A broch is an Iron Age drystone hollow-walled structure found in Scotland. Brochs belong to the classification "complex Atlantic roundhouse" devised by Scottish archaeologists in the 1980s.
A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders.
A defensive wall is a fortification usually used to protect a city, town or other settlement from potential aggressors. The walls can range from simple palisades or earthworks to extensive military fortifications with towers, bastions and gates for access to the city. From ancient to modern times, they were used to enclose settlements. Generally, these are referred to as city walls or town walls, although there were also walls, such as the Great Wall of China, Walls of Benin, Hadrian's Wall, Anastasian Wall, and the Atlantic Wall, which extended far beyond the borders of a city and were used to enclose regions or mark territorial boundaries. In mountainous terrain, defensive walls such as letzis were used in combination with castles to seal valleys from potential attack. Beyond their defensive utility, many walls also had important symbolic functions – representing the status and independence of the communities they embraced.
A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin fortis ("strong") and facere.
A tower is a tall structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting structures.
Anglo-Saxon architecture was a period in the history of architecture in England from the mid-5th century until the Norman Conquest of 1066. Anglo-Saxon secular buildings in Britain were generally simple, constructed mainly using timber with thatch for roofing. No universally accepted example survives above ground. Generally preferring not to settle within the old Roman cities, the Anglo-Saxons built small towns near their centres of agriculture, at fords in rivers or sited to serve as ports. In each town, a main hall was in the centre, provided with a central hearth.
A blockhouse is a small fortification, usually consisting of one or more rooms with loopholes, allowing its defenders to fire in various directions. It is usually an isolated fort in the form of a single building, serving as a defensive strong point against any enemy that does not possess siege equipment or, in modern times, artillery, air force and cruise missiles. A fortification intended to resist these weapons is more likely to qualify as a fortress or a redoubt, or in modern times, be an underground bunker. However, a blockhouse may also refer to a room within a larger fortification, usually a battery or redoubt.
A keep is a type of fortified tower built within castles during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars have debated the scope of the word keep, but usually consider it to refer to large towers in castles that were fortified residences, used as a refuge of last resort should the rest of the castle fall to an adversary. The first keeps were made of timber and formed a key part of the motte-and-bailey castles that emerged in Normandy and Anjou during the 10th century; the design spread to England, south Italy and Sicily. As a result of the Norman invasion of 1066, use spread into Wales during the second half of the 11th century and into Ireland in the 1170s. The Anglo-Normans and French rulers began to build stone keeps during the 10th and 11th centuries; these included Norman keeps, with a square or rectangular design, and circular shell keeps. Stone keeps carried considerable political as well as military importance and could take up to a decade or more to build.
Blackness Castle is a 15th-century fortress, near the village of Blackness, Scotland, on the south shore of the Firth of Forth.
Iglesias is a comune and city in the province of South Sardinia, Italy. It was co-capital of the province of Carbonia-Iglesias with Carbonia, and the province's second-largest community.
A dovecote or dovecot, doocot (Scots) or columbarium is a structure intended to house pigeons or doves. Dovecotes may be free-standing structures in a variety of shapes, or built into the end of a house or barn. They generally contain pigeonholes for the birds to nest. Pigeons and doves were an important food source historically in the Middle East and Europe and were kept for their eggs and dung.
Muchalls Castle stands overlooking the North Sea in the countryside of Kincardine and Mearns, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The lower course is a well-preserved Romanesque, double-groined 13th-century tower house structure, built by the Frasers of Muchalls. Upon this structure, the 17th-century castle was begun by Alexander Burnett of Leys and completed by his son, Sir Thomas Burnett, 1st Baronet, in 1627. The Burnetts of Leys built the remaining four-storey present-day castle.
Stone walls are a kind of masonry construction that has been used for thousands of years. The first stone walls were constructed by farmers and primitive people by piling loose field stones into a dry stone wall. Later, mortar and plaster were used, especially in the construction of city walls, castles, and other fortifications before and during the Middle Ages. These stone walls are spread throughout the world in different forms. One of the best example is the Cyclopean Wall in Rajgir, India.
Rothesay Castle is a ruined castle in Rothesay, the principal town on the Isle of Bute, in western Scotland. Located at NS086646, the castle has been described as "one of the most remarkable in Scotland", for its long history dating back to the beginning of the 13th century, and its unusual circular plan.
Hull Castle was an artillery fort in Kingston upon Hull in England. Together with two supporting blockhouses, it defended the eastern side of the River Hull, and was constructed by King Henry VIII to protect against attack from France as part of his Device programme in 1542. The castle had two large, curved bastions and a rectangular keep at its centre; the blockhouses to the north and south had three curved bastions supporting guns, and a curtain wall and moat linked the blockhouses and castle. The construction project used material from recently dissolved monasteries, and cost £21,056. The town took over responsibility for these defences in 1553, leading to a long running dispute with the Crown as to whether the civic authorities were fulfilling their responsibilities to maintain them.
The Torre di Moravola is a 10th-century medieval watch tower built in Umbria, central Italy, to guard the southern approaches of Montone by the Fortebraccio, a condottieri family of the Renaissance. Positioned on a hill top ridge, Madonna di Confine, overlooking the Carpini valley 450 metres above sea level, this strategic site served the dual purposes of holding the high ground and allowing the knights stationed there views of approach routes.
Tower houses appeared on the Islands of Ireland and Great Britain starting from the High Middle Ages. They were constructed in the wilder parts of Great Britain and Ireland, particularly in Scotland, and throughout Ireland, until at least up to the 17th century. The remains of such structures are dotted around the Irish and Scottish countryside, with a particular concentration in the Scottish Borders where they include peel towers and bastle houses. Some are still intact and even inhabited today, while others stand as ruined shells.
The walls of Genoa constitute in their whole the several circles of walls that protected and defended the city of Genoa, former capital of the homonymous republic. To this day, large portions of these walls remain, and Genoa has more and longer walls than any other city in Italy.
Crosskirk Broch was a fortification near the present day hamlet of Crosskirk near Thurso, Caithness, Scotland. After thorough archaeological exploration it was destroyed in 1972 since the site had become unsafe due to sea erosion. The site was unusual in having a broch, a large circular fortification, built within an older promontory fortification with a ring wall and blockhouse.
An albarrana tower is a defensive tower detached from the curtain wall and connected to it by a bridge or an arcade. They were built by Muslims when they occupied the Iberian Peninsula between the 8th and the 15th centuries, especially from the 12th century during the Almohad dynasty and mainly in the south of Spain and Portugal where the Islamic influence was the longest. In Spanish, they are called torre albarrana.
