Castle Wall Construction

You could calibrate Old Mosses to,produce a muzzle velocity such that it simulated the amount of kinetic energy that a hit from an earlier siege weapon was simulated. The cannon is a 6 pounder, and the weight that some Trebuchets threw was greater, you might be able to find an equivalence.

I will try to find something on the construction of a wall.

The two skin wall with rubble filling castle wall may have been built in two stages.
Single skin, along comes gunpowder, then double skin and rubble.... we just dont know, because the records were destroyed by the victors?... but double skin walls in construction are typical post gunpowder.

Anyway, it has been tested by certain historians, and the bag of rubble as a cannon ball stopper works out rather well.
The double skin was to keep the rubble in place and support a top gantry way where they could mount cannon to fire back.

Lime mortar... the outside of castles painted white was a thing to advertise their presence and domination, I believe this was started after Wales was finally conquered, and then it became traditional to advertise them against sea invaders.
Mortar between the stones of a castle wall initially was not the usual, because the stones were designed to fit that well, they didnt need it.
With walls being generally upwards of six foot thick, they were mostly weather resistant anyway?.

The original houses of parliament, as in Guy Fawkes, had a double wall about seven feet thick filled with rubble and mortar.

I suspect that the double wall was less about providing structural strength, and more about trying to insulate the structure. Remember that whatever else castles were used or designed for they provided accommodation for the owner as well as those troops stationed there. Even during a siege guards needed somewhere warm (or warmer) they could stand out of bad weather - especially archers who needed to keep their bows out of the rain.
No guard is all that effective when their hands are numb with cold.

I'd suspect that castles used what were standard building techniques and designs for the time, which would make sense as they were probably built by local artisans who when they were not building castles were building normal buildings.
The double-wall design was probably also a LOT cheaper and faster than trying to make a single thick wall. The gap between two walls allowed stairs to be build into them without having to hack them out of solid rock. And two thinner stone walls meant using smaller stone blocks, which would be cheaper and much easier to transport.

One problem we have in regards looking at old castles in the UK (or anywhere else for that matter) is that they were not static. They evolved over time, sometimes because the castle needed to be extended or the owner wanted some new feature/building. Other times because the nature of warfare had changed and new design features - such as the Bastion - appeared and were added to castles to improve their defenses. Gunpowder saw castle walls cut down and widened so they could accommodate cannon for example. Any castle you look at in the UK will have gone through several different designs in its lifetime. Some started as wooden structures, turning into rather small stone keeps with a wall and then spreading outwards to become larger structures will high walls, and then loosing the high walls in favor of thicker but lower walls with bastions added to the corners.

Likewise castles that fell into disuse tended not to to just stay there slowly falling prey to the elements and time. Like any other stone building the locals were quite happy, if not delighted, at having a source of pre-dressed stone they could use to build new homes with. Even if they had considered the possibility of future generations being interested in the original building, their need for somewhere to live right now took precedence. It is not uncommon to find that old buildings in the UK contain stones that came from even older buildings.

Last of all there was a period in which old castles were refurbished or rebuilt not for defense but as pure status symbols and high class housing - and in later periods in the UK some people had 'old castles' built on their grounds as a feature.

None of this means that we don't know, or at least have a reasonable idea as to how castles were built. Rather we can't be sure exactly WHY castles were built in certain ways. Those people who were there and writing about them assumed anyone reading their notes would understand such things - for example if we write about driving somewhere to see someone, we make the assumption that whoever is reading our notes doesn't need to know the legal and practical limitations placed on the design of the vehicle.
In the case of a castle the design features were most likely limited by cost and practicality (which would be related to some degree). It probably wasn't practical to try and construct castles using complex techniques that would be unknown to the local builders. Not only would it cost more to bring in a large workforce from further away to build it. But castles needed a lot of maintenance, so you'd end up having to bring at least some of these people back every year to do the needed work. Likewise building a single wall from thick blocks of stone would have cost a fortune to buy and transport, and if you needed to replace or repair part of the wall you'd end up spending a lot of money for a couple of new stone blocks. Practically having a single wall has a potentially more dangerous problem attached to it. If you had to repair a wall and replace blocks lower down you'd have to remove all the blocks above it...which means dismantling part of the wall. A surprise attack at that point would allow the attacker to run straight though the gap without having to deploy any siege equipment. With a twin-wall you would have at least part of the wall in place, preventing any attackers from being able to do this. A weak wall is better than none at all.

My point about the construction of castle walls was that the basic technique was most likely the same as with larger and more expensive stone buildings of the period, since these techniques would be known to workers in the local area. The only major difference would be in the scale of construction.

It is much the same as a shopping center being built near me. The way the structure is being constructed is identical to the way new homes are built, even though the center is several times the size. Other than a couple of minor changes in materials being used (steel rather than wooden structural beams) the nature of the construction is identical. This is cheaper than trying to build something in a totally new way, since the same people who were building local houses could be used to build the shopping center. If they had, for example, decided to build the center underground they would have had to bring in a different set of workers and use different tools and equipment - which would have increased costs for no good reason.

in contrast, our common house building style is lightweight stick frame construction - and our current new commercial structure is a concrete tilt-up structure.

but I agree - the basic technique of stone walls would be similar between cottages and castles

Dragon The phrase “Written in stone” actually refers to a biblical reference aka: the Ten Commandments written on stone tablets by Gods own hand.

Perhaps it's worth investigating. I've only ever heard of the biblical reference.

TLW, well, of course Biblical pre-dates building of Christian Churches in UK.... by quite a long way.....
But that wont stop me questioning if the saying has more than one source, from different area's.

Not all of UK was Christian when stone buildings were started.
In fact, saying that, the builders of Egypt (Pre-Christian) also put their makers mark on the stones....


Is it entirely possible that the phrase pre-dates Christianity.
Is it even possible that the Christianity "Writers" took the phrase commonly used by stone masons and used that to create the story of the tablets, and now that they were "Written in the stone", they should be adopted as seriously as anything else they took as important that had been previously written in the stone...........

I ask this because I can see a certain worrying thought process that almost agrees with Creationists that the Bible was the beginning of history and nothing important happened before that.....

Many of the words phrases and common belief structures included in the Bible were common before it was written.

I therefore propose that it is not that the phrase was stolen from a biblical reference, but it was stolen by the bible from Stone masons, who we have proof existed before the bible.....

Again, this is only a loose theory, I dont have concrete or even chipped stone proof evidence, but for me, it makes sense that is something was Written in the Stone and therefore "Important" before the time of Christ, perhaps they would include that "Its important" phraseology in the actual writings that became the bible.
Remembering that the Bible is a loose collection of stories that were edited into what we know today many years after Christ passed.

However, stone being important, we have the evidence from ancient Egypt, the deliberate defacing of Statues, and deliberate destruction of hieroglyphics, as one Ruler took over from the last, they would remove common references to their ancestors who they may disagree with.
Be that personal or ideologically, or even political views.
One Egyptian king decided on the "One God" way, and after his death, all that was reversed, he was extremely unpopular for, that, who did he think he was cancelling out Gods?...
I "Think" its this one....
Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV)

In return, after his own death, Much of his work was destroyed to remove it from history... statues were defaced.... stone hieroglyphs removed/destroyed....

Cross threading here, but I learned much of this from finding some intelligence on the Discovery Network....
Then googled for more info.
Maybe there are intelligent program makers out there?...

and while the bible was not published as a codified text until long after masonry was a career option, the text was based on more historical documents in various forms - and more modern editions are carefully referenced back to the oldest known documents; which are not in short supply.

and keep in mind that as far as the Egyptians being around before the bible was printed as a document - most of the crews building the pyramids did not draw paychecks.