Who would be employed?

During the Middle Ages the provision of housing for the ruling classes was commonly an obligation of the least privileged, the peasants and villagers that were to be ruled by these leaders.

The number of people and the skill required varied greatly between stone and timber castles.

A timber castle would employ only the minimum of builders to construct it and required very little skill, as it was a simple design. A "skeleton" of the castle was erected as a timber frame. The joints of the frame were slotted together with mortise and tenon joints and a cylindrical peg placed through them both to hold it together. The panels of the frame would then be infilled with wooden stakes and covered with wattle and daub, which was a mixture of manure, straw, mud and horsehair.

The inhabitants of villages are likely to have had experience in basic carpentry, thatching, wattle and daub, etc. as they could not afford skilled labour to build their own dwellings, but it is unlikely that they possessed the skills required to construct stone castles.

Stone castles required a great deal more planning, labour and skill. An architect was employed to design and plan the castle; he would be highly skilled and would have probably worked on several different castles. The architects would most likely be Norman, as the native English had neither the knowledge nor the skill to build a castle of this type.

A master mason was employed to oversee the planning and building of the castle; he would also organise the accounts, as the construction of a castle required a great deal of expenditure. Most probably the money for wages would have been paid to the master mason for him to distribute. He would have decided how much each worker was entitled to, depending on his experience.

The master mason's chief responsibility was to establish the number of men and quantity of materials needed and also to decide on the plans and the order of operations. He was the equivalent of a modern day Project Manager. It is likely that the master mason gained his experience from overseeing smaller projects before advancing onto larger undertakings such as castles.

The stone for the castle structure was cut into blocks from the quarry by a group of skilled men called hewers.

The stone would then go to stonemasons who would carve the blocks into the right shape and size and add any decoration that was needed. They would cut the arrow-slit windows and the blocks to frame the doorways. This was a highly skilled job without much room for error.

The finished blocks would then be passed to the rough masons who would lay the courses of the walls. This job was very similar to that of modern day bricklayers; the blocks were cemented in with mortar before another course was laid.

The castle would also employ a number of other craftsmen. Carpenters were needed to make the doors, window shutters, palisade fencing, bailey buildings and roofs. The carpenters would have also made the scaffolding necessary for the erection of the castle. Highly skilled smiths were needed to make the portcullis gates, hinges and bolts, as well as many of the tools involved in construction. Labourers were required to do the fetching and carrying, as well as the more menial jobs such as digging the ditches and clearing rubble.

[Original author: Miranda Greene, 2002]