medieval crisis!

need help urgently with these questions:

does anybody know if medieval castles have bricks or not?

also what's the best way of building a model version of a medieval castle with limited resources?

Reply 1

rkd

Depends on time period and country. I think, though, that the most common type of castle in England in the high middle ages was 'motte and bailey' - a wooden fort on a hill.

Get some clay and some twigs and put them together?

Reply 2

Eddums

You're unlikely to find bricks as such in earlier castles. During those built or modified during later periods, such as the 1600s, bricks are plausable, though by no means guaranteed.

Reply 3

Zetetic

Whilst in England and North-West Europe brick construction of castles is fairly uncommon, owing largely to the availability of sedimantary stones which could be rough-hewn, in Eastern Europe it was the norm, for around three centuries, to construct castles principally of brick. This method of construction lends its name to the aptly-entitled 'Brick-Gothic' style, popular in what is now Germany, Poland and its neighboring countries. Castle Malbork (begun 1274) is arguably the finest example of such a building; it stretches imposingly along the river Nogat in Poland, and was a key seat of the Teutonic Knights. If you're interested, it looks like this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Malbork_zamek_zblizenie.jpg

It's worth remembering however that most stone castles were in fact rendered with plaster. This obscured the stoney complexion usually assosciated with the traditional castle, and probably made their surfaces look somewhat more like the Japanese 'himeji' castles:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Himeji_Castle_M4690.jpg

To built a model, you might want to have a look in the local board-gaming shop; Games Worshop or something. They seem to have lots of scale models of castles and so on. Otherwise, try papier mache, toilet rolls and bits of card!