Flock Watchtower

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Schar watchtower with battlements

A crowd watchtower (also a crowd watch tower , échauguette , pepper box , high watchtower or listening house ) is a small bay tower on a bastion top, wall or building corner, which has a round or polygonal floor plan. It usually stands on a console and is protruding. Its upper end is either a roof or a crenellated platform.

description

Crowd watchtowers were first built on medieval castles in the 12th century and were also in use on fortresses until the 16th century . In the Gothic period they appeared in large numbers on so-called five - button towers . Later, crowd watch towers were only used as a decorative element in secular buildings . Originally they were used as observation points for guards and therefore always have viewing openings in the masonry. In addition, there are often fortification elements such as loopholes and machicolations , while the towers often form the corner of a battlement .

Eugène Viollet-le-Duc suspected in his Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française du XIe au XVe siècle that the early crowd watch towers - just like the Hurden of that time - were made entirely of wood and the first stone examples were very simple corner towers with a round or square plan that were placed on corners of defensive walls or defensive towers .

Examples

Wall

  • Crowd watchtower of the fortress Pyrmont

  • Flock watchtower at Fort de Savoie in Colmars

  • Brouage, fortress wall with two pepper boxes

  • Maillezais Abbey, pepper box on "breakwater"

  • Bartizan Gardjola in Senglea in Malta

tower

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Shar watchtower  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Annie Gay: Châteaux et demeures du Jura . Editions Cabedita, Yens [ua] 1998, ISBN 2-88295-234-1 , p. 14.
  2. ^ E. Viollet-le-Duc: Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture franc̜aise du XIe au XVIe siècle . Vol. 5, p. 115.