Why I am building Castle Black and how it is related to Hadrian's Wall

I have a great interest in the Classical world and all it's inner workings and because of this, I have chosen to build my own interpretation of Castle Black, located at the very Northern edge of the claimed lands of Westeros in Game Of Thrones, and am comparing it to the likes of Hadrian's Wall, located in Northern England, from the banks of the River Tyne near the North Sea to the Solway Firth on the Irish Sea.

Hadrian's Wall was a defensive fortification build by the Roman Empire to keep out invaders to the Roman providence of Britannia. It also stood as the Northern most border of the Roman Empire's reach. It's construction began in 122 AD in the reign of the emperor Hadrian (hence the Wall's name). It had a stone base and a stone wall and there were mile-castles with two turrets in between. There was a fort about every five Roman miles. It is thought that the mile-castles were staffed with static garrisons, whereas the forts had fighting garrisons of infantry and cavalry. In addition to the wall's defensive military role, its gates may have been used as customs posts.

Castle Black is the primary headquarters and redoubt of the Night's Watch. It is located roughly halfway along the length of the Wall on its southern side, at the northern end of the Kingsroad. It is a dark and chilling home to its garrison. It is one of only three manned castles left on the Wall along with Eastwatch-by-the-Sea and The Shadow Tower. There are nineteen castles along the Wall, but as their numbers fell over the centuries the Night's Watch had to abandon sixteen of them. Castle Black is located between the unmanned castles of Queensgate and Oakenshield.

These two vastly different, and yet fundamentally the same, fortifications serve the same purpose in their worlds, real or fictional. These two Walls were constructed out of the need to protect the citizens on one side of the Wall, and keep out those on the other side. Both structures have been left to ruin, lesser so in the case of Castle Black, and yet they are still extremely significant to the world they are in.

Small adjustments have been made to my original plan

All was going well with my build and I had just started to plan out the interior buildings of Castle Black with purple wool (see below) when I took another look at the source material from the Game Of Thrones TV series and the books and discovered a problem. At it's current size, the buildings that I was hoping and planning to add to the interior wouldn't fit with the Castle's size. Because I noticed this issue before any significant building could take place I have been able to expand the Castle's size. This adjustment will hopefully allow me to add the most important buildings into the interior. These buildings are things like the dinning hall, the stables, the armory, the sleeping quarters, the Lord Commander's office and the Wall elevator.

I will be the first to admit that I am not the best builder, or the best judge of build sizes, so this small setback is entirely my fault but I think i have managed to rectify the situation. This was always a concern of mine when I accepted the task of building something as substantial as Castle Black but I am managing to find ways to overcome my lack of professional building skills.

Toni's blog - Windmill/bridge plan

I have started a plan on where the windmill/bridge will be and how big it will be. The bridge will be made of cobblestone while the windmill will be a mix of stone and wood. Use wooden stair blocks for the wheel of the windmill and the roof. Also use stair blocks and stabs for a decorative look. 

Also need to fix the river to give it a more natural look.

I have based the placement of the bridge and the look of the windmill from a sketch that Tolkien drew himself:

The windmill may be a bit smaller than the windmill in the sketch, but will be similar.

I'm thinking of adding mossy cobblestone on the base of the windmill and the supports of the bridge. Moss will grow on the stones near water.

(Could also add a small farm next to the windmill/river.)

I will do more research on these types of windmills for an idea on the interior.

Also built this without using world edit because 1. I need to learn how to use it first and 2. The server was too lagging and the connection wasn't the best at the time for me to use world edit. Which could have ended with the server crashing on me. So I'll use world edit when I know the basics of it and the server connection is okay.

Creating the Hobbiton Hill

So i have started (attempting) to make the Hill for hobbiton, I decided to try doing it using world edit to save a lot of manual work. so I thought I should make some tiny clips just so you can see how it was done.

So this clip is showing How i intially made the hill, I used a command
(//br cylinder 4 2) and it create we circles of sand to make just the foundation of the Hill

(Hopefully the videos work)

   Now I use a different command
(//brush smooth 4) and it smooths out the area to make it look more "Hilly" 

so after replacing all the sand to grass

This is what im left with, this is by no means the finished hill i will need to do a bit of
manual work and smooth it out a bit
(Now again I really hope these videos actually work)

Alicia's Blog 5

Opps another blog. I've had time to get some more building done but not as much as i'd like. It's kind of awkward to build because I keep on forgetting my mouse and I'm stuck using my laptops trackpad.

I had forgotten that I could use world edit to change the stone to other blocks, which ended up being stone, cobble, andesite and cyan clay. (I forgot in mainly because I forgot the //replace command.) But I fixed it up now.

Inside the mountain I decided on instead of doing a more polished look I was going to make it look more earthy and make-shift but most of the props (from my plans, e.g. the kitchen) will probably stay the same but the colour scheme will be different.

I've been trying to figure out how to do the dance floor but have been having trouble, I don't know if it should be darker, lighter, a mix of different blocks or just no dance floor at all. For the inside I ended up using two types of blocks, both stained clay that I believe were black & dark grey. In the entrance it fades into the stone blocks from the outside of the mountain.

I'm planning as the build progresses to make the dance room less square and have bits of dirt sticking out from the roof and walls to make it look like it's been carved out. I'm thinking about a chandelier for lighting or conveniently placed glowstone that blends in with the build. I might end up going for the chandelier though so it still has a high-class feeling.

Toni's Blog - What will the Hobbit Burrows look like.

I haven't started building yet until I have a clear idea of what the burrows will look like and how we will plan them out. I also should get familiar with using world edit as it will help a lot while building.

I have found some sketches and pics that could use as a reference. We will have to plan out each room that we will build and decide how many burrows we will build.

We have found a perfect spot to build Hobbiton, we just have to shape the hill (I will more likely need to learn how to use world edit so I can help with this stage) and then start planning where we want the burrows to go, also build the build and a windmill if possible.

I will start building as soon as possible, or at least practice building on one of my own worlds.

Next step in building a Castle

Since my last post there hasn't been a great deal of progress on Castle Black, mainly minor details or things in the interior. I have, however, created a template for the Wall, which will need to be filled in with a mixture of snow and packed -ice blocks. My next step is to create the outlines for Castle Black's interior buildings which include; housing, dinning hall, armory, the Wall's elevator, stables and more. These will be done in dark woods, cobble stone, some fencing and more types of blocks that I can't think of right now.

This build isn't just going to be a shell of the Castle, no, it will be lived in and will have all its little quirks and tricks. Everyone has to keep in mind that this is the equivalent of military barracks, however old and neglected it may be. The people of Westeros build this Castle, and the numerous other abandoned ones along the walls length, to keep out anything unwanted from the true North so it was maned, and people saw honor in serving its cause.

The same can be said for Hadrian's Wall. The people at that time built the wall to keep out invasions and protect the people on the other side of it. Soldiers would have been guarding that wall night and day, rain or shine, come hell or high water.

Alicia's Blog 4

I've finished the base of the mountain over the weekend and I'm slowly filling in the stone with other blocks to create more texture on the mountain's surface.

I've also began hollowing out the inside of the mountain to make room for the different parts. For now I'm planning on just have the ballroom and possible adding in the kitchen/nursery depending on the amount of time left to build.

As i've said before the ballroom will have darker blocks such as darker blocks (such as stained clay or wool). I might also add in some stone or cobble to continue the under the ground feeling. 

I'll probably be fixing up the entrance a bit as time goes on to make it more natural and less like a hole has just been taken out of it.

Searching for Hobbition!

Here are some possible Areas for the Hobbiton build

Area #1

PROS:

Plains Biome,

Big area to work with,

CONS:

Its a plains therefore no hills so lots of terraforming will need to be done

Area #2

PROS:

Big Area,

Near Water,

Nice Hills for the Hobbit Holes,

CONS:

Lots of trees, will need to get rid of a chunk of them

Area #3

Its a mesa....

Now lets hope I did this blog thing right

Toni's Blog 3 - Building.

For some reason I can't connect to the server on my laptop (not sure about the school laptops)

but I have done some searching and practice building.

I was more practicing on the doors as they are circular and are/may be hard to build in Minecraft.

Also windows are small and circular so they will/may be hard too.

I did find this in images that may be useful as a reference pic. The doors may be too hard to make them circular, but the build doesn't need to be perfect, just as long as we tie it to history.

The hoobit burrows could still be inspired by Lydney park's ruins.

Progress is being made!

I found a nice place for my build, and it's not too far from the other builds so that's convenient. I forgot to post about finding a build space but I am doing it now. I've got the outline of the Wall and I am about 3/4 the way through building Castle Black's outer walls and the main gate. The design may need some adjustments but this is what it's going to look like. At the moment the build only consists of dark wood, cobblestone, snow, fences, torches, ice and iron bars. But as I move onto other aspects of the build there will be more material;s used, but the aforementioned ones are the main types of materials that would've been used to build Castle Black and Hadrian's Wall (just not the snow in that case).

Alicia's Blog 3

For the past two days i've set a couple hours in my day to start working on my build. So far i've flattened the ground and added in a massive block of stone that i'm slowly transforming into a mountain.

The mountain is going to be built from stone, cobble, gravel and andesite which I will add a nice texture to it instead of it being one block completely. Once i've filled it completely in i'll start filling in the rooms. I mainly just want to get the mountain done because it's going to be one of the most time consuming parts of the build.

I don't want to start any proper landscaping yet because at the moment i've just cut out and flattened some land. I want to hold off proper landscaping just incase I have to move stuff around, i'll probably wait until I'm completely happy and done with builds before I start fixing the land beside it.

Toni's Blog 2.

I haven't started building yet as I have been finishing my plan. I also have found a place on the server to start building when I have planned out how our build is going to look like and it's layout.

I was going to draw my own hobbit burrow bird-eye plan, but never got around to it. We will probably have it similar to this but the less rooms and the rooms will be more square as circular rooms are difficult to build in Minecraft, though it is still possible.

I have also read that hobbit burrows have a minimum of one window and can sometimes had a backdoor. So we could add this into our build.

Ref: http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Hobbit-hole

The bridge will be made with cobblestone or stone slabs. The hobbit burrows will be a mix of different coloured hardened-clay blocks, different fences, different types of wood/logs, different types of stair blocks, window panes, dirt/grass blocks, bricks blocks and many leaves/flowers blocks for the overgrowth.