© 2000-2008 by Marvin Hull
At first, castles were made up of nothing but earth, with timber towers and buildings. They could be built quickly, and without skilled laborers. In later castle development, castles were built of stone, or converted to stone. Stone was quarried locally, if possible, or taken from buildings near the site. In some castles you can even see some Roman red bricks.

Varieties of local stone included hard chalk, fine-grained limestone, green limestone, granular limestone, cellular igneous rock, and flint. Some of the more known quarries are in Pevensey, Corfe, Folkestone, and Barnack. The Normans even brought some of the stone with them from Caen, France. Most of the time, the king owned the quarries.

Stone Chart
Type	Color	Location
Sandstone	Purple	St Asaph Wales
Stone	Light red	Cheshire England
Sandstone	Yellow	Flint Wales
Limestone	Grey	Rhuddlan Wales
Trassic Sandstone	Brown	Radyr Wales
Lias Sandstone	Blue-grey	Glamorgan Wales
Sutton Stone	Conglamerate	Southern Down and Sutton England

The stone was quarried using wedges, then split to the desired sizes. The sizes depended upon the needs of the project that stones were being quarried for, but, for castle building, a foot square was the most common size. Oftentimes, transportation of the stone was done by water, as this happened to be the quickest and cheapest way. Materials were also transported by horse drawn carts, packhorses, or manpower.

Mortar was made of water, sand, and lime mixed together. Other ingredients were often used in place of the above, or to strengthen the mortar. This included cockleshells (a small mollusk), oxblood, and crushed chalk. Materials for the mortar were collected nearby the construction site, if possible, or transported to the site. Lime was made by heating stone in a lime kiln.

Bricks were made and used in the 13th and 14th centuries, but they were more common from the 15th century onward. Very few real castles were built of bricks. Some bricks would be taken from previous buildings or walls, the most common being from Roman works.

Metals used from the 11th through the 15th centuries included lead and iron. Lead was used for plumbing and roofing. The most notable places for getting lead were in Derbyshire and Cumbria. Iron was used for too many things to list here, but it came from Staffordshire, Yorkshire, Northumberland, and Gloucestershire. It was delivered as bars and ingots and shaped at the site. Some furniture and fittings were made of brass, and, on rare occasions, pewter or gold may have been used.

Timber continued to be used during all periods of castle building, as it was needed for bracing, framing, and scaffolding, heat, furniture, and other uses.

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