Association de Sauvegarde du

CHATEAU DE GAVRAY

THE ENTRANCE TO THE CASTLE AND THE BARBICAN

1 - The Barbican :

Visitors now take a path that leads them to a gap in the perimeter wall. The configuration of the land suggests that the barbican, referred to in a text of 1203, was located on the rocky platform that dominates the current road and that a drawbridge made it possible to span the ditch, which has now been partially filled in, which protected the fortified entrance. This work, built by John Landless, who became Duke of Normandy and King of England on the death of his brother Richard, responded to the need to fortify its places to face the threats of the King of France, Philippe Auguste who was preparing to conquer Normandy. To get to the castle, you had to cross the barbican, then a drawbridge and arrive at the tower that protected the entrance and which has almost completely disappeared.

The barbican is a round or half-moon project, placed at the bridgehead beyond the ditch in front of the main gates. Lower than the main works so as to be always under the fire of the defenders, the role of this advanced defence was to contain the attacker, to block the axis of the main gate by prohibiting frontal assaults, to gather the troops before an exit and incidentally to take from the rear by a flanking fire the troops who had ventured into the ditch

2 - The entrance to the castle:

The route of the path that leads to this false entrance is not contemporaneous with the occupation of the site. It is necessary to imagine, in the middle of the breach in the wall, to which the road leads directly, the most fortified point of the enclosure because it was also the most vulnerable. The entrance to the castle could be located to the south of this false entrance, although we do not know its shape or what type of door it was intended to be. Only an excavation of this very compacted earth with enormous quantities of backfill would perhaps make it possible to answer these questions.

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