It is the custom of the nobles who spend much of their time fighting and slaughtering their enemies, in order to be safer from their opponents and to overcome them, to make a mound of earth as high as they can, and encircle it with a ditch as broad and as deep as possible. They enclose the upper edge of this mound with a stockade of logs firmly fixed together, strengthened at intervals with towers, according to their means. Within this enclosure they build their house, a central tower which commands the whole place. The entrance may only be reached across a bridge.
Keep
1. Why were castles built?
2. Why, do you think, the first castles were motte and bailey castles?
3. Why is there very little evidence of these in the countryside today?
