Stone Record
Castles read as documents: plan, section, elevation and dimension, the way a survey drawing reads them.
Arrow Slits Were Harder to Shoot Through Than Claimed
In 1863 Viollet-le-Duc shot a bow through a medieval arrow slit and wrote that its sides worked like a gunsight. Around 1980, two researchers ran the test again at White Castle in ...
Harlech's Putlog Holes Do Not Prove Who Designed It
A small square hole in a castle wall has been used to name the architect who designed it: putlog holes at Harlech, cited alongside round arches and corbelled towers as proof of a S...
Bolton Castle Was Begun Before the King Said Yes
On 14 September 1378 Richard le Scrope and the mason John Lewyn agreed in writing on a tower that did not exist: fifty feet to the battlements, ten yards by eight, walls two yards ...
Medieval Castles Were Not Grey. The King Paid for White
On 17 March 1240 a clerk at Westminster wrote out an order for the keepers of the works at the Tower of London: whitewash the Tower, entirely, inside and out. It is why the keep is...
Chester Castle's Lost Bridge Was Under the Prison
In July 2026 an archaeologist walked to the end of a dark corridor under Chester Crown Court and, by the light of his phone, found almost three metres of medieval wall — part of a ...
Kenilworth, 1266: The Catapults Never Broke the Castle
In 2024, contractors laying a path outside Kenilworth Castle dug up a stone ball, and an archaeologist on site found seven more — up to 105 kilograms, all dated to the royal siege ...
Spiral Staircases Do Not Turn for a Right-Handed Swordsman
Ask why a castle's spiral stair turns the way it does, and you get the same answer almost everywhere: clockwise, so a right-handed defender coming down has his sword arm free, and ...
This Castle's Brickwork Spells Its Owner's Initials
Above the gateway of a ruined castle in Leicestershire, two letters are set into the wall in a darker brick. They read W, H — the initials of the man who paid for it, laid there in...
Kirby Muxloe's Builders Came Back After the Beheading
On Friday 13 June 1483, Lord Hastings walked into a council meeting at the Tower of London and did not walk out. The story everyone tells is that his half-built castle in Leicester...
Rochester's Tower Fell. The Castle Did Not.
In the autumn of 1215, King John's miners dug under the south-east corner of Rochester's great tower and burned forty pigs' worth of fat under the props. The writ ordering the pigs...
This Swamp Hid a Fortress. It Hid Something Else, Too.
In 2016, an airborne laser survey over a forest in eastern Poland flagged a ring under the tree canopy that matched nothing on any map. Officially, that's the story of how this for...
The Chapel and the Latrine Were the Same Building
Château Gaillard fell in six months to a castle its builder is said to have boasted he could hold if the walls were made of butter. For eight centuries the argument about the day i...
Murder Holes Were Not for Boiling Oil
There is a row of holes cut straight through the vaulted stone ceiling of a gate passage in this video, and every guidebook tells you the same thing about what went through them: b...
How to See Where a Castle Ran Out of Money
Somewhere on the walls of Beaumaris Castle is the year 1298. Nobody carved it there. Nobody wrote it down on purpose. And yet it is dated more precisely than most inscriptions actu...
The Letter That Explains Why This Castle Was Never Finished
In February 1296, the king's own master of works wrote to the Exchequer to explain exactly why his castle at Beaumaris was over budget. Nine years earlier, the same architect had f...
The Castle That Contradicts Its Own Building Licence
The king's own licence, from 1385, says Bodiam Castle was built to fight the French. The earthworks around it say it was built to be looked at. Both documents are genuine, and the ...