To begin with, as previously discussed in my post on the feudal system, a “knight’s fee”—that is, the assorted obligations a vassal owed his lord in exchange for the land he lived upon—was both passive and active in nature.
Remnants of Peveril Castle’s keep: the basement as viewed from the upper level
As shown in the artist’s rendition to the right, it contained only two rooms – a principal chamber and a basement underneath that was likely used for storage and accessed via a spiral staircase.
The keep also had a latrine, a wall cupboard, and a large window looking out over the rest of the castle and the surrounding Hope Valley, but it didn’t have a fireplace, any food service rooms, or even a well.
Remnants of the keep and curtain wall of Peveril Castle in Derbyshire, England
These drawings always took a similar form: a large square in the middle of the paper, two taller turrets on either side, and a wall that extended the remaining length of the page on either side. I even owned a stencil that had a guide for making square waves that I used on the upper edges of each part of the picture.
For a frontal, ground level representation by an eight-year-old, I actually think I did pretty well, having depicted the three key components of the average medieval English castle: the keep, the tower, and the curtain wall.
A Frame Around Infinity 