Mottes

Motte-and-bailey Castle - History - 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 ... 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 ...

Castles In The United Kingdom - Norman Invasion - Architecture
... One popular form of castle was the motte and bailey, in which earth would be piled up into a mound (called a motte) to support a wooden tower, and a wider enclosed area built alongside it (called a bailey ... Around 80% of Norman castles in this period followed the motte-and-bailey pattern, but ringworks were particularly popular in certain areas, such as south-west England and south ... is that ringworks were easier to build in these shallow-soil areas than the larger mottes ...

Moot Hill - Siting and Purpose
... mount, mound, hill, knoll, mot, moot, knol, motte, and druid hill ... Some hills known today as "moot hills" were actually historically mottes (from an unrelated French word meaning "mound"), the remains of a motte-and-bailey castle ... by a ditch and an outer ward called the "bailey".) In some cases a mound built as a motte may have seen later use as a functioning moot hill ...

Ringfort - Chronology - Theories - Use Continuing Into The Later Medieval Period
... ringforts were gradually converted into what would more generally be considered as mottes today, and there is some slight and contentious archaeological evidence that points to ... contemporary person, there is little to distinguish a ringfort from a small earthwork castle or motte ... that either the Normans converted existing ringforts into the basis of the future construction of mottes and earthworks, or that the Gaelic Irish, through the use of raised raths, sought to emulate the Norman example ...

Saint-Dizier-la-Tour - Feudal Mottes
... pair of its remaining three feudal mottes is very well preserved ... Two of the mottes – the large motte and the more southerly of the two small mottes – were subject of an archaeological dig in 1865, and have delivered up important finds ... The towers which topped the mottes were burned, probably in the 14th century ...