Water castle
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A water castle is a castle, whose outside walls are generally surrounded by water ditches called moats, which originally served the defense. Water castles where typically built in plains, where there are no steep hills or rocks to reinforce the strongholds.
They were usually developed from an early medieval motte-and-bailey. The construction of water castles served particularly in the flat country originally to make the entrance more difficult. In addition the water ditches were used as stores of water for a siege or a dry season. Such a castle usually had only one entrance, which led across a drawbridge, which was pulled up in the case of a siege. These water castles partly had even a fortress-like character.
In many places in Central Europe the formerly well-fortified castles in the course of the time were re-designed or converted to palaces, predominantly serving the purpose of representation and habitation.
Some typical water castles:
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[edit] in the Czech Republic
- Blatná in the town of the same name
[edit] in Denmark
- Egeskov Castle on central Funen
[edit] in England
- Bodiam Castle located in East Sussex
[edit] in Germany
- Schloss Brennhausen in northern Bavaria
- Schloss Dyck near Jüchen in the Rhein-Kreis Neuss
- Burg Gudenau in Wachtberg in the Rhein-Sieg district
- Schloss Rheydt in Mönchengladbach (enlarged to a fortress by Maximilian Pasqualini (1534–1572))
- Burg Vischering near Lüdinghausen in the district of Coesfeld
[edit] in Lithuania
- Trakai Island Castle in the town of the same name
[edit] in the Netherlands
- Muiderslot in Muiden 15 kilometers southeast of Amsterdam
