CASTLE, from the Latin castelluni, a dimin utive of cast rum, an encampment, is a walled inclosure with a tower or towers, strongly con structed and intended as a place of safety. Numerous castles, many of which are in ruins, still remain in various parts of Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and in the East. The castles of England consist of those erected by the Romans ; of British and Saxon castles erected previous to the Norman conquest, and Norman castles erected after it ; and also of the more modern stone and brick castles, erected from about the reign of Edward I. to the time of Henry V1I. The Roman castles in this country are numerous, and some of them still in very perfect condition, such as Burgh Castle and Richborougb. The Saxons most probably adapted the Roman inclosures to their modes of defence, and it appears that they often raised a mound on one side of the walls, on which they erected a keep or citadel. Roman castles were probably sometimes formed on the sites of British works ; and Saxon castle-building was probably borrowed from the Romanised Britons, who had ac quired a taste and knowledge of the arts from the Romans.
Norman castles, as fortifications, aro the strongest. They consisted of mounds and ditches, or moats, with walls on the mounds surmounted with battlements : the walls were also fortified at the top with small projecting towers called. bastions. In the walls were en trance gate towers, with bridges either of stone or wood, which were made to draw up and down. The entrances were also guarded with thick doors and portcullises, or gates which dropped down through grooves at the side of the masonry. All apertures, except
the gateway, were usually very small. Plat forms were made behind the parapets. The gateway was sometimes defended hy a barbican and also flanked by towers, as well as the outer walls. The keep was usually in or near the centre of the castle, and it had sometimes a chapel within it. Rochester Castle, which stands on a small eminence near the bridge over the Medway, is a fine example of a Nor man castle.
William the Conqueror was a great builder of castles. Forty-nine castles are mentioned in Domesday Book, which notices Arundel as tho only one named in the time of the Confes sor. It is said that in the nineteen years of Stephen's reign 1115 castles were erected. Every feudal chieftain had his stronghold, round which his immediate retainers rallied, for the purpose of mutual defence or to annoy and plunder their neighbours. A very consi derable number of old towns of Europe gra dually arose around these baronial fortifica tions ; and it is interesting to trace, in the history of many of these communities, the pro gress by which the town, originally a miserable dependence on the castle, gradually attained privileges, and charters, and wealth, and in creased in strength and importance exactly in proportion as • the owner of the fortress lost both, till finally the castle, from being neg lected and deserted, was either levelled with the ground and furnished materials for house building, or remained in ruins, an enduring monument of the slow hut certain victory of the once subject townsmen over their lords.