Sunday, the day after my return from Denmark, I went once again on an Emory trip, this time to Bodiam Castle and Down House (the home of Charles Darwin). Both were great, although Bodiam Castle stole the show. It was built in the late 14th century by a rather punchy knight who earned his nobility and wealth by pillaging and successful combat against the French. It’s really almost the stereotypical image most people seem to have of a military castle, complete with moat. We had a tour guide who lived and breathed love of this castle. He showed us around dressed in period armor, and showed us how each element of the castle was carefully designed with defense in mind.
Apparently many people have written that the castle was simply for show, that the military designs aren’t right. However, he refuted this points to us rather convincingly. For example, they say that the gun openings don’t point directly at the drawbridge, therefore wouldn’t work. But, guns when it was built had an extreme spray effect, and therefore weren’t meant to be aimed straight on anyways, and would have worked.
The murder holes were also evidence of this. They were undecorated, and were very high up to prevent spear and crossbow shot at the defenders. This would indicate that there was a practical intent to the design. Through these, though, they wouldn’t pour boiling water or oil or anything like that, because with wooden floors you wouldn’t want to have fires. Instead, they would dump quicklime through onto the attackers.
Apparently in Wales there was an example of a similar castle holding out for months with only 40 men against about 3,000. You didn’t need many inside a castle if it was properly designed, and the men knew what they were doing. At the end of the tour we got instruction on the purposes and evolution of weaponry and armor at the time, and then best of all we got to try them on and mess around with them. The longbow impressed me quite a bit. It’s as tall as I am, at about 6 feet, and could fire with power at a distance of about 300 meters.
On one campaign in France, an army of the English brought with them 2 million arrows, when an arrowhead would take about an hour to make.
Posted in Art & Architecture, Being A Tourist, History | Tags: armor, bodiam, castle, medieval, moat
