I heard somewhere that medieval castles did not look grey-ish or with visible stones and bricks, but was in fact white (plastered).
Is this true? If so, I think I, and for a large part many others, have been reconstructing medieval castles the wrong way.
I would like to know… which materials were used when finishing a castle wall in the middle ages? And are the vast majority of CGI-reconstructed castles using the wrong materials (stones, bricks etc.) when they should instead use plain white plastered walls?
For example, churches originally had the stone walls covered. But recently people thought that they had to show the stones, because that is the real difference with nowadays buildings.
I doubt that all medieval castles were white. How they looked probably varied a lot from place to place and depended largely on the purpose of the castle, available funding, locally available building materials, building style trends, and who build it. An important castle may need to be large and look impressive and thus is costly to build. But a small castle located on the outskirts of a territory only needs to fulfill its practical function (without the aesthetics).
Yeah, it wouldn’t make too much sense to plaster a castle built for war and with artillery. It would be like putting decorative wall paper up in an active military base. The process of creating all of the plaster, especially in those day, would also be extremely laborious and would easily take tens of thousands of gallons to coat a large castle. Probably more time consuming than building the castle itself.
If it was used on some stronghold type castles, it could be likely it was only used on some parts or in rare cases, either to intimidate the enemy with a show of wealth or just around the living quarter of high ranking knights and royalty as plaster keeps in heat and keeps out bugs and small animals.
In your case of making models for games it might be a good idea to make some of them with plaster. My reasoning is games often exaggerate the truth. If medieval kingdoms had exaggeratedly vast surplussed of resources and time, I’m sure they would have plastered their castles, painted them with their colors and maybe even added silver or gold statues and adornments.
The insides of the castles were definitely a lot more lavish than they look today, they were much more like churches or cathedrals than they were like the crumbling bare stone ruins they are today. They would often plaster them and cover them in tapestries. Some castles were plastered on the outside too, I guess that those with more cleanly cut stonework were bare all along while those with rougher stone may have had coatings.
All those were rarities, since on the west (Europe) they mainly took care of kingdom/empire - collecting tax, protecting roads and holding the fort. Castles/forts were mainly made for the army. Even in colonies, provinces there weren’t such a display of a prestige as we were made to believe (through movie media). Travel & study more! Mainly what was there, was only there if functional, necessary & maintainable. Beauty was made for worthy occupants only and only for royalties near or in the cities (where resources, market & peace were in abundance) - palaces.
There are a few examples of castles with outside coloration, but most were too bulky and built for function, not to impress people. Now, the INSIDES were frequently decorated with various scenes… frequently with noble/religious scenes at eye level, and more bawdy scenes higher up. I guess the pious kept their heads down.
Very late with a correct answer but it might help someone sometime doing a search. What was used was called ‘harling’, a finish of lime and stone aggregate. It was used on many castles, especially in Scotland and the north of England. The Great Hall at Stirling Castle, for example, was finished with harling. It served a practical purpose of protecting the mortar of the building although, myth to the contrary, people in the middle ages used a lot of decoration, often more than is used now. It was often white or cream but sometimes was other colors as well.
An overcoat would also help prevent water getting into the joints, where freezing and thawing would tend to break the rock. But I don’t think that we can “definitively” say whether or not this was used on any particular structure. No one’s cell-phone photographs from those days survives.
We know that the Egyptian pyramids were originally finished with facing stone … until some future invader identified a great source of stone and stole it all.
Absolutely. My ancestors had lived in austere castles that were built to withstand tribal wars and bandits. I notice that most castles in my country are located near the rivers. Who can ever live without water?
The Romans had a thing for whitewashing their buildings, and there’s even a debate about Hadrian’s Wall being rendered white. This Smithsonian exhibition shows how much the ancients loved to bling their artefacts. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/true-colors-17888/
