Portcullis | Hacker News Reader

Portcullis

medievalbritain.com

> For example, soldiers could drop hot oil from holes in the ceiling, while archers and crossbowmen could shoot missiles from arrowslits on the sides.

The Santa Barbara County Courthouse, despite having been constructed in 1926, incorporates such holes and slits. I don't think opposing counsel has ever had boiling oil dumped upon them, but at least the architects (and tradies?) had a bit of fun putting these in.

The only reason why I already knew the name of this type of gate was because Fezzik was ordered to prevent it from closing in 'The Princess Bride'. Porte cochere are very common in my neighborhood as there's a zoning requirement for all garages to be behind the primary residence, but so far, I've yet to see anyone equip one with a portcullis.

> They were an essential defence mechanism, as they allowed the castle to be organized when facing an ambush.

How do you "ambush" a castle? Perhaps TFA meant "siege"?

One of the key features of a portcullis is because it drops into the closed position under gravity, it's very fast to close. Opening it is slow and involves a winch.

That's in contrast to another iconic medieval castle feature, the drawbridge, which drops into the open position, and closing it involves a winch.

And in contrast to simple doors, which are reasonably fast to both open and close, with no winches required, and which are widely used to this day.

Presumably the article's authors then asked themselves under what circumstances a castle would need something very fast to close - faster than a door or drawbridge - and concluded it was for surprise attacks.

I seem to recall that some drawbridges could be counter weighted and have supports that could be removed quickly that would then free the counterweight and close the bridge immediately.

You sneak up at night, maybe with a few key people paid off ahead of time.

Macbeth can tell you how.

They lost me at dropping hot oil. There is no evidence of anyone dropping oil, it would have been expensive and hardly better than boiling water.

We have historical evidence of using hot oil, especially pitch (which is "oil" in the sense of petroleum, not plant oil), e.g. see [1], which provides academic sources.

If we go beyond Medieval Europe, using hot oil was observed by Josephus in AD 67 [2].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/26l4ae/was_b...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_thermal_weapons#Hot_oil

Imagine being under siege and dropping pitch on someone.

Give it 8-or-so years and they'll be in real trouble

Hot pitch is very fluid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4UDAa0i0tw.

I learned what this word meant in the FRC 2016 competition :^)

For anyone interested in this sort of thing this 5 part blog series from ACOUP on fortifications is really interesting.

The 3rd part specifically goes into castles.

https://acoup.blog/2021/10/29/collections-fortification-part...

"Portcullis" seems somehow much more deadly than "sliding door"

not if you know spanish

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