Stories of the ancient princely stronghold inspired Geoffrey of Monmouth to link the site with the legendary King Arthur, and Earl Richard of Cornwall staked his claim on the legend by raising Tintagel Castle there. Built partly on the mainland and partly on a dramatic rocky headland, it stands on a site occupied long before by ‘Dark Age’ Cornish rulers, traces of whose buildings you can still see nearby. No evidence has yet been found for merpeople or grindylows.įor a fortress defended by water, however, nowhere is quite as spectacular or as legend-haunted as 13th-century Tintagel Castle in Cornwall. This also created a moat to the north and east, surrounding the entire site with water. Geoffrey de Clinton, the chamberlain and treasurer of Henry I, dammed two streams to create the Mere which defended the castle from the south and west sides. At half a mile long and up to 150m wide, its vast Great Mere (or lake) was one of the largest man-made water defences in medieval Britain. Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire is a good example.
They included moated manors such as Eltham Palace where the moat can still be seen clearly today, and those – like Hogwarts – built on natural bodies of water. Water-defended castles were built throughout medieval England. Hogwarts has seven storeys and several looming towers, as well as “a hundred and forty-two staircases: wide, sweeping ones, narrow, rickety ones some that led somewhere different on a Friday.” In the film series, the castle was brought to life as a vast fortified mansion surrounded on all sides by a lake.
#MAGICAL NAMES FOR PRISON WINDOWS#
“Perched atop a high mountain on the other side, its windows sparkling in the starry sky, was a vast castle with many turrets and towers…”
Though perhaps not considered a castle by most of us, Hogwarts School is described as one in the first of the Harry Potter books by J.K. Here we examine some of the most famous castles and fortified residences in fiction, and some of their real-world counterparts which you can visit for yourself. While the fortresses described in fiction are often exaggerated, many have parallels with the elaborate style and tactical design of real castles. Above: Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, which has close associations to Elizabeth IĬastles have long been a cornerstone in the world of fantasy storytelling across literature, TV, film and gaming.
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