Editing Keep (section)

===Timber keeps (9th–12th centuries)===
The earliest keeps were built as part of [[motte-and-bailey castle]]s from the 10th century onwards – a combination of documentary and archaeological evidence places the first such castle, built at [[Les Rues-des-Vignes|Vincy]], in 979.<ref>King, p.38.</ref> These castles were initially built by the more powerful lords of [[County of Anjou|Anjou]] in the late 10th and 11th centuries, in particular [[Fulk III, Count of Anjou|Fulk III]] and his son, [[Geoffrey II, Count of Anjou|Geoffrey II]], who built a great number of them between 987 and 1060.<ref>DeVries, pp.203–4.</ref> [[William the Conqueror]] then introduced this form of castle into England when he invaded in 1066, and the design spread through south Wales as the Normans expanded up the valleys during the subsequent decades.<ref>King, pp.20–1.</ref>

[[File:Donjon chateau a motte saint sylvain.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|Reconstructed keep at [[Saint-Sylvain-d'Anjou]] in [[Maine-et-Loire]]]]
In a motte-and-bailey design, a castle would include a mound called a motte, usually artificially constructed by piling up turf and soil, and a bailey, a lower walled enclosure. A keep and a protective wall would usually be built on top of the motte. Some protective walls around a keep would be large enough to have a wall-walk around them, and the outer walls of the motte and the wall-walk could be strengthened by filling in the gap between the wooden walls with earth and stones, allowing it to carry more weight – this was called a ''garillum''.<ref>King, p.55.</ref> Smaller mottes could only support simple towers with room for a few soldiers, whilst larger mottes could be equipped with a much grander keep.<ref name="DeVries, p.209">DeVries, p.209.</ref> Many wooden keeps were designed with a ''bretasche'', a square structure that overhung from the upper floors of the building, enabling better defences and a more sturdy structural design.<ref>King, pp.53–4.</ref> These wooden keeps could be protected by [[hide (skin)|skins and hides]] to prevent them from being easily set alight during a siege.<ref name="DeVries, p.209"/>

One contemporary account of these keeps comes from Jean de Colmieu around 1130, who described how the nobles of the [[Calais]] region would build "a mound of earth as high as they can and dig a ditch about it as wide and deep as possible. The space on top of the mound is enclosed by a palisade of very strong hewn logs, strengthened at intervals by as many towers as their means can provide. Inside the enclosure is a citadel, or keep, which commands the whole circuit of the defences. The entrance to the fortress is by means of a bridge, which, rising from the outer side of the moat and supported on posts as it ascends, reches to the top of the mound."<ref>Toy, p.53.</ref> At [[Durham Castle]], contemporaries described how the keep arose from the "tumulus of rising earth" with a keep reaching "into thin air, strong within and without", a "stalwart house...glittering with beauty in every part".<ref>Kenyon, p.13 citing Armitage 1912: pp.147–8.</ref> As well as having defensive value, keeps and mottes sent a powerful political message to the local population.<ref>Durand, p.17.</ref>

Wooden keeps could be quite extensive in size and, as Robert Higham and Philip Barker have noted, it was possible to build "...very tall and massive structures."<ref>Higham and Barker, p.244.</ref>{{refn|The timber structure of surviving medieval [[bell tower]]s have provided archaeologists with indications of at least some of the architectural techniques available at the time.<ref>Higham and Barker, p.246.</ref>|group=nb}} As an example of what these keeps may have comprised, the early 12th-century chronicler Lambert of Ardres described the wooden keep on top of the motte at the castle of [[Ardres]], where the "...first storey was on the surface of the ground, where were cellars and granaries, and great boxes, tuns, casks, and other domestic utensils. In the storey above were the dwelling and common living-rooms of the residents in which were the larders, the rooms of the bakers and butlers, and the great chamber in which the lord and his wife slept...In the upper storey of the house were garret rooms...In this storey also the watchmen and the servants appointed to keep the house took their sleep."<ref>Brown, p.30.</ref>

In the [[Holy Roman Empire]], tall, free-standing, wooden (later stone), fighting towers called ''[[Bergfried]]e'' were commonly built by the 11th century, either as part of motte-and-bailey designs or, as part of ''Hohenburgen'' castles, with characteristic inner and outer courts.<ref>Kaufmann and Kaufmann, p.109; Purton, p.195.</ref> ''Bergfriede'', which take their name from the German for a [[bell tower|belfry]], had similarities to keeps, but are usually distinguished from them on account of ''Bergfriede'' having a smaller area or footprint, usually being non-residential and being typically integrated into the outer defences of a castle, rather than being a safe refuge of last resort.<ref>Kaufmann and Kaufmann, pp.123, 306; Thompson (2008), pp.22–3.</ref>{{refn|In practice, smaller keeps are often hard to distinguish from the design of a ''Bergfried'' – it is also worth bearing in mind the lack of clarity of the term ''keep'' when drawing distinctions of this kind.<ref>Kaufmann and Kaufmann, p.306.</ref>|group=nb}}