What was inside a medieval tower house?

Tower houses were a popular type of castles in the Middle Ages. To find out more about them, we're visiting Siedlencin in southwest Poland, where the biggest and best preserved tower house in Central Europe is located. Tower houses first appeared in Western Europe in the High Middle Ages. They were very popular in Scotland, Ireland, Basque Country, England, France, and in general in all of Western Europe. However, occasionally they were also erected in the Central and Eastern Europe. This particular tower was built in the 14th century by the Duke of Javor, Henry I. And interestingly enough, with castles, it's always all about the dual purpose. On one hand, this is a residence of a nobleman, so it has to be quite aesthetic and comfortable enough for the nobleman to live his daily life there. But on the other hand, this is a stronghold. This is supposed to withstand an attack, to defend itself. And it's always interesting how people merged these two factors together. Now, the first line of defense of this building is the moat. Not all, but many tower houses did have moats around them. So the attackers had to cross the moat while being shot at with arrows. The second line of defense of this building is no longer visible today. But in the Middle Ages, there was an outer wall going around the tower. Now, in this case, it wasn't a full circle. It was more like a semi-circle from the side where the entrance was. We're now on the bailey between the wall of the actual tower and the outer wall. And this is the actual entrance to the tower. Now, normally, in the summer, there would be an outdoor kitchen located in the bailey. It's always better to have an outdoor kitchen because you don't generate all of the smoke inside the building. And you have a lot of natural light to work with. However, of course, in the case of bad weather or snow, they did have another small kitchen inside. Interestingly enough, this is not the only entrance to the tower there was at the time. This is more of the servant entrance. There was another one that doesn't exist today. But I will show you later the remains of it. It was placed higher up already on the first floor. And there were wooden outer stairs leading to the other entrance. Generally speaking, in castles on the ground level, there were kitchens, maintenance rooms, and rooms for the servants. And it wasn't always completely clean. So when the duke himself wanted to enter his tower, maybe with some proper guests, he would like to skip the ground level and get already to the more official and representative part of the building. I probably should have asked for permission to close this door. But anyway, this is how you close this door when under attack. To support the door, you drag these two horizontal locks, which I'm told are still original from the 14th century. As we've already stated, generally on the ground level, there would be utility rooms, maintenance rooms, kitchens, rooms for servants, and stuff like that. And on the higher levels, there would be the more representative, official, or sometimes private parts of the building. The main reason for that is that you can skip the ground level if you need to. And the other reason was probably windows. You see, as a rule of thumb, on medieval castles, we don't see any windows at all on the ground level, as it would be too much of a defensive weakness. We do see the first windows appearing on the first floor, but these are still generally very narrow and meant only for shooting arrows through them at the attackers. We tend to see normal windows already on the second floor and above. So the most official and private rooms would be placed higher up there for greater comfort. But before we go upstairs, let's take a look at the cellars of the building. Even though it is a very warm day today outside of the tower, here in the cellar, it is a little bit chilly, definitely. So it is kind of an equivalent of a big medieval fridge. And what's interesting here is this little window with this slope. This slope would have a continuation made out of wood, and it all would be used to roll in small barrels through the window. Now let's take a look upstairs. We are now on the second floor or the first floor above the ground level, if you like. And the ground level was used mostly for utility rooms, maintenance rooms, stuff like this. This level is already a bit more representative, because this room probably had administrative functions. And this wood, this wooden wall is said to be actually also original from the Middle Ages. On this level, the wood was added on the stone walls to add a little bit more isolation, because it could be quite cold in here in the winter. And in most rooms, we have a furnace like this one, which was supposed to, of course, warm the level of the building. The Duke himself would be obliged to solve many administrative problems, and they would deal with them here on the first floor. We have also a second room on this level, and this is actually the official entrance of the Duke and the guests that I was talking about. We can see the remains of it here. So if people wanted to visit the Duke and had some problems regarding the law or in general administration, they would actually enter the tower here and get straight to the administrative level. Tower houses were generally erected in stone, but the ceilings were usually made out of wood. What's interesting is that in this tower house, all of the wooden ceilings are still original from the 14th century, what makes them the oldest wooden ceilings preserved in Poland. We are now already in the second floor above the ground level, which was called the Great Hall. It was here where the owner had meetings, where the owner had feasts. Everybody would sit and celebrate and eat something and look at these beautiful and marvelous paintings on the wall, which are original from the 14th century, mid-14th century. These are actually the world's only frescoes preserved in situ about the legend of Sir Lancelot. People often say that castles were cold, which is not necessarily true. We've seen, for example, the furnace. They had ways to warm up a bit the room. And also, it is often said that castles were dull, boring and grey. And I think this is the best example to prove them wrong. Of course, back in the day, these paintings would have been way more vibrant and colorful. But even today, you can see all of the different colors. Many buildings, actually, and especially also churches, were very colorful inside in the Middle Ages. And that's something that we often forget about because not a lot of these paintings survive to this day. But here in Siedlencin, in this tower house, we can see all of these frescoes. And imagine how was it like to sit here 700 years ago. We're not going to dive very much into the details of the story of Sir Lancelot here because I'm going to make another video on this channel about it. But for now, let's go even more upstairs. The third floor is today empty, but it is here where the Duke had his own private rooms. On the top of the building, we have a beautiful wooden roof. Now, this roof was actually rebuilt in the first half of the 16th century after the fire. But the original one was quite similar. It was a little bit smaller than this one, so that the merlons would stick out. The merlon is the solid upright segment of the fortification and the space between the merlons would be called a cranel, which would be empty at the time. You can clearly see the remains of the merlon here. Now, this is an interesting feature because it's what they often get wrong in the movies. You see, a proper merlon has to be big and tall enough for a whole person or an archer to be able to hide behind it, get an arrow, get ready, and then step into the cranel or the empty space between merlons and shoot an arrow at the enemy. So there you go. I think we've explored quite a lot in this episode about tower houses.