Siege in
Miniature

Castles and the ways of breaking them, built as scale models in the manner of the plans-reliefs that royal engineers made of fortified towns. Set the counterweight and the release, then let the arm go.

Counterpoise trebuchet before a curtain wall

Wall 210 m away · 11 m high · 2.6 m thick · stone 90 kg

Speed–

Angle–

Range–

The arm is cocked and the sling laid in its trough.

The galleries

A castle was an argument with the people outside it

For about seven hundred years, the stone castle and the siege grew up together. Each new trick of the attacker, a taller tower, a heavier stone, a deeper mine, was answered by the builder with a moat, a round tower, a second ring of walls. Then gunpowder changed the argument, and the castle gave way to the low, angled fortress.

The models in these rooms show that argument in miniature. They are not pictures of one real castle: they are typical ones, built from what survives and what the sources say. Where the sources disagree, the labels say so.

Room I

The castle in section

A model sawn through the gate and the keep. Touch any part, from the moat to the well, to read what it was for.

Room II

The same hill, six centuries

One hill rebuilt by each age: a timber palisade, a stone keep, towers, concentric rings, gunports, and the angled bastions that ended the castle.

Room III

The trebuchet

Set the counterweight, the long arm, the sling and the release, and see where the stone goes and whether the wall cares.

Room IV

A ram at the gate

Swing the beam under its roof of hides against an oak gate, and meet what waits behind it.

Room V

A mine under a tower

Dig under the foundations, prop them, fire the props, or listen for the enemy digging toward you.

Room VI

Siegecraft

Nine ways to take a castle, from the mangonel to treachery, starvation and gunpowder.

Room VII