Comments by "Mat Broomfield" (@matbroomfield) on "The Mystery Of The Sutton Hoo Anglo-Saxon Helmet | King Arthur's Britain | Timeline" video.

Sure, "trade forts". Sounds plausible :-/
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@SimonOBrien-be8qt And I would disagree with that theory. You don't expend the massive investment in labour and quarrying and money to over-engineer a medieval version of a mall.
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@SimonOBrien-be8qt I did consider status homes, and what are the pyramids if not the ultimate in status buildings? But it is not their size, or even their MASSIVE MASSIVE expense and over-engineering that makes me completely dismiss this hypothesis, it's the fact that they are UNEQUIVOCALLY built for war. The thickness and height of their walls, the crenallations on the top, their location, the way that access was designed, the addition of moats and a dozen other features tells anyone not in complete denial, that these were buildings built for war. Not even COPIES of war buildings, as in the crenellated mansion decorations. You don't limit the light with small windows and arrowslits purely for decoration.
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@SimonOBrien-be8qt So you're saying a BADLY DESIGNED defensive structure proves that a well designed one wasn't necessarily what it seemed. Or that the fact a castle was never attacked meant it wasn't a castle. Does not compute.
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@SimonOBrien-be8qt I already acknowledged that decorative fortification features made their way into other buildings as affectations. But you have to look at them in context.
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@SimonOBrien-be8qt No, absolutely not. I thought we both established that wasn't the case long ago. Why are you deliberately mischaracterising my position? I guess because a straw man is easier to argue against huh? If I show you a machine, it has rubber tires, an engine, room for 4 people to sit in, a radio, street lights and indicators, an aluminium body, axels, wheels, a tax disk on display, and it sits on the road, it COULD be an elaborate fair ground ride, but the balance of probabilities, when you consider all the indicators of function, are that it is a car. The same applies here. When you look at a building and it has 50 characteristics of medieval castle, that being defined as a fortified building created for the express purpose of defence and control over strategic areas, and only a few of those can be written off as serving an alternate purpose, you'd have to be particularly obtuse to define it as something other than its apparent purpose. You clearly have an emotional vested interest in demoinstrating that that is NOT the case. And for the record, I WAS in the forces. The same forces that built fake air fields full of inflatable planes, and fake battle grounds full of inflatable tanks during WW2. Sometimes things serve functions other than their immediately obvious one. Maybe a castle was built with inaccessible towers out of a desire for symmetry or structural reinforcement.
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