An English Castle.  

The typical English Castles were always one of my favourite buildings. So, when I got the idea to build a castle. I decided to build it as real 
as possible. I had some drawings with plans and sections of (real) English castles and a very interesting book, Sidney Toy’s “Castles, their 
construction and history”. This book gives you lots of information – and most important – dimensions about all kinds of details of these 
masterpieces of construction and architecture. At first, I converted the original drawings into LEGO-format at a scale 1: 25. (I always build 
on that scale). After that, I started building. I think the pictures tell the storey. All these details were implemented in this model of a typical 
rectangular keep or donjon. There is the entrance doorway on the second storey, mostly the principal hall, with its heavy doors, portcullis and 
machicolations. The stairway defended from two galleries, which ran along on either side high above the steps and could be occupied by 
defenders raining missiles on enemies advancing upwards. The thick walls strengthened by heavy corner buttresses. In these buttresses were 
located the mural latrines and the spiral staircases. The windows in these walls were small, having internal jambs, which recessed back in 
three orders. Not forgetting the Great Hall, with its fireplaces and its two tiers of windows, the upper tier with a mural gallery, which runs 
round the walls. Each fireplace has a flue, carried up through the wall and finished with a loophole. You can even see the holes where the 
wooden floor beams once had been set. As a protection for the roof the walls of the keep were carried up so high above the level of the gutter 
as not only to mask the roof but to form two tiers of fighting lines; the battlements and, below the battlements, a row of meurtières. (Recesses 
in the wall sufficiently large for the accommodation of an archer, and pierced with a loophole). A noticeable feature of this keep is the 
existence of a prison with a true oubliette, which is constructed in the thickness of the wall and has no window or other entrance than from 
above.

Building and thinking in a way as the former castle builders did was a very nice and instructive experience. On the outside, this castle may 
look a rather dull, but on the inside however, are the beauty and the interesting details.           

The same as with the real castles, a lot of bricks was needed. Some 60,000 bricks were used in this model, which weights about 120 
kilogram’s 
The dimensions are 91x72x114cm (3’ x 2’, 4” x 3’, 9”)
 I build it in about 265 hour.