How long did it take?

It is difficult to say with any certainty how long it took to build any castle, as each one is different and the site, conditions and resources of the owner unique.

A timber castle could have been constructed in a matter of months from start to finish. The majority of the labour was required in the construction of the motte. Holden (1967) has estimated that a motte with a base diameter of 40m and a height of 5m would have taken 50 men 42 days to build if they were working a ten hour day.

This is working on the assumption that one man equipped with simple digging tools could shift 0.42m³ (15 cubic feet) of soil in one hour. The speed of digging would greatly depend on the quality of the tools and the dryness of the earth; the wetter the ground the harder it would have been to dig. A man would also dig less in the afternoon as he became tired, so a day's work may have not been much more than 2.4m³ (80-90 cubic foot). This output would have also depended on the type of soil that was being dug, as loamy and sandy soil is much easier to dig than soft rock or stiff clay.

In a timber castle a great deal of time would have been needed for carpenters to create the beams, floor-boarding and rafters. Spence Geddes (inEstimating for Building and Civil Engineering Works, George Newnes Ltd., 1963) has attempted to put estimates on the time taken by a skilled carpenter to carry out these tasks. He estimates that a carpenter could produce 2.5 cubic feet of ceiling beams and joists in one hour, 24 square feet of floor boarding in one hour and 2 cubic feet of rafters in one hour. However, it must be remembered that these approximations are for modern day carpenters using tools that are more sophisticated than those of a medieval carpenter.

Spence Geddes has also estimated the time taken by bricklayers and plasterers to perform their part of the work. To build a wall 14 inches thick and using a modern standard sized brick a bricklayer could lay 0.54 square yards in one hour. A medieval rough mason would have been using stones that were a lot larger than standard bricks. Although this would cut down on some of the time required, these blocks were heavier to lift into place and so any time made up by their size would probably have been lost because of their weight. A plasterer takes one hour to plaster 4 square yards of internal render with a hair and lime mortar, and would take the same time to do a coat ½ inch thick on the external walls.  

These estimates do not take into account the time taken to build the scaffolding so that the builders could reach the higher levels, nor the time taken to resource and provide the materials. These are also only approximate guesses for the simple construction of the castle, as the carving and finishing of the stone blocks would have taken a lot longer. In a discussion with Simon Hudson, a stonemason for Capps & Capps (currently working on Hereford Cathedral), he estimated that it would have taken one stonemason, working with two labourers, at least one month (if not more) to produce the stonework in the picture on the right (from the chapel at Goodrich).

The column and arches on the left, which are situated in the solar at Goodrich, are surprising in that Simon Hudson has estimated that each block of the column would have taken one day, whilst each voussoir (the curved blocks of the arches) would have taken up to two days. There may have been more than one mason working on it but Simon Hudson says that to get the blocks fitting together perfectly it would have been better for one man to have done it all.

To carve a simple block with accurate 90 degree angles such as the ones in the picture on the left may have taken a hewer or stonemason one day. Today blocks like these are cut by mechanical saw.

Accounts for expenditure recorded by the Exchequer are of some use on the subject of the length of time it took to build castles, as they list the materials purchased and the salaries paid. However, much of the labour used in the castle construction would have been forced and unpaid, and therefore no accurate record would have been kept of how many men were employed and for how long they worked.

[Original author: Miranda Greene, 2002]