Another desert mystery ...

[Sergeant Bob]

Secure house:

What's that little roofed outcropping at the top? Maybe the privy? For dropping "bombs" on intruders

[230RN]

Yep.

For pouring boiling oil, offal, privy products, rotten bodies and other unsavories down onto the folks trying to bust through the door below.

I wouldn't have a ground floor entrance at all.  The door would be at the top of a narrow stairway clinging to the lower wall, with a small landing and no railings.

That Rick Steves travelogue on PBS showed this technique was used for private homes in some European town or other  --Venice?  Not too practical for a castle or fortified town where horse-drawn supplies have to be carted in and out in normal times.

[Sergeant Bob]

Yep.

For pouring boiling oil, offal, privy products, rotten bodies and other unsavories down onto the folks trying to bust through the door below.

I thought I was joking but, I guess not! 

[cordex]

I wouldn't have a ground floor entrance at all.  The door would be at the top of a narrow stairway clinging to the lower wall, with a small landing and no railings.  Make it hard to bust down the outer door, especially with stuff being rained down from the parapet above. 

Makes it hard to move furniture into the place, doesn't it?

[Tallpine]

Makes it hard to move furniture into the place, doesn't it?

Yeah, you'd want to move the cannons in before the walls were finished 

There's probably a "murder hole" just inside the door.

A trap door between the inner and outer doors. 

A real castle/tower house would have walls 8-10 feet thick, so there would be a narrow hallway leading through the wall.  Windows would be tall and narrow, with a V-shaped alcove in the wall.

[gunsmith]

I keep seeing this thread title and wondering what the mystery desert was and how it tasted. 

like sand

[freakazoid]

Secure house:

Secure house, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4Qm7CWcOEY
 

[Hawkmoon]

Two words:

"Straw Dogs"

[Perd Hapley]

A modern castle.