With tomorrow's scheduled protests looming, a look at old-school defenses.
French residents are throwing hot water out their windows to stop rioters from breaking into the storefronts below them... If they are excited about what hot water can do, wait until the French learn about guns! Too bad they don't have many of those...
— Shawn Farash (@Shawn_Farash) October 19, 2026
There is a reason we've had multiple posts that mention machicolations and murder holes as amenities to value when shopping for your castle, donjon or stand-alone tower.
The word machicolation probably comes from the old French words for ‘crush’ (machier) and ‘neck’ (col). Neck crushers.
As noted introducing 2024's "Caution: RuPaul Built A Bunker (just don't call it a bunker)":
This is indeed where castles studies can lead. You start to think, say, that's not a bad idea and next thing you know you're pouring boiling pitch onto the swarming hordes at the base of the tower.(machicolations baby)
Earlier:
Tips For Buying Your Next Castle
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The next thing to pay attention to is verticality....
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The linked pictures lead to our third consideration, your spiral stairs. From the (maybe) adulterous wife tower above...
The first thing you notice is the spiral is correct.
Your men-at-arms retreating up the stairs from the attackers will have their right
hand free to thrust, parry and chop while the swing of the interlopers
is impeded by the outer wall.
However:
On newel-post spiral stairs the tactics are different....
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...Moving on to a couple of the Italian offerings.
Castello di Montefiore has pretty much everything you are looking for in a castle including machicolations under the battlements at the top of the towers for dropping your flaming pitch or whatever on the besiegers:
There! Underneath the crenelated battlements are structures with holes to drop stuff through!
Much less exposed than standing at the window with your tea kettle.
After oat prices jumped in 2023 we saw:
....Takeaway - the urchins can still buy their own damn gruel and won't be knocking on the portcullis for a while yet.
However, should oat prices turn higher again, you may want to cook some up to leave on the other side of the moat. Here's the Royal Society of Chemistry with their re-creation of your basic Oliver Twist workhouse gruel along with some signage you may wish to use:
Although somewhat filling the workhouse gruel leaves much to be desired as this article from the British Medical Journal explains in some detail. Still, beggars really can't be choosers and should the urchin class breach your outer defenses, you can always drop the boiling slop through the machicolations and murder holes of your fortifications to hold them at bay.
For what it's worth the workhouse that inspired Dickens (though not the one his father was in) is now an area of luxury condominiums, thus explaining some of London's affordable housing crisis.
And if you are coming at things from the other side, we have:
News You Can Use: How To Storm A Castle