ABSTRACT
While all this religious development was taking place, our early secular society was also in transition. The medieval world was a dark and aggressive place with constant feuding between warring factions. Its secular architecture reflected this pattern of continual feuding with the building of castles and fortified structures, their main focus being defence against attack by enemies. However, from the fifteenth century onwards the focus of secular architecture on defensive constructions – castles and fortified houses – subtly morphed into development less centred on defence and more on comfort and quality of settled domestic life.
