How to Build a Medieval Castle

https://archaeology.org/issues/september-october-2025/features/how-to-build-a-medieval-castle/

by benbreen • 11 months ago

244 76 11 months ago

weregiraffe• 11 months ago

Guédelon Castle

cyprien_g• 11 months ago

I was there when I was a child, maybe 15 years ago. It's amazing to see such a project still running after so many years.

I remember that you could see all the trades explaining how they used to work back in medieval times. Very enlightening.

This article makes me want to go back and see the progress.

jupiterelastica2• 11 months ago

There is a great documentary series with three archeologists by the BBC about medieval castles featuring Guédelon as a real live example from around 2014. I really enjoyed watching this and highly recommend it.

https://archive.org/details/secrets-of-the-castle

Edit: spelling

atombender• 11 months ago

Great show. If you liked it, Ruth Goodman and Peter Ginn has made several shows together along with another archeologist, Alex Langlands, which I think are even better.

Of these, I think my favourite is Victorian Farm (2009), where the gang has to bring a real Victorian-era farm back into working order and then live like the Victorian farmers did. Unlike the castle show, it benefits from the gang having to research and learn the old ways on their own, whereas the castle is a big project where they're being taught or directed by the crew who's already working there.

The other shows — Tudor Monastery Farm, Edwardian Farm, Wartime Farm, Tales from the Green Valley, etc. — are all thoroughly excellent.

A minor point, but Goodman is not an archeologist or historian, but she's very good!

jupiterelastica2• 11 months ago

I watched the Tudor Monastery Farm show first by random chance and also liked it a lot. Thanks for all the recommendations!

username1352• 11 months ago

I liked this show over the castle one they did.

rester3244• 11 months ago

A bit offtopic. Is it possible to cast these videos somehow from the browser to a TV? I know it's possible to download them, but I am wondering if it's possible to stream them to the TV instead...

archermarks• 11 months ago

They're on youtube https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc9JhVp9B6Crpfu7asBwJZAY8...

eszed2• 11 months ago

That's what Chromecast has been for, for over a decade. I understand that's going to stop working(?) soon, and am very sad.

IncreasePosts• 11 months ago

If you have a Chromecast on your tv, you can generally just cast a whole tab using chrome. But the frame rate will be awful and I don't think audio gets cast.

If there isn't a cast button within the video player itself, i would download them, and then use something local to cast the actual video content to your tv (vlc has this feature)

BobaFloutist• 11 months ago

Does your TV let you use it as a wireless display? I've found that to work as basically HDMI without cables, which is nice.

moats4u• 11 months ago

Not restricted to medieval castles, but this documentary on large moats was fascinating:

https://youtu.be/drvX9huKowA

DigitalNoumena• 11 months ago

Coincidentally I recently watched these videos about this topic. Both great channels!

3D Guide - How to Build the Perfect Medieval Castle https://youtu.be/Syjg6PHYFBo?si=JceRfeOks3hOVqWu

How to Lay Siege to a Medieval Fortress (1000-1300) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ7hTNoK-OA&t=1900s

IAmBroom7• 11 months ago

How to Lay Siege to a Medieval Fortress:

Bring food. LOTS of it.

Wait.

(However, it's apparently easier to do it the fast way. Food storage in the field was quite difficult, and supply lines are vulnerable.)

bell-cot• 11 months ago

With competent defenders, "the fast way" has a high failure rate. And even if successful, a high body count.

Or, if you're referring to gunpowder/cannon tactics - those are the reason for medieval-style fortifications falling out of favor, 1500 CE-ish.

SJC_Hacker3• 11 months ago

Well constructed medevial fortresses imposed such a high cost on any attackers that were rarely attempts to assault them directly. There was almost always an easier way.

However if was a city or sometimes a large town, the calculus changes because the payoff was much higher. Also it may not have always been possible to wait the defenders out - because of relief armies and the troops getting restless and possibly deserting. An example in the "medevial" period (lets say ~1050-1453) where walls were directly attacked would be Jerusalem

ahazred8ta• 11 months ago

After a three month siege in 1136, Exeter Castle finally had to surrender when they ran out of wine. O cruel fate.

HelloUsername• 11 months ago

How to Build a Medieval Castle https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13518800 30-jan-2017 57 comments

Guédelon Castle https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22844118 11-apr-2020 40 comments

metalman• 11 months ago

somewhere in the US, a man built a stone castle single handedly, useing whatever tools he could get, so not historicaly accurate, but the insights into what can be done would be valid, started in the 70's?, 60's, and last I heard had found a sucessor to continue construction I know a man who built a stone barn from salvaged granite foundation block's, and have watched an very large amish timber frame barn go up, by hapenstance on a back road in Pennsylvania, and have a bit of stone and timber frame experience myself, so seeing stuff like this makes my hands itchy.....abandoned quaries bieng plentiful

bombcar2• 11 months ago

It really brings to the forefront that the hard part isn’t usually the building - it’s figuring out how to build with what is available and can be sourced locally - often within tens of feet.

We’re so used to shipping pine boards from the Pacific Northwest to the high desert we don’t even stop to consider there may be another option.

Fun fact: concrete is so heavy and so time dependent that it’s one of the few things that is still almost always VERY local; you probably have a home of cement mixers closer than you think!

foobarian• 11 months ago

I think my first worry would be how to figure out if the ground will support the immense weight of a one-off stone structure. I guess karsty/rocky areas are a safer choice than run-of-the-mill New England yard where you hit water table in 2 feet of digging

helsinkiandrew• 11 months ago

Bishop Castle? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_Castle

To me it has more of a Sagrada Família vibe than medieval castle

thrance• 11 months ago

There's something similar in France, built by a lone poor mailman on his off time over a period of ~33 years. Now that I'm reading about it, it doesn't even have an English Wikipedia entry (!). Which is a shame, it's arguably incredibly beautiful and definitely a unique piece or architecture/art.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_id%C3%A9al

anthk3• 11 months ago

Bear in mind in Europe tons of buildings merged both Medieval and a Modern (Englightened) era as progress happened. For instance, the style of the buildings in the the old town of Salamanca, which is obviously not 100% medieval.

chrisdhoover• 11 months ago

Is that the one where he moved large stones with small stones?

RattlesnakeJake• 11 months ago

Loveland Castle outside of Cincinnati has a story like that:

https://lovelandcastle.com/

jawilson2• 11 months ago

Loveland Castle is just outside of Cincinnati. I visited many times growing up in the 80s and 90s.

https://lovelandcastle.com/

Reading through that website is...a trip.

IAmBroom7• 11 months ago

These are so common in England they have a name: follies.

Typically named after (often Victorian) idle playboy who built them, and often with no attempt made to conceal their origins; they are only as "medieval" as the tastes of the playboy ran (so, more Tennyson than Terry Jones).

anthk3• 11 months ago

As an European, I find Americans more fascinated about Medieval buildings than us. I can see medieval churches and such by just a 10 minutes subway trip into the old town of the capital with ease. Less than 1 eur with a travelling pass card. It's just there, we see them without giving them too much care. The same with squares with buildings showing up arcs in the first floor. They give you both a shadow and and a place to rest. A pity the modern brutalist architecture wants these wiped out.

Still, liking them doesn't make must fascinating, but just useful and charming because of the slowed down ambient compared to modern cities. To me the modern US folklore and weird stuff (contraculture, UFO cults and such), scifi/hippie/hackers cross-polination are much more fascinating, because it's something 'modern' and 'weird', more machine bound than a utilitarian-but-pretty inspired design. Such as the Illuminatus trilogy.

Back to Europe, tons of medieval knowledge was still in use in small villages, such as knitting methods, homemade soap with cooking oil and so on. Oh, and lewd jokes/limericks, these were told and sang across centuries.

pjmlp• 11 months ago

Indeed, I find more fascinating discovering the "modern" tech used by the ancient civilations that took centuries to become widly known again.

If anything, they are great examples of what happens when civilations break down.

anthk3• 11 months ago

Indeed. Brutalist architectures would work well in Northern Europe, not much in the south when you have both hot summers and cold winters were heat AND cold spread over.

Thick brick/stone walls would protect you both from the heat in summer (down to 15 degrees colder as it's crazy as it sounds) and from chilly winters if you got a bunch of blankets.

gibspaulding• 11 months ago

I grew up in a part of the US that was “settled” in the mid 19th century. The absolute oldest buildings are just now approaching 200 years old and there aren’t many of those even. From that perspective it’s astonishing to be able to see the work of someone’s hands from so long ago. Obviously there were native Americans here long before European settlement, but evidence of their presence has been so thoroughly erased that it feels like everything you see sprung up in the last century. Even our forests are new, as pretty much the entire state was clear cut by the start of the 20th century.

bluGill3• 11 months ago

Obviously there were native Americans here long before European settlement, but evidence of their presence has been so thoroughly erased

Most of what the native Americans built would be erased by now anyway. They mostly didn't build with stone or metals, but with wood that rots. Most European castles were built out of wood and there is not trace remaining other than town archives (if that) even though no deliberate effort was made to erase them.

Not to excuse the deliberate eraser of history, it happened and is bad. However don't get the wrong impression either, most wasn't deliberate history erasing. Most of it was natural decay, followed by this useless bit is in the way of progress - the natives did exactly the same thing to their old worn out structures.

oaiey• 11 months ago

One day an archeologist will ask: Why they heck they build a medieval castle in the 21. century.

And chat in a forum about it.

love it nevertheless.

thecompilr• 11 months ago

There is a really good winery in Napa Valley, called Castello di Amorosa. Really good wine, and it is also built as a medieval castle. I bet there are more places like that around the world.

IAmBroom7• 11 months ago

"Medieval castle". Like the home of two friends near me, in Wexford PA. Quarter-scale replica of a real English castle.

Towers, parapets, (non-working) drawbridge (weighing tons, and already on its second timbering). Murder slits and a secret staircase...

Fully modern wiring, plumbing, and inner structure (faux stone facade). But a "medieval castle".

bluGill3• 11 months ago

Maybe, but more likely they will read the records from today (we are much better at archiving) and wish they could find someone to sponsor them to do the same. They will of course criticize something - that with some discovery we don't yet have - they know was done wrong.

com• 11 months ago

They won't be able to read the records due to physical bit rot of any public archives making it through the narrow path to the future, and of course the absence of most material behind paywalls that won't be in any public archives that substantially survive. They'll get more from acid-free paper archives under mountains than anything digital I expect.

thmsths• 11 months ago

I am sure you're probably right on the last part. And that would be in very poor taste considering that one of the aim of Guedelon is to act as a research project and validate hypotheses.

IAmBroom7• 11 months ago

A major archaeology project went on in Mexico to excavate a pyramid.

Not a ziggurat-style Mayan temple.

An Egyptian pyramid. Built for the movie Cleopatra.

pimlottc• 11 months ago

Er, do you have more details on that? From my understanding, Cleopatra (the 1963 film with Elizabeth Taylor) was filmed primarily in Italy and I don’t recall seeing any actual pyramids in it.

RickJWagner• 11 months ago

For do-it-yourselfers, there’s a partially completed medieval castle in Arkansas awaiting a buyer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozark_Medieval_Fortress

zelphirkalt3• 11 months ago

How cool would it be, if enough DIY craftspeople got together to buy it, build it, and then were able to live in it. And people would come to the castle to hire the craftspeople to build things for them.

IAmBroom7• 11 months ago

And that's how I founded a massive entertainment park on just a couple million dollars. Plus investors.

bilsbie• 11 months ago

It’s crazy they built these without electricity or fuel. Just hand tools!

tantalor• 11 months ago

I think you're missing a lot of the larger types of machines that were available, such as cranes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadwheel_crane

And don't forget animal power was used for pulling or lifting.

username1352• 11 months ago

For further reading, I submit to you the toils of one man on a mission in West Virginia

http://www.dupontcastle.com/

Sadly, I thing age and the scope of the project has caught up to him and his wife.

retrocog• 11 months ago

Impressive project. I remember watching a video documentary about this some years ago.

pier25• 11 months ago

Glasswork, the team learned, swallowed up half the cost of building a cathedral.

Oh wow I would have never guessed that.

IAmBroom7• 11 months ago

Interesting. I know some glassblowers, but they use modern propane systems of course.

A friend spent a weekend (including Sat night, all night) trying to get a beehive glass furnace to turn some sand and ?phosphorus? into glass. He was only able to get it hot enought to make "proto-glass" pellets.

I'm guess the fuel costs in the middle ages were astronomical for making plate glass. You have to blow it large enough to form a reasonable cylinder, cut the cylinder while hot, and flatting the walls into a sheet. The tail and head are waste products. All done with forced-air charcoal (where humans are doing the forcing), which had to be made first in sufficient quantities.

gooseyard• 11 months ago

Made me think of one of my favorite books as a kid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_(Macaulay_book), loved getting to pass them on to my own kids.

pstuart• 11 months ago

If AI doesn't destroy us but actually frees people from the need to work, then projects like this could really bloom. We all need a reason to get up in the morning, as well as being part of something bigger then ourselves -- this is a wonderful example of how that could look like.

How to Build a Medieval Castle

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