Garderobe
Garderobe is a historic term for a room in a medieval castle. The Oxford English Dictionary gives as its first meaning a store-room for valuables, but also acknowledges "by extension, a private room, a bed-chamber; also a privy".
The word derives from the French Template:Lang, meaning "robes (or clothing) protector". Its most common use now is as a term for a castle toilet.
Store room
Template:Lang is the French word for "wardrobe", a lockable place where clothes and other items are stored. According to medieval architecture scholar Frank Bottomley, garderobes were "Properly, not a latrine or privy but a small room or large cupboard, usually adjoining the chamber [bedroom] or solar [living room] and providing safe-keeping for valuable clothes and other possessions of price: cloth, jewels, spices, plate and money."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Toilet
The term garderobe is also used to refer to a medieval or Renaissance toilet or a close stool.<ref name=Bell3839>Template:Cite book</ref> In a medieval castle, a garderobe was usually a simple hole discharging to the outside into a cesspit (akin to a pit latrine) or the moat (like a fish pond toilet), depending on the structure of the building. Such toilets were often placed inside a small chamber, leading by association to the use of the term garderobe to describe the rooms. Many can still be seen in Norman and medieval castles and fortifications, for example at Bürresheim Castle in Germany, where three garderobes are still visible.<ref>Bürresheim Castle in the Rhineland-Palatinate state of Germany has three garderobes: "...the rectangular castle keep dating from the 12th century, and raised in height to five storeys in the 15th century ...Only the fifth floor added in the late gothic period has rectangular windows and can be recognized as the dwelling for the tower watchman through its chimney and garderobe." Burgen, Schlösser, Altertümer. Burresheim Castle Koblenz, 2000. p. 22.</ref> They became obsolete with the introduction of indoor plumbing.
A description of the garderobe at Donegal Castle indicates that while it was in use, it was believed that ammonia—a byproduct of excretion—would protect visitors' coats and cloaks from moths or fleas.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Other languages
In European public places, a garderobe denotes a cloakroom, wardrobe, alcove, or armoire used to temporarily store the coats and other possessions of visitors.<ref name=Bell3839/> In Danish, Dutch, Estonian, German, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Ukrainian, the word can mean a cloakroom. In Latvian, it means "checkroom".
See also
- Bretèche, a small balcony in a medieval fortress
- Dansker, a German term for a castle toilet in a tower over a watercourse