City Castle By The Sea

Common features
• Motte
A motte was an earthen mound with a flat top. It was often artificial, although sometimes it incorporated a pre-existing feature of the landscape. The excavation of earth for the mound left a ditch around the motte, which acted as a further defence. Sometimes a nearby stream was diverted to flood the ditch, creating a moat. "Motte" and "moat" derive from the same Old French word, indicating that the features were originally associated and depended on each other for their construction. Although the motte is usually associated with the bailey to form a motte-and-bailey castle, this was not always the case and there are instances where a motte existed on its own. "Motte" refers to the mound alone, but it was often surmounted by a fortified structure, such as a keep, and the flat top would be surrounded by a palisade. It was common for the motte to be accessed via a flying bridge (a bridge over the ditch from the counterscarp of the ditch around the motte to the edge of the top of the mound), as represented by the Bayeux Tapestry's depiction of Château de Dinan. Sometimes a motte covered an older castle or hall, whose rooms became underground storage areas and prisons beneath a new keep.