Motte - and - bailey castle A motte - and - bailey castle is a fortification with a wooden or stone keep situated on a raised earthwork called a motte , accompanied by an enclosed courtyard , or bailey , surrounded by a protective ditch and palisade . Relatively easy to build with unskilled , often forced labour , but still militarily formidable , these castles were built across northern Europe from the 10th century onwards , spreading from Normandy and Anjou in France , into the Holy Roman Empire in the 11th century . The Normans introduced the design into England and Wales following their invasion in 1066 . Motte - and - bailey castles were adopted in Scotland , Ireland , the Low Countries and Denmark in the 12th and 13th centuries . By the end of the 13th century , the design was largely superseded by alternative forms of fortification , but the earthworks remain a prominent feature in many countries . Architecture . Structures . A motte - and - bailey castle was made up of two structures , a motte , a type of mound - often artificial - topped with a wooden or stone structure known as a keep ; and at least one bailey , a fortified enclosure built next to the motte . The term " motte and bailey " is a relatively modern one , and is not medieval in origin . The word " motte " is the French version of the Latin " mota " , and in France the word motte was initially an early word for a turf ; it then became used to refer to a turf bank , and by the 12th century was used to refer to the castle design itself . The word " bailey " comes from the Norman - French " baille " , or " basse - cour " , referring to a low yard . In medieval sources , the Latin term " castellum " was used to describe the bailey complex within these castles . One contemporary account of these structures comes from Jean de Colmieu around 1130 , describing the Calais region in northern France . De Colmieu described how the nobles would build " a mound of earth as high as they can and dig a ditch about it as wide and deep as possible . The space on top of the mound is enclosed by a palisade of very strong hewn logs , strengthened at intervals by as many towers as their means can provide . Inside the enclosure is a citadel , or keep , which commands the whole circuit of the defences . The entrance to the fortress is by means of a bridge , which , rising from the outer side of the moat and supported on posts as it ascends , reaches to the top of the mound . " At Durham Castle , contemporaries described how the motte - and - bailey superstructure arose from the " tumulus of rising earth " with a keep rising " into thin air , strong within and without " with a " stalwart house . . . glittering with beauty in every part " . Mottes were made out of earth and flattened on top , and it can be very hard to determine whether a mound is artificial or natural without excavation . Some were also built over older artificial structures , such as Bronze Age barrow s . The size of mottes varied considerably , with these mounds being 3 metres to 30 metres in height ( 10 feet to 100 feet ) , and from 30 metres to 90 metres in diameter ( 100 feet to 300 feet ) . This minimum height of 3 metres ( 10 feet ) for mottes is usually intended to exclude smaller mounds which often had non - military purposes . In England and Wales , only 7 % of mottes were taller than ten metres high ; 24 % were between ten and five metres , and 69 % were less than five metres tall . A motte was protected by a ditch around it , which would typically have also been a source of the earth and soil for constructing the mound itself . A keep and a protective wall would usually be built on top of the motte . Some walls would be large enough to have a wall - walk around them , and the outer walls of the motte and the wall - walk could be strengthened by filling in the gap between the wooden walls with earth and stones , allowing it to carry more weight - this was called a " garillum " . Smaller mottes could only support simple towers with room for a few soldiers , whilst larger mottes could be equipped with a much grander building . Many wooden keeps were designed with a " bretasche " , a square building that overhung from the upper floors of the building , enabling better defences and a more sturdy structural design . The early 12th - century chronicler Lambert of Ardres described the wooden keep on top of the motte at the castle of Ardres , where the " first storey was on the surface of the ground , where were cellars and granaries , and great boxes , tuns , casks , and other domestic utensils . In the storey above were the dwelling and common living - rooms of the residents in which were the larders , the rooms of the bakers and butlers , and the great chamber in which the lord and his wife slept . . . In the upper storey of the house were garret rooms . . . In this storey also the watchmen and the servants appointed to keep the house took their sleep " . Wooden structures on mottes could be protected by skins and hides to prevent them being easily set alight during a siege . The bailey was an enclosed courtyard overlooked by the motte and surrounded by a wooden fence called a palisade and another ditch . The bailey was often kidney - shaped to fit against a circular motte , but could be made in other shapes according to the terrain . The bailey would contain a wide number of buildings , including a hall , kitchens , a chapel , barracks , stores , stables , forges or workshops , and was the centre of the castle ' s economic activity . The bailey was linked to the motte either by a flying bridge stretching between the two , or , more popularly in England , by steps cut into the motte . Typically the ditch of the motte and the bailey joined , forming a figure of eight around the castle . Wherever possible , nearby streams and rivers would be dammed or diverted , creating water - filled moats , artificial lakes and other forms of water defences . In practice , there was a wide number of variations to this common design . A castle could have more than one bailey : at Warkworth Castle an inner and an outer bailey was constructed , or alternatively , several baileys could flank the motte , as at Windsor Castle . Some baileys had two mottes , such as those at Lincoln . Some mottes could be square instead of round , such as at Cabal Trump . Instead of single ditches , occasionally double - ditch defences were built , as seen at Berkhamsted . Local geography and the intent of the builder produced many unique designs . Construction and maintenance . Various methods were used to build mottes . Where a natural hill could be used , scarping could produce a motte without the need to create an artificial mound , but more commonly much of the motte would have to be constructed by hand . Four methods existed for building a mound and a tower : the mound could either be built first , and a tower placed on top of it ; the tower could alternatively be built on the original ground surface and then buried within the mound ; the tower could potentially be built on the original ground surface and then partially buried within the mound , the buried part forming a cellar beneath ; or the tower could be built first , and the mound added later . Regardless of the sequencing , artificial mottes had to be built by piling up earth ; this work was undertaken by hand , using wooden shovels and hand - barrows , possibly with picks as well in the later periods . Larger mottes took disproportionately more effort to build than their smaller equivalents , because of the volumes of earth involved . The largest mottes in England , such as Thetford , are estimated to have required up to 24 , 000 man - days of work ; smaller ones required perhaps as little as 1 , 000 . Contemporary accounts talk of some mottes being built in a matter of days , although these low figures have led to suggestions by historians that either these figures were an underestimate , or that they refer to the construction of a smaller design than that later seen on the sites concerned . Taking into account estimates of the likely available manpower during the period , historians estimate that the larger mottes might have taken between four and nine months to build . This contrasted favourably with stone keeps of the period , which typically took up to ten years to build . Very little skilled labour was required to build motte and bailey castles , which made them very attractive propositions if forced peasant labour was available , as was the case after the Norman invasion of England . Where the local workforce had to be paid - such as at Clones in Ireland , built in 1211 using imported labourers – the costs would rise quickly , in this case reaching £20 . The type of soil would make a difference to the design of the motte , as clay soils could support a steeper motte , whilst sandier soils meant that a motte would need a more gentle incline . Where available , layers of different sorts of earth , such as clay , gravel and chalk , would be used alternatively to build in strength to the design . Layers of turf could also be added to stabilise the motte as it was built up , or a core of stones placed as the heart of the structure to provide strength . Similar issues applied to the defensive ditches , where designers found that the wider the ditch was dug , the deeper and steeper the sides of the scarp could be , making it more defensive . Although militarily a motte was , as Norman Pounds describes it , " almost indestructible " , they required frequent maintenance . Soil wash was a problem , particularly with steeper mounds , and mottes could be clad with wood or stone slabs to protect them . Over time , some mottes suffered from subsidence or damage from flooding , requiring repairs and stabilisation work . Although motte - and - bailey castles are the best known castle design , they were not always the most numerous in any given area . A popular alternative was the ringwork castle , involving a palisade being built on top of a raised earth rampart , protected by a ditch . The choice of motte and bailey or ringwork was partially driven by terrain , as mottes were typically built on low ground , and on deeper clay and alluvial soils . Another factor may have been speed , as ringworks were faster to build than mottes . Some ringwork castles were later converted into motte - and - bailey designs , by filling in the centre of the ringwork to produce a flat - topped motte . The reasons for why this decision was taken are unclear ; motte - and - bailey castles may have been felt to be more prestigious , or easier to defend ; another theory is that like the terpen in Netherlands , or Vorburg and Hauptburg in Lower Rhineland , raising the height of the castle was done to create a drier site . History . Emergence of the design . The motte - and - bailey castle , as historian Denys Pringle puts it , is " a particularly northern European phenomenon " , most numerous in Normandy and Britain , but also seen in Denmark , Germany , Southern Italy and occasionally beyond . European castles first emerged in the 9th and 10th centuries , after the fall of the Carolingian Empire resulted in its territory being divided among individual lords and princes and local territories became threatened by the Magyars and the Norse . Against this background , various explanations have been put forward to explain the origins and spread of the motte - and - bailey design across northern Europe ; there is often a tension among the academic community between explanations that stress military and social reasons for the rise this design . One suggestion is that these castles were built particularly in order to protect against external attack – the Angevin s , it is argued , began to build them to protect against the Viking raids , and the design spread to deal with the attacks along the Slav and Hungarian frontiers . Another argument is that , given the links between this style of castle and the Normans , who were of Viking descent , they were in fact originally a Viking design , transported to Normandy and Angers . The motte and bailey castle was certainly militarily highly effective : the design enabled defenders to deal with enemy cavalry and were very hard to assault , although as historian André Debord suggests , the historical and archaeological record of the actual military operation of motte and bailey castles remains relatively limited . An alternative approach focuses on the links between this form of castle and what can be termed a feudal mode of society . The spread of motte - and - bailey castles was usually closely tied to the creation of local fiefdoms and feudal landowners , and areas without this method of governance rarely built these castles . Yet another theory suggests that the design emerged as a result of the pressures of space on ringworks , and that the earliest motte and baileys were converted ringworks . Finally , there may be a link between the local geography and the building of motte and bailey castles , which are usually built on low - lying areas , in many cases subject to regular flooding . Regardless of the reasons behind the initial popularity of the motte and bailey design , however , there is widespread agreement that the castles were first widely adopted in Normandy and Angevin territory in the 10th and 11th centuries . Initial development , 10th and 11th centuries . The earliest purely documentary evidence for motte - and - bailey castles in Normandy and Angers comes from between 1020 and 1040 , but a combination of documentary and archaeological evidence pushes the date for the first motte and bailey castle , at Vincy , back to 979 . The castles were built by the more powerful lords of Anjou in the late 10th and 11th centuries , in particular Fulk III and his son , Geoffrey II , who built a great number of them between 987 and 1060 . Many of these earliest castles would have appeared quite crude and rustic by later standards , belying the power and prestige of their builders . William the Conqueror , as the Duke of Normandy , is believed to have adopted the motte - and - bailey design from neighbouring Anjou . Duke William went on to prohibit the building of castles without his consent through the " Consuetudines et Justicie " , with his legal definition of castles centring on the classic motte - and - bailey features of ditching , banking and palisading . By the 11th century , castles were widely built in the Holy Roman Empire , which then spanned central Europe , but these typically took the form of enclosures on hill tops , or tall , free - standing towers , called " bergfried " , on lower ground . The largest castles , called " hohenburgen " , had well - defined inner and outer courts , but no mottes . The motte and bailey design began to spread into Alsace and the northern Alps from France during the first half of the 11th century , spreading further into Bohemia and Austria in the subsequent years . This form of castle was closely associated with the colonisation of newly cultivated areas within the Empire , as new lords were granted lands by the emperor and built castles close to the local gród , or town . Motte - and - bailey castle building substantially enhanced the prestige of local nobles , and it has been suggested that their early adoption was because they were a cheaper way of imitating the still more prestigious " hohenburgen " , but this is usually regarded as unlikely . In many cases , " bergfied " were converted into motte and bailey designs by burying existing castle towers within the mounds . In England , William invaded from Normandy in 1066 , resulting in three phases of castle building in England , around 80 % of which were in the motte - and - bailey pattern . The first of these was the establishment by the new king of a number of royal castles in key strategic locations , including many towns . These urban castles could make use of the existing towns walls and fortification , but typically required the demolition of local houses to make space for them . This could cause extensive damage : records suggest that in Lincoln 166 houses were destroyed , with 113 in Norwich and 27 in Cambridge . The second and third waves of castle building in the late - 11th century were led by the major magnates and then the more junior knights on their new estates . Some regional patterns in castle building can be seen - relatively few castles were built in East Anglia compared to the west of England or the Marches , for example ; this was probably due to the relatively settled and prosperous nature of the east of England and reflected a shortage of unfree labour for constructing mottes . In Wales , the first wave of the Norman castles were again predominantly made of wood in a mixture of motte - and - bailey and ringwork designs . The Norman invaders spread up the valleys , using this form of castle to occupy their new territories . After the Norman conquest of England and Wales , the building of motte - and - bailey castles in Normandy accelerated as well , resulting in a broad swath of these castles across the Norman territories , around 741 motte - and - bailey castles in England and Wales alone . Further expansion , 12th and 13th centuries . Having become well established in Normandy , Germany and Britain , motte - and - bailey castles began to be adopted elsewhere , mainly in northern Europe , during the 12th and 13th centuries . Conflict through the Low Countries encouraged castle building in a number of regions from late 12th century to 14th century . In Flanders , the first motte and bailey castles began relatively early at the end of the 11th century . The rural motte - and - bailey castles followed the traditional design , but the urban castles often lacked the traditional baileys , using parts of the town to fulfil this role instead . Motte - and - bailey castles in Flanders were particularly numerous in the south along the Lower Rhine , a fiercely contested border . Further along the coast in Friesland , the relatively decentralised , egalitarian society initially discouraged the building of motte and bailey castles , although " terpen " , raised " dwelling mounds " which lacked towers and were usually lower in height than a typical motte , were created instead . By the end of the medieval period , however , the " terpen " gave way to " hege wieren " , non - residential defensive towers , often on motte - like mounds , owned by the increasingly powerful nobles and landowners . On Zeeland the local lords had a high degree of independence during the 12th and 13th centuries , owing to the wider conflict for power between neighbouring Flanders and Friesland . The Zeeland lords had also built " terpen " mounds , but these gave way to larger " werven " constructions - effectively mottes - which were later termed " bergen " . Sometimes both " terpen " and " werven " are called " vliedburg " , or " refuge castles " . During the 12th and 13th centuries a number of " terpen " mounds were turned into " werven " mottes , and some new " werven " mottes were built from scratch . Around 323 known or probable motte and bailey castles of this design are believed to have built within the borders of the modern Netherlands . In neighbouring Denmark , motte - and - bailey castles appeared somewhat later in the 12th and 13th centuries and in more limited numbers than elsewhere , due to the less feudal society . Except for a handful of mote and bailey castles in Norway , built in the first half of the 11th century and including the royal residence in Oslo , the design did not play a role further north in Scandinavia . The Norman expansion into Wales slowed in the 12th century but remained an ongoing threat to the remaining native rulers . In response , the Welsh princes and lords began to build their own castles , frequently motte - and - bailey designs , usually in wood . There are indications that this may have began from 1111 onwards under Prince Cadwgan ap Bleddyn , with the first documentary evidence of a native Welsh castle being at Cymmer in 1116 . These timber castles , including Tomen y Rhodywdd , Tomen y Faerdre , Gaer Penrhôs , were of equivalent quality to the equivalent Norman fortifications in the area , and it can prove difficult to distinguish the builders of some sites from the archaeological evidence alone . Motte - and - bailey castles in Scotland emerged as a consequence of the centralising of royal authority in the 12th century . David I encouraged Norman and French nobles to settle in Scotland , introducing a feudal mode of landholding and the use of castles as a way of controlling the contested lowlands . The quasi - independent polity of Galloway , which had resisted the rule of David and his predecessors , was a particular focus for this colonisation . The size of these Scottish castles , primarily wooden motte and bailey constructions , varied considerably , from larger designs such as the Bass of Inverurie to smaller castles like Balmaclellan . Motte - and - bailey castles were introduced to Ireland following the Norman invasion of Ireland that began between 1166 and 1171 under first Richard de Clare and then Henry II of England , with the occupation of southern and eastern Ireland by a number of Anglo - Norman barons . The rapid Norman success depended on key economic and military advantages ; their cavalry enabled Norman successes in battles , and castles enabled them to control the newly conquered territories . The new lords rapidly built castles to protect their possessions ; most of these were motte - and - bailey constructions , many of them strongly defended . Unlike Wales , the indigenous Irish lords do not appear to have constructed their own castles in any significant number during the period . Between 350 to 450 motte - and - bailey castles are believed to remain today , although the identification of these earthwork remains can be contentious . A small number of motte - and - bailey castles were built outside of northern Europe . In the late - 12th century , the Normans invaded southern Italy and Sicily ; although they had the technology to build more modern designs , in many cases wooden motte - and - bailey castles were built instead for reasons of speed . The Italians came to refer to a range of different castle types as " motta " , however , and there may not have been as many genuine motte - and - bailey castles in southern Italy as was once thought on the basis of the documentary evidence alone . In addition , there is evidence of the Norman crusaders building a motte and bailey using sand and wood in Egypt in 1221 during the Fifth Crusade . Conversion and decline , 13th - 14th centuries . Motte and bailey castles became a less popular design in the mid - medieval period . In France , motte - and - bailey castles were not built after the start of the 12th century , and mottes ceased to be built in most of England after around 1170 , although they continued to be erected in Wales and along the Marches . Many motte - and - bailey castles were occupied relatively briefly and in England many were being abandoned by the 12th century , and others neglected and allowed to lapse into disrepair . In the Low Countries and Germany , a similar transition occurred in the 13th and 14th centuries . One factor was the introduction of stone into castle building . The earliest stone castles had emerged in the 10th century , with stone keeps being built on mottes along the Catalonia frontier and several , including Château de Langeais , in Angers . Although wood was a more powerful defensive material than was once thought , stone became increasingly popular for military and symbolic reasons . Some existing motte - and - bailey castles were converted to stone , with the keep and the gatehouse usually the first parts to be upgraded . Shell keep s were built on many mottes , circular stone shells running around the top of the motte , sometime protected by a further chemise , or low protective wall , around the base . By the 14th century , a number of motte and bailey castles had been converted into powerful stone fortresses . Newer castle designs , however , placed less emphasis on mottes . Square Norman keeps built in stone became popular following the first such construction in Langeais in 994 , the first such in Normandy . Several were built in England and Wales after the conquest ; by 1216 there were around 100 in the country . These massive keeps could be either erected on top of settled , well established mottes , or could have mottes built around them – so - called " buried " keeps . The ability of mottes , especially newly built mottes , to support the heavier stone structures , was limited , however , and many needed to be built on fresh ground . Concentric castles , relying on several lines of baileys and defensive walls , made increasingly little use of keeps or mottes at all . Across Europe , motte - and - bailey construction came to an end . At the end of the 12th century the Welsh rulers began to build castles in stone , primarily in the principality of North Wales and usually along the higher peaks where mottes were unnecessary . In Flanders , decline came in the 13th century as feudal society changed . In the Netherlands , cheap brick started to be used in castles from 13th century onwards in place of earthworks , and many mottes were levelled , to help develop the surrounding , low - lying fields ; these " levelled mottes " are a particularly Dutch phenomenon . In Denmark , motte and baileys gave way in the 14th century to a " castrum - curia " model , where the castle was built with a fortified bailey and a fortified mound , somewhat smaller than the typical motte . By the 12th century , the castles in Western Germany began to thin in number , due to changes in land ownership , and various mottes were abandoned . In Germany and Denmark , motte - and - bailey castles also provided the model for the later " wasserburg " , or " water castle " , a stronghold and bailey construction surrounded by water , and widely built in the late medieval period . Today . In England , motte - and - bailey earthworks were put to various uses over later years ; in some cases , mottes were turned into garden features in the 18th century , or reused as military defences during the Second World War . Today , almost no motte - and - bailey castles remain in regular use in Europe , with one of the few exceptions being that at Windsor Castle , converted for the storage of royal documents . The landscape of northern Europe remains scattered with their earthworks , however , and many form popular tourist attractions as part of the European heritage industry .