When Sile and I went to work in France, in Anjou in the early seventies our place of work was called the Chateau de Teildras.
Now we translated Chateau, as most people do, as Castle. Teildras, to our surprise turned out to be a stately home much more that a castle. It had no sign of fortifications or great stone battlements as one would expect in a castle, it was a very old house, with some some stunning features and a lot of stone walls inside.
The French, like the English and us in Ireland have lots of different names for their old buildings.
Take Bastille, as the one in Thezan which I did a recent blog about reminded me.
I have always assumed there was only the one, in Paris which was stormed in 1798 lighting the spark for the French Revolution.
In fact the word can mean any fortress, and as such is more allied to our conception of “castle” than “chateau”.
Another interesting word is the French Donjon which translates as “Keep” in English and not dungeon, or prison cellar as you would expect.
The Donjon in France is usually a fortified castle rather like our Tower House here in Ireland and was intended to be the last bastion for the lord of the manor in times of war. Its roots come originally from the word Dominus meaning Lord.
Mind you the words are not unconnected, both the dungeon and the tower would be the safest place to keep out of danger in times of war.
And there I notice another defensive word has crept in in the last few sentences; Bastion.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, a bastion was a defensive tower often one which would stand in the centre on the castle and offer a last defence, in fact rather like a Donjon or Keep.
Then there is Bastide, which must be related but means different things in different places.
In the South West of France it means a fortified, usually hilltop village, rather like the Circulades of the Languedoc.
In Provence and the Languedoc a Bastide however is a castle,or manor house, which they would call a chateau in other parts of the country…..which……
Brings me right back to where I started.