Hogwarts Castle musings (was: Re: Voldemort descendents )

[Bernadette M. Crumb]

No: HPFGUIDX 40325


----- Original Message -----
From: "bluesqueak" <pipdowns at etchells0.demon.co.uk>

> You have to jump through a lot of hoops to get 'ancestor' to
make
> sense (a lot more than you have to jump through to get a
obviously
> High Medieval castle built in 9th Century Scotland [grin]-
apologies
> for going off topic there). And the fact that later editions DO
now
> have 'descendant' suggests it was a genuine error in wording.

I wish my daughter hadn't taken the books off with her to camp
this morning so I could look up references.

Is it actually specified in the books that the castle (as it is
currently seen) has always been that way?  Something the size and
age of Hogwarts school isn't necessarily something that wizards
would create all at once, as we see it in the "current day."  I
believe it is the school as an organization that is over a
thousand years old.  Not the building it currently resides in.
Or at least, not the current incarnation of the building.

The school maybe have been founded a thousand years ago on that
site, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the initial buildings
were created in the high style we think of when we see castles
today.  While motte and Bailey "castles" were the most numerous
of the type in the 900s, there WERE stone keeps in Britain--and
certainly in many other parts of the European and North African
world--just not necessarily in what is now Scotland.

The White Tower in the Tower of London is within a century of the
founding of Hogwarts, and even accounting for its changes over
time, I could conceive of the Founders being able to build a
similar keep as the basis for their school (I do like the idea
that they had to make it a defensive building--thanks to whomever
it was who mentioned it).  As Wizards, they could possibly have
an easier time of putting a keep together simply because they
could use magic.

Just as with Muggles, there probably always were Wizards who were
interested in more than just the basics of survival and who
sought to invent and create, and may have discovered things like
the Gothic Arch and flying buttresses earlier than the Muggles
did.  Over time, as the school grew, and the number of students
increased, the original keep would have been added on to with the
style changing as technology, architecture and fashion changed.
Perhaps Snape's dungeons are partly made up of that original
building, if any of it survives.

We don't know how educated the Founders were outside of being
powerful witches and wizards.  We do not know if they were native
to Britain or if they migrated there from other lands.  We don't
know what kind of knowledge they brought with them.  Some people
speculate that Salazar may have come from what is now Portugal.
If so, he certainly could have been exposed to the arts, crafts
and sciences of the Moors who invaded the Spanish peninsula--who
were far in advance of the natives who lived there in so many
areas , and provided a lot of inspiration for later development
of architecture, poetry and suchlike that became hallmarks of the
"high Middle Ages."  One could expect the Founders and their
successors to take the best they could discover to apply to their
great project.

As far as the subterranean chamber that became the Chamber of
Secrets... even in Britain there are evidences of stone walled
underground rooms... the various barrows and chambered tombs that
are scattered about the island.  If the idea of Salazar taking
this "local" primitive architecture and improving on it is
distasteful, then who's to say that he didn't travel in his
lifetime and didn't explore things like the tombs and pyramids of
Egypt?  And other underground places that existed at the time
(there were some exquisite temples for Mithra in existence,
despite the best efforts of the Catholic church, well into the
Middle Ages).  In Rome, the catacombs were still reachable at
that time.  He could have seen them and then improved on the idea
until he got what we now know as the Chamber of Secrets.

Of course, until JKR decides to reveal what her conceptions of
the Founding and Building of Hogwarts are, all we can do is
speculate.  It's fun. :)

I rather like the idea that Hogwarts started out as a small
defensive keep, and, like Topsy, just simply grew!

Bernadette/RowanRhys

"Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved."
- Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, 1862