval times, they wouldn’t have used the term ‘the Keep’.

Instead, they would have called this tower the don-jon (from the French, indicating strong-hold). Because this is too easily confused with dungeon (which confusingly now means something quite different), I always avoid using this phrase.

The keep was traditionally the strongest and the most fortified part of a castle – and, in early Medieval times, it’s where the nobles would have lived. In later Medieval times, as castles began to morph into grand residential buildings (from being fortresses), the nobles began to live in warmer, comfier chambers – and the keep became a strong-hold.

There were numerous different forms of keep design – the most interesting being the shell keep.

Over time, the construction of the castle keep would have evolved from being built from wood, to become built of stone.

The Moat and the Dam

Very few castles had the advantage of a fresh-flowing natural moat (formed from the loop of a river, for example).

Instead, moats needed to be man-made, by damming nearby rivers and streams to create a stagnant pool around the castle.

Although moats were great for defence – they partially prevented attackers from burrowing beneath the castle walls, for example – a stagnant moat would have been pretty unpleasant. Sewage would have been tipped straight into the stagnant water – imagine the smell in the summer!

The adjacent image which you can see of a castle moat is taken from Beaumaris Castle, one of the most impressive moated castles in the whole of the UK.

Many Medieval castles had moats to improve their defensive capabilities. I’ve written more about different hazards and obstacles of defending a Medieval castle, if you’re interested.

The Kitchens

Garderobe Medieval Castle

The kitchens would have been a frantic hubbub of activity. Entertaining important guests was a fundamental purpose of many castles – this helped secure the power of the castle’s Lord and Lady.

The size of a castle’s kitchen was often proportionate to the intended grandeur and importance of the castle. The most elaborate kitchens would have been all-set to cook and prepare game and fish, which had been caught when hunting in the castle grounds.

The Bakehouse and Brewery

Bread was a dietary staple, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that many castles had their own bake-houses, which would have baked fresh bread for everyone living within.

Many castles had their own breweries. This wasn’t due to Medieval alcohol dependence – brewing beer sterilised (hugely-polluted) water, making it a much safer drink than sipping water alone.

In fact, beer was so important to Medieval life that a designated Ale Wife (yes, she was always a woman!) would have been in charge of the castle brewery.

The Towers

Although round towers of Farleigh Hungerford castle were predominately decorative, many other castles built towers for practical purposes – to provide a vantage-point for archers to shoot at oncoming attackers.

Additionally, the advantage of round towers is that they couldn’t be toppled over that easily. Attackers had got wise to the fact that, by burrowing under the corner of a square tower, they would disrupt the foundations and collapse the whole tower.

Round towers didn’t, of course, have any corners – perfect.

As time went on, the design and construction of different towers became more grand and more ambitious. The octagonal towers of Caernarfon Castle are something quite special altogether.

The Stables

Horses were incredibly valuable commodities in Medieval society – essential for transport, communication, and for use in battle. Indeed, for a Lord to be considered powerful, they would have needed war-horses.

Stables would have often included hay-lofts and space for the grooms to live. Archeologists working on Farleigh Hungerford castle have indeed discovered evidence for sizeable hay-lofts within this castle.

The Gatehouse

Every castle suffered a huge conundrum – people and supplies needed access to the castle, but building a route into the castle formed an incredibly obvious route for attackers.

It took castle designers a surprisingly long time to solve this problem. The solution they came upon was the Gatehouse.

The gatehouse was a fortified entrance, with numerous different doors and portcullises, tricks and obstacles, all used to guard the castle. It wasn’t uncommon to see two different gatehouses – one on the outer-castle, and one on the inner (if the outer one was breached).

A later solution again was the drawbridge. In actual fact, a chained drawbridge (as we think of it today) was an uncommon feature of a typical Medieval castle layout.

These designs tended to be added in later years. Instead, many castles used a pivoted system, where the a plank for a drawbridge was fixed on a ledge between two moats – like a big see-saw.

The photo you can see is of the impressive castle gatehouse of Harlech Castle, which you can discover in Wales.

Definition Castle Garderobe

The Barbican

The Barbican funnelled attackers through an obstacle course riddled with danger.

The Barbican was a further development in the defensive design of a castle. Whereas the Gatehouse simply protected the entrance to the castle, the Barbican was designed to be a deathly obstacle course, preventing attackers from even reaching the gatehouse.

The barbican was a thin, enclosed passageway that would have jutted out from the gatehouse. Attackers would have to stream through this thin funnel just to reach the gatehouse.

Sneakily, the defendants of the castle could fill the barbican with deathly traps – slits for arrows, and holes for boiling-oil. This meant that the only way to the gatehouse was through an entrance riddled with danger and entrapment.

The barbican and the gatehouse were two important parts of Medieval castle defence, but there were many other obstacles and hazards built to protect Medieval castles from attack.

The Inner Courtyard

This would have been another area of hustle-and-bustle, and the focus of day-to-day residential life in the castle. Whereas horses and pigs would have been grazed in the outer courtyard, it’s likely the inner courtyard would have been used for more formal events.

The Great Hall

The Great Hall would have been a social focus of any Medieval castle layout. It would have been a bustling and exciting hubbub of activity – filled with staff and servants preparing for feasts and banquets, held at the discretion of the Lord and Lady.

When a banquet was on, the Great Hall would have been decked out to impress and entertain the most important visitors. Indeed, the guests of honour would have been seated on a dais (stage) at the front of the hall.

The further you were seated from them, the less important you were- right through to the least important visitors, on wooden benches at the back of the hall.

The Chapel and the Priests House

Religion dominated Medieval society.

Christian belief (and, don’t forget, that England was Catholic prior to Henry VIII) permeated every aspect of life.

The presence of a chapel gave a castle a sense of prestige and significance within the local area.

But there were strategic advantages too. Harming a priest would be the ultimate act of barbarity – only the most fearless of castle attackers would even dream of doing such a thing.

The presence of a chapel (and the ‘safe haven within’) would be of practical use if the castle was ransacked.

The Dungeons

Most castles didn’t have dungeons – in actual fact, dungeons are a bit of a modern-day obsession.

However, it’s something I’m always asked about, so I’ve written a special page on castle dungeons (undoubtedly the most asked-about part of any medieval castle layout!).

In Early Medieval times, castles didn’t really have dungeons – simply because the idea of keeping someone prisoner was, back then, a very strange punishment. However, as the Middle Ages developed, more castles became to be equipped with space for prisoners.

From this, modern ‘dungeons’ developed – secure places to hold prisoners and enemies of the castle.

Learn more about Life in a Medieval Castle

If you’ve found this page useful and interesting, I think that you’ll like to read about life in a Medieval castle – everything from the stench and smells, to types of Medieval toilets!

Alternatively, discover strange flavours – from roast peacock to other strange types of Medieval food and drink.

Or how about hanging out in a castle dungeon?!