Talk:Fortified house

Conflating fort with fortified house?

A fort "refers to a small strongpoint usually occupied by military personnel." (Kaufmann & Kaufmann) This is fundamentally different from the purpose and occupancy of a historic fortified house. In addition the architecture and situation of the fortified houses being described here and US forts was totally different. Unless there is a consensus against, I therefore propose to remove the "United States" section on forts. Perhaps it needs its own article or to be merged into Station (frontier defensive structure) with a link in the "See also" section here. --Bermicourt (talk) 18:46, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Remove. Fully agree. No connection between the medieval maison forte of the aristocrats, and US forts. There are and have been lots of fortification types, and these two have close to nothing in common, really. Arminden (talk) 23:58, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

Of all other languages, the French article, also being the probably most developed, is the only one having such a non-West-European section attached to it: Svaneti in Georgia. But then why not also the various types of kula from the Balkans and who knows how many Asian and maybe African types of fortified houses? They'd even be better suited than the US forts. But none of them really belongs, the European domus fortis, in all its range of variations, has its own characteristics that set it apart. No need to mix. Arminden (talk) 00:12, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

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US forts don't belong here

1. Did anyone ever call them "fortified houses"? I strongly doubt it.
2. The forts' main feature were the defensive walls, usually made of wood. A fortified house is fortified in itself, curtain wall or not: it is the fortification.
3. A maison forte was the residence of a nobleman. The North American forts offered protection to groups of people. I'm not aware of fortified US homesteads of single families, those could have a claim for being here, but there were none, right?
4. It's North American forts, (future) Canada included, built by the British & French military or the colonists.
5. Lots of fortified places around the world, each with its own specificity - and own enWiki page, or rightful claim to one. None of those though were European maisons fortes, fortified houses, with their specific type of fortifications and lodging facilities.

I see no connection whatsoever. I'm moving that part over to Fortification#North America. Arminden (talk) 10:42, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

I see there were some 18th-c. family-built fortified homesteads. I'll add a link.

The modern times-related bit doesn't fit in anywhere. I'll park it here for now. Security devices don't yet qualify a modern house to be called a "fortified house" in the sense of this page's definition. I guess it was a school homework that never got checked :)

In the present day, fortified houses are houses with physical security features, including using enhanced locks, security bars, solid core or metal doors, perimeter alarms, cameras, security guards to deter or delay assault.<ref>{{cite book |author= Task Committee |author= Structural Engineering Institute |title= Structural Design for Physical Security |year= 1999 |publisher= ASCE |isbn= 978-0-7844-0457-7}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url= http://yourlocalsecurity.com/security-tips.html |title= Home Safety Tips |website= Yourlocalsecurity.com |access-date= 2011-03-31}}</ref>

Arminden (talk) 11:03, 5 October 2025 (UTC)