A hoarding — also called a brattice, French *hourd*, German *Hurde*, Dutch *oppotting* — is a timber, overhanging and roofed gallery built along the top of a medieval wall or tower. From it, defenders could shoot and drop missiles under cover, including straight down the face of the wall, which is impossible from an open crenellated parapet.
It is one of the most ingenious solutions in medieval military architecture: a timber structure that extends the defence downwards without having to thicken the wall itself.
How it worked
- Cantilevered beams. Heavy timbers were pushed through openings in the wall or rested on stone corbels, projecting half a metre to a metre beyond the face.
- A floor with drop holes. A timber deck on those beams had openings through which stones or hot liquids could be dropped directly onto attackers at the base.
- Walls and roof. Thick planking on the outer face with loopholes, and a roof above against fire arrows and weather.
The beam holes in the masonry — known as putlog holes — are often still visible in surviving castle and town walls, long after the timber structure itself has gone.
Advantage and weakness
Advantage: timber is light and quick to erect. When a siege threatened, a hoarding could be put up at short notice and taken down again afterwards. Hoardings were built in single- and two-storey versions.
Weakness: timber burns. Besiegers aimed their fire arrows at the hoarding for exactly that reason. From the late medieval period onwards the timber structure was increasingly replaced by a stone version: machicolation, a projecting stone parapet with drop holes carried on corbels.
Dating
Hoardings are documented from the twelfth century onwards and became increasingly common through the later Middle Ages, before being superseded by stone machicolation and, eventually, by artillery fortification.
Related terms
- Machicolation
- Crenel
- Parapet
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