bretesche

English

Etymology

Noun

bretesche (plural bretesches)

Alternative form of brattice
- 1894, Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society (Southampton, England), Papers and Proceedings, page 263:
  ... 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.
- 1897, William Weaver Tomlinson, Life in Northumberland During the Sixteenth Century, page 27:
  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."
- 1907, Architectural and Archaeological Society of Durham and Northumberland, Transactions of the Architectural and Archaeological Society of Durham and Northumberland, page 126:
  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 ...
- 1920, The Irish Monthly:
  In preparing the site for a bretesche, if the Normans found an earthen mound already existing, they naturally made use of it.
- 1964, Richard Hayward, Munster and the City of Cork:
  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 ...
- 1998, Kieran Denis O'Conor, The Archaeology of Medieval Rural Settlement in Ireland:
  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 ...

Old French

Noun

bretesche oblique singular, f (oblique plural bretesches, nominative singular bretesche, nominative plural bretesches)

a sort of lookout station cum defensive outpost, a brattice