motte and bailey

[Peter van der Wielen]

With motte I mean only a small hill in the landscape, which was once the underground for a fortified house. With a motte and bailey we have a same kind of hill, but still with walls upon it. De Leidsche Burcht is a good example; a hill with nothing more then a round wall which encloses the inner courtyard. There are no living quarters or other buildings, just the wall.
With motte castles I mean that on the motte a new castle was built, for example Limbricht and the Keverberg. The latter is very special by the way. This is a motte on a motte. The first castle was a stone tower on a motte; later this tower was destroyed, but the foundations kept preserved. On this foundations they made a new motte, on which they built a new impressive castle. This new hill is so high, that the foundations of the latest castle don't touch the old ones anywhere.

Peter, there are some mottes left, but not so many. Most of them are destroyed; re-allotments did many bad things. Only the last few years they see the historical and archaeological importance of these sites, and are they willing to protect and even restore them. The Bolberg is one of these restored mottes.

[Denis]

Ok. Let me take it one part at a time.
A motte is actually a large mound of earth on top of which a tower was usually built. Though a natural hill could be used as initial background, most mottes were piled up by soldiers, using the earth from the protective ditch that was dug up around the future motte. Sometimes the slopes of the mottes were buttressed by timber structures or enforced with rocks to prevent erosion. The higher and steeper the motte was, the more trouble the attackers had when endeavoring to scramble up to the tower.

A bailey represents a rather extensive defensive enclosure usually consisting of a circular earthwork crowned by a wooden palisade with a gate or gate tower, and surrounded by a ditch to impede the invaders. The bailey usually contained entire hamlets with all the residential and supply store buildings. There were barns, stables, workshops, huts for the dwellers, chapels, and sometimes even larger buildings for the lords.

Inasmuch as the bailey borders were rather extensive and difficult to defend, and since the wooden palisades were susceptible to fire, it soon became obvious that smaller, less accessible, and sturdier structures were needed as shelters. Consequently detached mottes were built next to the baileys, thus engendering what we now call “motte and bailey castles” or simply “motte and baileys”. Although they looked like united structures, often shaped like an 8, the motte was actually intended to serve as a final retreat that could be totally isolated in case the bailey had yielded during siege. The motte had a separate moat (ditch around the bottom of the mound) and palisade, access to which was restricted by means of wooden stairs or a “floating bridge”, which could be easily destroyed.

The basic advantage of M&Bs is that they didn’t take too long to build (sometimes less than a week). The greatest disadvantage was that they could just as easily be destroyed – quickly devoured by fires set by enemies or gradually eroded by harsh weather. Thus many of them were built as temporary structures. Nonetheless, some turned into stable defense points and evolved as time elapsed. Some of the timber towers were eventually supplanted by stone keeps. Even palisades were sometimes gradually enforced by internal stone structures, which later could replace them altogether. Occasionally inner and outer baileys were built for extra security. This way, some M&Bs evolved into pretty large and impressive stone fortifications, with sturdy walls and towers replacing the former timber structures. Most, however, have succumbed to the stark fate, now looking like mere eroded mounds of earth covered with grass and trees.

Check out the pictures attached below and the following page, where you can see an excellent 3D representation of an M&B:

http://www.btinternet.com/~timeref/mottb3d.htm

what was the ratio of motte area to bailey area?
thank you!

[Peter E Presford]

That should probably be looked at like .. what was the bailey area regarding the motte ?
It would depend more on the strategic importance of the site than the actual Motte size. The bailey would normally be kidney shaped, to sit round part of the motte. Some of the larger sites would have two baileys.
A motte may even be quite small compared with the ground area of a
bailey(s). A bailey(s) was the day to day working & living area of a castle site, whilst the Motte with its tower was a final refuge.
So would only house a fraction of the people that may live and work with the bailey areas.
Not forgetting that motte & baileys come in all shapes and sizes anyway.
Peter

[Denis]

The question was very shrewdly rephrased by Peter Presford. It is tough to talk about the area of a motte. Since the latter means a huge mound of earth, we could talk about the bottom area and the top area. But if we think about the irregular shape a motte can take, then the issue gets even more complicated!

Anyway, though there is no specific "ratio", the fact is that a motte has always been much smaller than the bailey. In the very historical beginning of such structures, baileys used to be the initial parts to be built. Later on, due to the increased vulnerability of an extended structure like that, mottes started to be built at one side as means of ultimate refuge. Due to the obvious advantage of mottes, at the next phase these became the primary structures, and were often the first parts to be constructed. Consequently, the baileys came to assume the shape of a kidney, just like Peter Presford has mentioned.

As time elapsed, many baileys got extended even further or reinforced by secondary structures on the outside (outer baileys), this way making the mottes look even punier (in the size respect) when contrasted to the baileys!

ER well obviously the bailey is bigger than the motte!!!