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This set of plans is a great additon to
any of the castle building projects. You can create your own castle or
add to any of the castles in the series. The plan set inculdes plans for
building walls, basic corner and mural towers, gate towers, gate walls,
and draw bridge construction. A
very nice, simple wall set, which goes very nicely with the Norman Keep,
to form an inner bailey around it, consists of a gate assembly (gate wall
and two attached towers), ten towers, and eleven wall sections. I like
to cut a small doorway through one of the wall sections for a postern
(secret) gate.The inner bailey at Dover Castle
had two gateways, and ten additional towers, in somewhat of a circular
arrangement. A second, far more extensive outer wall, begun by King Henry
II in the 1180s and completed by his successors, King John and King Henry
III, made Dover one of the most powerful of all the medieval castles.
The design of a keep completely surrounded by an inner bailey, which in
turn was completely surrounded by an outer bailey, was the first use of
concentric defenses in western Europe. The western section of this outer
wall alone runs well over 1500 feet, half again as long as the entire
inner bailey wall. The west wall has two gates and eleven mural towers.
The eastern wall is slightly longer, with two gates and at least ten towers.
The two long stretches of outer wall join just north of the barbican (a
small outer defensive work protecting the front gate of the inner bailey)
of the inner bailey where the massive main front gateway is located. Another
large tower and barbican defend the approach to this gate. The back, or
southern end of the outer bailey is open, as the west and east walls end
at the top of the cliff.The
Tower of London, by about 1200 A.D., was partially surrounded by an inner
bailey. The Tower itself made part of the east wall. The bailey had a
gateway, with a tower on one side only, located in one corner of the bailey,
and only four other towers.
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Norman Keep & Block Set Combination |
By 1300, under the direction of the great
castle builder King Edward I, the White Tower was completely surrounded
by an inner bailey with four gates and ten additional towers. Inside this
bailey was a smaller enclosure created by connecting the south side of
the Tower to the south wall of the inner bailey by means of two parallel
walls. Another small inner court was created by running a wall from the
southeast corner of the Tower to the east wall of the inner bailey. The
inner bailey was surrounded by an outer, lower wall, with a narrow park
between the two walls. The outer wall had three gates but no additional
towers. A long causeway over a mote, another gatehouse, and a barbican
protected the entrance to the main gateway in the outer wall.
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