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Ancient History, Ancient Mystery
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Roy?
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History/Mystery trivia question: What famous British castle withstood a 7 year siege? Please include a photo in your answer.
Hint: The idealized castle below isn't it, but looked similar.
The only castle I know which looks similar to that is Biwmares (Beaumaris). It was sieged for 4 years by Parliamentary forces when held by Royalists in the 1640s. It was also sieged for 2 years by English forces when held by Owain Glyndwr in 1403.
Harlech and Cricieth are also of similar design, defence capabilities and similar events also happened to them during the Glyndwr rebellion and English civil war.
In descending order, the castles in best condition are Biwmares, Harlech then Cricieth.
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Dotini
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The only castle I know which looks similar to that is Biwmares (Beaumaris). It was sieged for 4 years by Parliamentary forces when held by Royalists in the 1640s. It was also sieged for 2 years by English forces when held by Owain Glyndwr in 1403.
Harlech and Cricieth are also of similar design, defence capabilities and similar events also happened to them during the Glyndwr rebellion and English civil war.
In descending order, the castles in best condition are Biwmares, Harlech then Cricieth.
Close - I think, since I'm no expert on British castles. IMO, the castle you show is the never completed Beaumaris.
The castle which underwent a 7 year seige I believe is Harlech, which you included in your answer, though lacking a photo.
Would you please take a turn?
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Just going off the picture/drawing you provided, that drawing is quite clearly Biwmares and not Harlech. Harlech is much smaller and more compact than Biwmares:
And there's nothing mysterious about these, or any other of the major intact castles in Wales such as Conwy and Caernarfon. Just lots of time and labour. I spent a lot of my youth visiting these places.
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Dotini
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Just going off the picture/drawing you provided, that drawing is quite clearly Biwmares and not Harlech. Harlech is much smaller and more compact than Biwmares:
And there's nothing mysterious about these, or any other of the major intact castles in Wales such as Conwy and Caernarfon. Just lots of time and labour. I spent a lot of my youth visiting these places.
Excellent!
Though this source says the inner wards of both Harlech and Beaumaris are about 50 yards square. I believe both castles were designed by the same man. Do you know if stables were incorporated within the walls of these castles?
http://www.medieval-spell.com/Concentric-Castles.html
Please take a turn with a trivia question or history/mystery of your own choosing.
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I'll never forget my roots. North Wales is Best Wales and don't let those Italians from down south say otherwise.
Just on the topic of ancient history, ancient mystery and North Wales, @TenEightyOne mentioned bronze age goldmaking in a previous post.
One of the finest pieces in the British museum is the Mold Cape, so named having been found in Mold, Flintshire in 1833. It is a shoulder-collar item made from wrought gold. It dates from 1,900-1,600BC so it is roughly 3,700 years old. Originally it had amber beads running along it but these were all crushed when the item was found. Its narrow shape suggests it was intended for a young woman or girl.
It is unparalleled in form and design and one of the greatest works of gold anywhere in prehistoric Europe. And I don't present it as an item whose apparent modern aesthetics and nuances cannot be explained. As I mentioned, it's made from wrought gold. That means it was hammered into shape and not manufactured by tools or cast by chemical processes.
I present it as another example of what could be achieved by our ancestors with time, care and craftsmanship, contrary to popular belief of rudimentary flint spears and basic dwellings.
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That's a thing of beauty. Here's a 360 on Sketchfab, I'm sure there'll be a proper VR somewhere too.
@Dotini, Harlech was sieged for (supposedly) 7 years. The architect (or principal architect) was James of St. George who did indeed contribute heavily to Caernarfon and Conwy.
@Dotini, Harlech was sieged for (supposedly) 7 years. The architect (or principal architect) was James of St. George who did indeed contribute heavily to Caernarfon and Conwy.
Dotini
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Did all of these castles have a stable included within the walls, in the inner ward?
Probably Edward I met him in Savoy on return from the a Crusade, according to your link. Likely the Welsh castles were influenced by those Edward (and James) had seen in the middle east, I'm guessing.
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Yes - at least Harlech did. The location of stables in a castle depends on the amount of ground available, often it seems to have been preferred to keep stables in the "outer court", in the case of Harlech the stables were in the inner court (or ward). It's likely that the favourite/best/stud horses were kept in this inner court, other horses would have been kept nearby while the forces of the nearby hundreds would have provided their own as required.
Somewhat, yes. They're about three thousand years apart though, and there are only so many ways to fashion a (reasonably) practical torc/lunular. I think the second one is this, from Blessington, Ireland and now shown in the British Museum.
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From what I recall it was besieged by land but not by sea, supply ships were able to land.
EDIT: Here you go, this is the bones of it. Wasn't even a very good land siege
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It's probably not true of all castles built on top of prominant hills or rocks like Harlech but some, such as Bratislava castle where I currently live, have a network of secret underground tunnels to the surrounding town area.
I would imagine that these underground passages were used as supply lines as well as escape routes and that many castles on flatter plains also had similar passages and networks.
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It's also worth noting that in the case of the north Wales castles, they were built by the English to defend themselves from, and as a show of force to, the locals. ie the Welsh themselves.
The castle at Beaumaris is built at sea level and is prone even now to flooding. I doubt it has any secret underground tunnel systems as they constantly be underwater.
The castle at Beaumaris is built at sea level and is prone even now to flooding. I doubt it has any secret underground tunnel systems as they constantly be underwater.
Dotini
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Yes, this is very worth noting, indeed. Castles, at least in Europe, were invented as a means of political and military control over the countryside - even whole nations.
Fulk the Black, in France, I think was the first to systematically build castles for this very purpose. William the Conqueror, beginning with wooden motte-and-bailey castles, later in stone, continued this process in Britain.
IMO, the advent of the European castle is virtually 100% synonymous with the system of social organization which became known as feudalism, the system which transitioned European civilization between the Dark Ages to the Renaissance and Enlightenment.
Today, castles have few mysteries and secrets left to reveal. Today, we can marvel at what were the secrets and mysteries of their design, construction, finance, purpose and operation. Masonry, freemasonry, templarism, Machiavellianism, maybe even continental and global empires were integral to the history of the castle. It may be noted that what looked like castles were pretty routine in the middle eastern Bronze Age and Iron Age Rome. The key difference being that the European castle was typically the dwelling place of the local lord in fief to the king.
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If you use the word "castle" (castellum) then by language definition you're typically talking about the post-Norman period in Europe. If you're talking about fortified noble dwellings in stone then you can go back a thousand-or-so more years elsewhere in the world, something that Fulk the Black would have been well aware of from his visits to the Middle East.
The motte-and-bailey developments brought by the Norsemen in 1066 were also evolutions of arrangement styles that were considerably older and, in many cases, fairly obvious solutions to protecting land/wealth/settlements.
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Dotini
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Could you provide a link, please? My Mac has no right click.
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Dotini
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A quick search suggests the female Viking warrior is holding glass, amber or horn gaming pieces. Perhaps a strategist in addition to a warrior?Search "Birka Grave 581"
My own interest in this particular site is mainly in what the grave's occupant is holding.
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Indeed, "she" is holding hnefatafl pieces. Hnefatafl (fist-table, arguable translation) is a game of strategy popular in the North East of Europe during (as far as we know) the 6th to 12th centuries. I had the honour of handling and scanning some pieces from Jorvik along with a recovered fragment of game board. They're on display in the museum there if you're ever visiting
This skeleton is interesting - somebody apparently buried as a tactical expert and warrior with a recent assessment suggesting that the skeleton is a female. There's much debate about "the chain of evidence" (the original dig was about 100 years ago) and it's upset a good number of Viking experts who believe that female warriors couldn't have been A Thing.
Dotini
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Watching Lagertha on the History Channel's production of "Vikings" persuades me of the female Viking warrior/queen.Indeed, "she" is holding hnefatafl pieces. Hnefatafl (fist-table, arguable translation) is a game of strategy popular in the North East of Europe during (as far as we know) the 6th to 12th centuries. I had the honour of handling and scanning some pieces from Jorvik along with a recovered fragment of game board. They're on display in the museum there if you're ever visiting
This skeleton is interesting - somebody apparently buried as a tactical expert and warrior with a recent assessment suggesting that the skeleton is a female. There's much debate about "the chain of evidence" (the original dig was about 100 years ago) and it's upset a good number of Viking experts who believe that female warriors couldn't have been A Thing.
But then I also adore Queen Daenerys, the Khaleesi, or really almost any alpha female.
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Yeah, I believe it's the same grave that made the news earlier this year when it was revealed that it might actually be a woman.
Fun fact: the Swedish word for queen is the female variant of drott, which was a title for a leader of warriors in the Viking ages.
Funner fact: the word for king may originally have meant "belongs to the woman" (alternatively "child of the Earth mother").
Yeah, I believe it's the same grave that made the news earlier this year when it was revealed that it might actually be a woman.
Fun fact: the Swedish word for queen is the female variant of drott, which was a title for a leader of warriors in the Viking ages.
Funner fact: the word for king may originally have meant "belongs to the woman" (alternatively "child of the Earth mother").
Dotini
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A new discovery has been made at the Great Pyramid, said to be the most important new discovery of the century. I'm not sure of that, but what do you think?
The "void" has a cross section and dimension similar to the "Grand Gallery", and might seem likely to be a leftover from the original building project serving a purpose related to moving blocks higher up, perhaps now filled with rubble - or could it be something else?
NG STAFF. SOURCE: MORISHIMA, K. ET AL. DISCOVERY OF A BIG VOID IN KHUFU’S PYRAMID BY OBSERVATION OF COSMIC-RAY MUONS. NATURE
https://news.nationalgeographic.com...za-void-discovered-khufu-archaeology-science/
The "void" has a cross section and dimension similar to the "Grand Gallery", and might seem likely to be a leftover from the original building project serving a purpose related to moving blocks higher up, perhaps now filled with rubble - or could it be something else?
NG STAFF. SOURCE: MORISHIMA, K. ET AL. DISCOVERY OF A BIG VOID IN KHUFU’S PYRAMID BY OBSERVATION OF COSMIC-RAY MUONS. NATURE
https://news.nationalgeographic.com...za-void-discovered-khufu-archaeology-science/
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Dotini
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For a long time the dominant view among academics was that domestication of plants and animals allowed for social organization and the surpluses which led to urbanization. Here Ian Hodder argues new evidence that ritual and symbolism led to agriculture, domestication of animals and settled life.
Dotini
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Welcome to the Ancient History, Ancient Mystery thread, Imari. As an Australian, I expect you could come up with several intelligent things to say about the history and mysteries to be found in the southern hemisphere. I'll be looking forward to that.
Aboriginal science was certainly far more thoughtful than one might imagine, I'll find something on their astronomy if @Imari doesn't beat me to it.
In the meantime here's an interesting article about shoes, I thought it might interest a few readers
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Welcome to the Ancient History, Ancient Mystery thread, Imari. As an Australian, I expect you could come up with several intelligent things to say about the history and mysteries to be found in the southern hemisphere. I'll be looking forward to that.
I should be able to do that just because I'm Australian? I have enough trouble keeping up with the interesting things in modern times that we can actually learn more about without getting into fantasies about alien handbags and how the ancient Egyptians had a time portal to the future that gave them chainsaws.
I was merely poking fun at your idolisation of a fictional dictatorial murderer who believes she is owed power and obedience simply because of her bloodline, and who is somehow accepted because she's a strong independent woman who don't need no man.
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