The Spiral Staircase
Clockwise staircase, Château de Cingé, Bossay sur Claise.
Nerds (me) love castles, especially those massive stone spiral staircases. For people of a certain age (me) they conjure up images of a sword brandishing, swashbuckling, Errol Flynn in those cheesy films.
These impressive feats of engineering couldn’t be done today, could they? Yes. One is being built in Burgundy.*
The story goes that this ingeniously clever concept for defence was dreamed up by stonemasons. It was state of the art, cutting edge, precision engineering. Designed to be extremely narrow, space was so tight there was room for only one at a time. As most men are right handed, stairs spiralling up clockwise gave those coming down the advantage. Not only could he draw his sword, he could strike downwards and launch effective blows on the enemy below. Right handers would have found it difficult to draw their sword. Even if it was already in hand, the inner wall of the spiral would prevent him from wielding it.
This is why, in the Middle Ages, or so it’s said, left handed soldiers were much in demand. They could use their swords going up spiral staircases.
The massive central pillar not only holds the whole shebang together but coming down, keeping tight to the inner wall, a defender could hide and wait in ambush. The attacker would have to round the curve and face his adversary before being able to strike.
And if you thought the uneven steps in staircases are the result of hundreds of years of tourists clumping up and down you would be wrong. Stone masons were mathematicians. They didn’t make mistakes. They designed the stairs with differing heights. Each was built separately, each was different, resulting in irregularities. Known as Trip Steps, defenders of the tower would know each one in the dark. Strangers, especially those wearing armour, would fall and make one hell of a racket alerting anyone above.
The spiral staircase in Madame’s Studer’s Château Cingé in Bossay sur Claise was built in a clockwise direction. Although it bordered land under English occupation, Madame’s Château, which had a moat, massive walls, a drawbridge, two defensive towers, a Keep and a spiral staircase, somehow managed to survive The Hundred Years War.
Mind you, it’s doubtful anyone ever got as far as the spiral staircase. It’s odds on that many turned out to be something of a white elephant. Weighed down by armour and weapons, an attacker would first have to get across a moat, scale walls, kill armed defenders on the battlements, dodge crossbows from arrow slits, storm the drawbridge, avoid boiling water** and caustic quicklime hurled from above then escape from the narrow, walled passage closed off by the portcullis.
Anti-clockwise staircase, Château Royal d'Amboise.
Eagle eyed visitors to Château Amboise notice that the staircases rise Anti-clockwise*** which means, one presumes, they were built when wars were a thing of the past and there never was a knight in armour on this one. It is to be hoped that fathers, explaining the much loved story of knights in armour and spiral staircases, will not be corrected. Children need castles in the air. Especially if they are left-handed!
* Guédelon Castle.
** Oil was not used. It was very expensive.
*** There are at least two clockwise staircases, however, they are not open to the public.
Post by Pamela (BA History of Art).
Loire Valley
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