Castle Terms - C

CAPHOUSE: gabled turret, often containing a stair-head. 

CARPENTER: a skilled craftsman who shaped or made things of wood. 

CASTLELAN: a person in charge of the castle. Custodian. 

CASTLELLATION: battlements. Implying use as decorative feature.

CASTLE: properly fortified military residence. Derived from the Latin castellum. 

CAVALIER TOWER: a square wall-tower astride a curtain to provide additional living space. 

CHAMFER: beveled face formed by cutting off corner of stone or timber structure. 

CAPITAL: head of a column. 

CAPUT: feudal term for the administrative center of a lordship. 

CHIVALRY: rules of polite and honorable behavior that knights were supposed to follow. 

CONCENTRIC: castles having two parallel lines of defence, the outer wall closely surrounding the inner. 

CONSTABLE: title of governor of the castle: also warden, captain, castellan. 

CORBEL: projecting stone (or timber) feature on a wall to support an overhanging parapet, platform, turret, etc. 

COUNTERSCARP: outer slope of a defensive ditch. 

CRENELLATION: fortification- a "license to crenellate" was official permission to raise a fortified building or fortify an existing structure. Jagged protective stonework at the top of a castle wall. 

CRENELS: low sections of the battlements. 

CREASING: groove in a wall face insuring a weather proof junction with a roof or chimney which abuts it. 

CROSSLET/CROSSLIT: a loophole arranged in the form of a cross. 

CRUCK: curved timber from ground to roof ridge to support the roof. 

CULB: bowl. 

CURTAIN: wall enclosing a bailey, courtyard, or ward, generally constructed in stone. 

CUSP: projecting point usually in the upper portion of a tracery window and often seen in ogee-headed windows. 

CUSTO: temporary custodian or governor of a castle or lordship.


8KMZ39BH6XDH