bretesche

plural bretesches

1. alternativeAlternative form of brattice.

   In preparing the site for a bretesche, if the Normans found an earthen mound already existing, they naturally made use of it.

   1920, The Irish Monthly

   5 more examples

   ... still further west , upon which a bretesche would rest overhanging the entrance. The keep entrance was dealt with at the same time, the existing ribbed inner portion, replacing the Norman entrance which has entirely disappeared.

   1894, Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society (Southampton, England), Papers and Proceedings, page 263

   Some of the towers had attached to their walls — generally over the gateway — a bretesche, or penthouse , with loops and meurtrières. Clennell Tower, for instance, is described in 1541 as "newly reparelled and brattyshed."

   1897, William Weaver Tomlinson, Life in Northumberland During the Sixteenth Century, page 27

   The gallery may have received protection by a bretesche or a machicolated battlement and may have been used for raising a drawbridge, if such existed in front of the entrance doorway; or the doorway may have contained a hoist ...

   1907, Architectural and Archaeological Society of Durham and Northumberland, Transactions of the Architectural and Archaeological Society of Durham and Northumberland, page 126

   On the summit of the mound, known as a mote or motte, a bretesche or wooden archery tower was erected for the use of the knight and his officers, whilst at a lower level an enclosure, encircled by a palisade and known as a bailey ...

   1964, Richard Hayward, Munster and the City of Cork

   Another chamber or building and a bretesche lay outside this gate . A cruck-built wooden grange and a byre lay in the lower courtyard of the castle (seemingly a reference to the bailey). A masonry-built hall was also standing ...

   1998, Kieran Denis O'Conor, The Archaeology of Medieval Rural Settlement in Ireland