Hello, everyone

[steffanmilonas]

Thanks Dinosaur.
I recently purchased a copy (reprinted 2006 edition) from Foyles bookshop, in Charing Cross Road. It cost me over ?40. I paid will wet pound notes, I cried when i parted with that amount of money. ISBN number is 9780859897532, if anyones interested, and can afford it. Very interesting book, with a good amount of history on the origins of castles.
Regards Steffan:face-approve:

[BAJR]

Wo't tell you what I felt when I parted with 70 quid for the complete 5 volumes of MacGibbon and Ross "The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries, 5 vols. (1887-92) http://www.archive.org/details/castellat...05macguoft (free online copy)

Still the best resource for Scottish Castles.

I am hoping that later this year I will be part of a search for a lost castle. We were lucky enough to see a 1542 map of Templarlands/Knights of St John which were being spit up to various families, while meeting with a nice family at a country estate. Clearly shows a castelated structure with curtain wall and corner towers. all that is left now is a gateway from the 17th century, however, this proves an earlier structure from the 16th century, and this may have earlier evidence. Suddenly realised that the kids playground is actually the sunken garden shown in the map!

So cross fingers for a new one coming soon.

[Dinosaur]

Straying dangerously into the territory of whether a 'castle' per se has to be a defensive structure or whether it can be just a non-defensible structure that looks the part for prestige or just as a pretty landscape feature/garden ornament. See the various papers in Med Arch over the last few years on the meaning of medieval examples - its a Saturday and I'm 50 miles from the office so can't give you any refs - worth reading anyway just for the entertainment of contributors politely going for each other's throats

[trainedchimp]

This talk of definitions reminds me too much of reading books distinguishing between roman fortresses, forts, fortlets, milecastles, signal towers and about 50 other types of fortified place, or the difference between a class 1a and 2c henge. Surely there's a very big point being missed there.

[steffanmilonas]

Thanks BARJ and DINOSAUR, I tried to reply to you both last weekend, but my internet connection was'nt having any of it. instead of posting a reply, it just said, " internet explorer cannot find this page". so I gave up.
Regards Steffan:face-approve:

[steffanmilonas]

TRAINEDCHIMP Please tell us the point were missing ?.
Regards Steffan:face-approve:

[Unitof1]

[SIZE=3]I only list sites that were or are still called CASTLES

[/SIZE]

Apart from Platos world of forms and Socrates ideals and beyond the meanings of words maybe it would help you if you pinpointed the authorities that undertook this castle calling. Is it, fore instance only things called castles on ordnance survey maps?

[Carrickavoy]

Hi Steffan,

have you looked at Mike Salter's publications on the castles of Ireland? Published by Folly publications these are excellent little paper backs for each of the provinces i.e. 'Castles of Ulster' (2004) etc. They dont have all the castles but an awful lot of them usually with plans and brief historical backgrounds.

What is the format of the book??

[steffanmilonas]

Thanks CARRICKAVOY. I have a book of general castles of Ireland by Mike Salter. But not any of the individual County guides. I have contacted each counties main tourist information office, and many can supply books covering their counties castles, I just dont have enough cash flow for that at the moment. But in time hopefully will be able to buy as many as I can.
The book in general is to list every site, that was known to be and is still called a "Castle". With a brief desciption and if possible photos.
P.S. Fry's book " Castles of Great Britain and Ireland" has 1,300 listings. Hopefully, Mine will have around 8000, when finnished. a sizable undertaking. And a huge Volume.
Thanks to EVERYONE for your continued support. Please keep the replies coming.
Regards Steffan:face-approve:

[trainedchimp]

I could tell you if I could work out exactly what it was myself...

But.

1) the definitions that archaeologists put on things and categories to put them into to 'describe' them are actually pretty high-level interpretations, and tell us a lot more about the archaeologists than anything they're actually trying to study - please don't start me on Roman military archaeology or that depressing trend in prehistory to talk about 'structured deposits' (agreeing with Dinosaur again. Something must be wrong...). Either way, you spend decades building up a typology, most of it arguing about the finer details of what 'is' or 'isn't' a castle, a henge or a barrow, rather than actually trying to understand the flipipng things.

2) The definitions that contemporaries used, where we can reconstruct them are, in my experience (medieval and post med mostly, but Roman, Early med and modern to a lesser degree) pretty changeable and arbitrary, even where things are built to very formulaic patterns and standardised plans. They change over time, over space and between audiences - even when the words signify the same physical thing, the meaning can be totally different (for castles, usually depending on which side of the wall you happened to be at any one point) - Roscommon would be interesting here with a high medieval castle (replaced by a C16th prodigy house thing) close to the site of a supposed earlier clan centre that is supposedly occupied while the castle was in one of several periods of disuse.

So the whole interpretive scheme is either arbitrary or but on some very shifting sands, neither of which are intellectually sustainable. So far, so unconstructively post-processual. However tracing how these constructs have been used against the use-history of structures and their cultural context(s) will actually tell you far more about what it all means (i.e. what a castle actually was/is) than trying to define something that is pretty well undefinable because it contains such innate variety. I think.