Fortified house
As the feast house a conditionally bulit building is designated as relatively strong walls in the castle research, - served the aristocratic owners to residential, military and ceremonial purposes - similar to the residential tower. The designated building may be part of a larger castle or stand individually. The festivals house is detectable at least since the 10th century. In the early modern period ( 16th and 17th century), a comparable type of house came increasingly into use, which was used as a slightly reinforced noble residence.
Solid Houses in the Early and High Middle Ages
The construction type of the fixed house can be the latest evidence from the mid-10th century. These were a free-standing building with längsrechteckigem floor plan and up to three storeys. The entrance was located mostly in the ground floor which was (often from field stones) erected in stone construction. The defensive character is reflected, among other things, the only small window openings or slits of light on the ground floor. The upper floors could also be executed in wood or timber construction or in stone. Since the preserved building remains, however, often does not go beyond the ground, an accurate reconstruction of the early medieval festivals houses is usually hardly possible. However, it can be stated that they had by their stone construction increased defense and representation of value when you consider that in early medieval castle building construction materials mainly used wood, clay and earth ( earth mounds ) were. As a predecessor of the design can be considered the early medieval Germanic hall, built in timber residential building with längsrechteckigem floor plan.
The festivities houses of the 10th and 11th century were often part of a castle and made their nucleus, which was often supplemented in later times by rebuilding and additional buildings. An example is a Carolingian period around 900 stone built house in Doue -la -Fontaine (Maine -et -Loire, France), which was increased at least two stories after a fire at 940 and then around 1000 additionally in previous ground floor area heaped with a mound of earth ( moth ) was surrounded. Using examples such as this can also be seen that a conversion could take place in a residential tower by later increases. The residential tower initially differs purely formally by its greater height from festivals house. The transition between the two types can be fluent in a particular case. This is also true for some French and English Donjons Keeps who do not have the vertical pronounced character of a typical tower construction, with its squat form.
In the 11th century there was a castle building in the juxtaposition of the two types Festival House and Tower House, both found, for example, as a main building on the moths of time. The fragmentary building stock makes an assignment often difficult, especially in the period often also resistant houses were increased by additional floors to tower structures.
From the second half of the 12th century began in central Europe, a new development in the castle architecture in the residential and military functions have been increasingly separated from each other: The result was the construction of fortified and usually uninhabited the keep on one side, and on the other side Palas or similar Saalbauten that differed substantially from the house earlier festivals by numerous large windows, architectural decoration and greater comfort. The summary and compact concentration of residential and military function no longer met the requirements of the noble lords this time.
Permanent dwellings in the early modern period
At the transition from the late Middle Ages to the Early Modern spread a new type of festivals house, which once again experienced a revival in the capacity of slightly reinforced needle seat in the 16th and 17th centuries. They began to reduce the older multi-unit Castle, summarize various buildings and the different building functions to concentrate under one roof again. These festivals houses were used for example as stand hunting and often met for landed gentry at the low cost of construction at that time requirements for defense and representation. The stone construction is at this time, of course - unlike in the Early Middle Ages - no longer a unique selling point. The attachment was often through loopholes for handguns on the ground floor, a moat and fortified bay windows and corner turrets (Tour Ellen or flock watchtowers ) in the roof. For the development of the upper floors, a staircase tower was erected in many cases. The main floors were equipped with larger windows and is designed for the befitting their housing needs of the noble owner. Thus the early modern festivals houses did not meet course the function of a military fort, but could be defended against smaller raids and corresponded with the sometimes more symbolic military elements of the noble representation. Often the festivals houses reach tower-like proportions by several bullets. In France, these buildings as maison forte or manor, in the English language called fortified manor house. They often formed the center of a farm and then took over the function of a mansion.
Old Hakeburg, Kleinmachnow, built around 1600
Weiherhaus
When Weiherhaus (often referred to in the diminutive as a fishpond ) is a small, easy- fortified noble residence, which was built on a natural or man-made island in a pond or a pond. Access was via a bridge with a drawbridge. Pond homes are often found in the late Middle Ages, primarily in southern Germany.