Ahmed Matiur Rahman
The idea of a castle is connected with defense. In fact, the word ‘castle’ comes from a Latin word weaning fort. So a castle was a home of a ruler or lord that could be defended. Even in ancient Egypt, the royal palaces were fortified with towers and parapets, and so were like castles. In ancient Greece, to, the chieftains fortified their palaces. But the castle as we think of it really came into its own during the Middle Ages in western Europe, from AD 1000 to AD 1500.The reason for this was the feudal individual nobles controlled their own sections of the country and their people. They would often attack or take advantage of neighboring areas in order to strengthen their power. And, of course, they would be attacked in return, so they had to make their own homes into strong forts, and thus built what we call castles. Since the conditions were pretty much alike in most of Europe, the castles that were built were quite similar, whether they were in France, Germany, Spain, or England. One of the first such structures was the Tower of London, begun in 1078 by William the conqueror. It was several stories high, had double walls, small windows, and spiral staircases in the corners of the tower. The lord and his garrison of troops lived there. Another early castle, Hedingham castle, in Essex, was built in 1130. It had double walls of stone twenty feet thick, and its corners were even thicker. There was a great centre hall, two storied high. The only light came from a few small windows high up in the wall. It was planned this way for reasons of defense; few and small window were good protection. Later on, castles were built around inner country yards, so that there would be more room for the people living in them, and more comfortable facilities could be set up.