Audley's Castle

Audley's Castle, is a 16th century castle located near Strangford, County Down, Northern Ireland. Strangford is a village in County Down, Northern Ireland. ... County Down, (An Dún in Irish) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, covering an area of 2,448 km² (945 square miles). ... Dieu et mon droit (Royal motto) (French for God and my right)3 Northern Irelands location within the UK Official languages English, Irish, Ulster Scots Capital and largest city Belfast First Minister Office suspended Area  - Total Ranked 4th 13,843 km² Population  - Total (2001)  - Density Ranked 4th 1,685...

There are thousands of small stone towers similar to Audley's Castle in the Irish countryside; they are one of the commonest of archaeological sites, which tells us one thing: these were not buildings put up for the higher aristocracy, but for lesser lords and gentry. Most were built in the late Middle Ages (roughly 1350-1550). Audley's was built towards the end of this period. From written documents we may note the name of the family who owned it in a certain year but rarely anything else. Archaeology or sometimes in American English archeology (from the Greek words αρχαίος = ancient and λόγος = word/speech) is the study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains, including architecture, artefacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes. ... -1... A lord is a male who has power and authority. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ...

Audley's Castle consists of a tower set within a yard (technically known as a bawn) which is enclosed by a thin wall, with a simple gate. The door of the tower is guarded by a high arch stretching between two turrets. Men on the roof level could drop things from behind this arch on to anyone standing outside the door below. The dropping of hot oil didn't, in fact, actually happen. The price of oil was far too high to waste, and dropping liquids through air is the best way to cool them, so that the boiling water or oil would simply be pleasantly warm when it landed. What was dropped were rocks, cheaper and better.

The tower has one main room on each floor, with one or two subsidiary rooms off each of the big ones. The ground floor has small windows and no fireplace or latrine and was for storage of provisions. The first floor has better windows, a large fireplace and access to a latrine; this was a room for the owner to live in and entertain his friends. It also has a chute for throwing dirty water away, so the large fireplace was also probably used for cooking on. The second floor was probably the lord’s private room for sleeping and his family life: servants and others could be accommodated in the attic. A fireplace with a burning fire. ... A latrine is a method of disposal of human waste used in rural areas and much of the developing world. ... Servant has a number of meaning: A servant is another word for domestic worker, a person who is hired to provide regular household or other duties, and receives compensation. ... Meanings for the term include: Attic (always capitalised) is an adjective for something or someone coming from Attica or Athens. ...

There is very little historical information about the buildings in the small courtyard around Audley’s. Only a minority of towers had courtyard walls at all, and their buildings were clearly less importance than the tower. They were built at a time when the population had shrunk drastically after the Black Death, and the profitable, market side of the Irish economy was much more dependent on cattle than on grain. Elaborate farm buildings were unnecessary in England, as they were in Scotland or the north of England, where cattle or sheep were also important in the economy; so too were tower house in the countryside. Illustration of the Black Death from the Toggenburg Bible (1411). ... Royal motto (French): Dieu et mon droit (Translated: God and my right) Englands location within the British Isles Official language English de facto Capital London de facto Largest city London Area – Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population – Total (mid-2004) – Total (2001 Census) – Density Ranked 1st UK... Royal motto: Nemo me impune lacessit (English: No one provokes me with impunity) Scotlands location within the UK Languages English, Gaelic, Scots Capital Edinburgh Largest city Glasgow First Minister Jack McConnell Area - Total - % water Ranked 2nd UK 78,782 km² 1. ... Binomial name Bos taurus Linnaeus, 1758 Cattle (called cows in vernacular usage) are domesticated ungulates, a member of the subfamily Bovinae of the family Bovidae. ... For other uses, see sheep (disambiguation). ...

These towers are different from castles of the great lords, which had large halls for public events and a number of different rooms for the members of their large households. The towers in different parts of the country vary, with distinct regional patterns. Audley’s with its two turrets linked by an arch is one of a type found in County Down only. Further south, in the Pale, the towers often have two or more turrets but they do not guard the door like those at Audley’s. In Munster, they have an elaborate display of roof-level defences which, on examination, are barely workable, while the number of rooms is greater than those of County Down. The main point was not defence, but to give the free holding gentry of comparatively modest resources comfortable and impressive places to live in, literally towering above their lands and peasants. Turret (highlighted) attached to a tower on a baronial building in Scotland In architecture, a turret (from Italian: torretta, little tower; Latin: turris, tower) is a small tower that projects from the wall of a building, such as a medieval castle or baronial house. ... County Down, (An Dún in Irish) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, covering an area of 2,448 km² (945 square miles). ... The Pale or the English Pale comprised a region in a radius of 20 miles around Dublin which the English in Ireland gradually fortified against incursion from Gaels. ... Munster (Irish: An Mhumhain, IPA: ) is the southernmost province of Ireland, comprising the counties of Clare, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford. ...