Motte-and-bailey castle
Castillo de motilla y patio (motte-and-bailey)
- Date
- c. 950 · confidence low
- Place
- Doué-la-Fontaine, Maine-et-Loire, France
- Credited to
- Nobles of north-western France
- Field
- Conflict
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A timber fortress built on an artificial mound (motte) with a tower and an adjoining enclosure (bailey) ringed by ditch and palisade. Its speed and low cost let the nobility control territory in feudal France and in the Norman conquest of England.
The chronology is debated: the oldest known mottes date from the 10th-11th centuries in France, but the 'invention' and its relation to Viking raids or Carolingian disorder are debated.
What it led to
- Norman castles in England, Wales and Ireland
- stone castles with a keep
- the feudalisation of the landscape