Castles

My pedant soul prompts me to continue...

Deal Castle is not a castle.
Someries Castle (near Luton) is not a castle.
The name is irrelevant. My name means 'leader of men' but I ain't.

But the point is that it is not a series of defensible buildings which are also a residence. It is a residence inside a ring of defenses.

You are correct, location is irrelevant. Many later castles were deliberately built on low ground to give access to water for a moat.

Ah, thanks!
It must have been quite a nice money-earner. :smok:

No it's not, it is a gun fort with a house inside.
I am perfectly happy that it is called 'Kronborg Castle', and I must admit that it is a lovely example of an Early Modern fortification that is also used as a Royal residence, but from a pedantic point of view, it is not a 'true' castle.

I'll stop now before I get anybody annoyed that I am dissing their (very beautiful and very militarily effective) favourite landmark.

 

Naarden. A Dutch fortress city, most of the fortification works dating from the late 17th century. Beautiful.



Note: this is definitely not a castle!

 

it is a castle, after danish definition a castle, or in danish: slot, is where the king has lived for a short or long period of time, there are many manors, some of them have "slot" in there name, because the king have stayed there for a long or short period of time, so in Denmark it has all to do with the name, you dont call something its not...

And as you said your self, Ricky: a castle is a place where the local bigwing has stayed, and you cant get a bigger bigwing then the king, so kronborg is a castle simply because the danish king have stayed there for short or long period of time.

From Wikipedia: "A castle (from the Latin castellum, diminutive of castra, a military camp, in turn the plural of castrum or watchpost), is a fort, a camp and the logical development of a fortified enclosure. The term is most often applied to a small self-contained fortress, usually of the Middle Ages, though traditionally in Britain it has also referred to prehistoric earthworks (e.g. Hollingbury Castle, Maiden Castle). "Castle" sometimes denotes citadels (such as the castles of Badajoz and Burgos) or small detached forts d'arrêt in modern times."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castles

 

I never trust Wikipedia for really pedantic stuff...

However, I am happy to accept that in Demark a Castle is a slightly different definition than in English - after all, it is technically a 'Slot', which is only translated as 'castle', which is surely just the nearest equivalent they could think of.

 

I do not know wether there is a difference in english language to differ these 2 types of "castles".
In french both of them can be called "château" despite they obviously have two very different functions.

Le Crac de Chevaliers:


Chambord:

 

The Marienburg, it´s next to me, exproxamily 30 miles away




Best wishes,
Che.

 

Che honey, you have an odd concept of next to....

That is beautiful though.....I'd love to go and see that! WOW!!!

 

And some "castles" aren't castles because they were built as "follies" not fortifications- most are easy to tell because because the spiral staircases go the wrong way round (anti-clockwise going up, instaed of clockwise).

 

There is also another castle named Marienburg, but unfortunatley it´s not german anymore. I guess it´s one of the biggest castles in the world, at least it´s the biggest brick-builded castle.










Regards,
Che.

 

Must just be swell to have castle comming from the states we dont have much of history before the 16th century all the castle ideas died off

 

"don't have much history before the 16C"

So those little red blokes with bows and arrows do not count?

There were some huge civilisations in america pre european arrival. They had complex cities and everything. Unfortunatly a lot were built out of brick and dissapeared.

FNG

 

Besides, as far as I know they didn't commonly build castles or fortifications of any kind. I could be wrong...

 

This is that other topic about castles I was looking for.