Describe daily life on a medieval manor and explain how castle design reflects defensive needs.
A manor was a largely self-sufficient estate: a lord's house, a village of peasant homes, farmland, a mill, and often a small church, all working together to feed and support everyone who lived there. Most peasants farmed using the three-field system, rotating crops between two planted fields and one resting field each year, which kept soil from wearing out and let more land be farmed at once than older methods allowed. A peasant's year followed the seasons exactly -- plowing, planting, and harvest were not flexible deadlines; missing one meant real hunger.
Castles began as simple wooden motte-and-bailey structures -- a wooden tower on a raised earth mound, with a fenced courtyard below -- built quickly after the Norman Conquest of 1066 to control newly conquered land. Over the next few centuries, castles evolved into massive stone fortresses with features designed for one purpose: survive a siege. Thick walls resisted battering; a moat (a water-filled ditch) kept attackers and their siege equipment away from the walls; a drawbridge could be raised to seal the entrance; and arrow slits let defenders shoot at attackers while staying protected themselves. Every feature of a castle, if you look closely, answers the same question: how do we make this harder to attack than to defend?
Mastery looks like: They can describe the three-field system and explain at least three castle defensive features and the specific purpose of each.
Common stumbles: Listing castle features without connecting each one to the specific defensive problem it solves, or assuming manors had no organized farming system.