Machicolation is a projecting gallery or parapet on a castle wall or tower with openings in its floor, through which defenders could see and act straight down the face of the wall. The term comes from the French mâchicoulis; the Dutch equivalent is mezekouw. It solves a very specific problem: an attacker who had reached the base of the wall could no longer be reached from an ordinary parapet.
How it is built
- Corbels — rows of stone brackets projecting from the wall to carry the overhang
- Arches or stone slabs — spanning between the corbels, forming the floor of the walk
- Murder holes — the openings between the corbels, directly above the base of the wall
- Parapet — the wall on the outer side of the walk, often with crenellations and arrow loops
Because the walk projects, the floor with its openings lies outside the face of the wall. Whatever went through — stones, boiling water, quicklime, later fire and shot — landed precisely where the attacker stood, whether he was undermining the wall or setting a scaling ladder.
From function to ornament
Machicolation appears in Europe in the thirteenth century and remains a standard feature of serious defensive work into the fifteenth. Once gunpowder artillery arrives, the tall thin wall loses its value and the feature disappears from military architecture.
What survives is the shape. In the Gothic Revival, and on nineteenth century castles, town halls and villas, machicolation is applied purely as decoration: rows of corbels with no openings at all, intended to give a building a castellated character. The difference is easy to spot — real murder holes are open and sit directly over the wall base, decorative ones are closed.
| Real (defensive) | Open murder holes that sit directly over the wall base |
|---|---|
| Decorative (Gothic Revival, nineteenth century) | Rows of corbels with no openings at all, applied purely as decoration |
Related terms
- Crenellation
- Castle
- Corbel
- Cantilever
- Wall walk
- Gothic Revival
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