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A tower house is a particular type of stone structure, built for defensive purposes as well as habitation.Sidney Toy (1985) Castles: Their Construction and History, Courier Dover Publications, (reissue of Castles: a short history of fortification from 1600 B.C. to A.D. 1600; London: Heinemann, 1939) Tower houses began to appear in the Middle Ages, especially in mountainous or limited access areas, to command and defend strategic points with reduced forces. At the same time, they were also used as an aristocrat's residence, around which a castle town was often constructed.
Scotland has many fine examples of medieval tower houses, including Drum Castle, Craigievar Castle and Castle Fraser, and in the unstable Scottish Marches along the border between England and Scotland the peel tower was the typical residence of the wealthy, with others being built by the government. In 17th century Scotland these castles became the pleasure retreats of the upper classes. While able to adopt a military nature, they were furnished for comfort and social interaction.A. Mackechnie, For friendship and conversation': Martial Scotland's Domestic Castles". Architectural Heritage XXVI (2015), pp. 14, 21.
Tower houses are commonly found in northern Spain, especially in Navarre and the Basque Country, some of them dating to the 8th century. They were mainly used as noble residences and were able to provide shelter against enemies, starting with the Muslims and later Aragón and Castile. Due to complex legal charters, few had boroughs attached to them, thus they are usually found standing alone in some strategic spot like a crossroad, rather than on a height. During the petty wars among the Basque nobles from 1379 to 1456, the upper floors (with defensive capacity) of most of them were demolished. Few have survived unscathed to the present day. Since then they have been used only as residences by their traditional noble owners (Saint Ignatius of Loyola was born in one of them, which stands to this day) or converted into farmhouses.
To the west of the Basque Country, in Cantabria and Asturias, similar tower houses are found. Furthest west in Spain, in Galicia, medieval tower houses are in the origin of many Modern Age , noble residences as well as strongholds.
Large numbers of tower houses can be found across Portugal, particularly in the north of the country. By the 15th century they had lost their military or residential uses, and were often either expanded into larger manors or converted into hunting lodges for the aristocracy.
A feature peculiar to Germany is the few preserved tower houses of Regensburg, reminiscent of those in San Gimignano.
Distinctive tower houses were built in the Balkans since the Middle Ages. They became very widespread in the 17th century, built by both Christians and Muslims in a period of decline of Ottoman Empire authority and insecurity.Grube-Mitchell 1978, p. 204: "a distinctive form of defensive tower-dwelling, the kula, developed among both the Christian and the Muslim communities during the insecure period of the decline of the Ottoman authority in the 17th century ..." The tower house served the purpose of protecting the extended family.Greville Pounds 1994, p. 335: "In southeastern Europe, where the extended family was exemplified as nowhere else in the western world, the home itself was often protected, giving rise to the kula or tower- house."
In the Baltic states, the Teutonic Knights and other crusaders erected fortified tower houses in the Middle Ages, locally known as "vassal castles", as a means of exercising control over the conquered areas. These tower houses were typically not intended to be used in any major military actions. For this purpose, the crusaders relied on a number of larger Ordensburg. A number of such tower houses still exist, well-preserved examples include Purtse Castle, Vao and Kiiu castles in Estonia.
The city of Shibam has hundreds of tower houses.
Similarly, hundreds of Himalayan Towers dot the so-called Tribal Corridor in Western Sichuan, some 50 metres high with as many as 13 star-like points, and the oldest are thought to be 1,200 years old. They appear to have been created as much for prestige among village families as for defence.
Kaiping and some other towns in South China retain a plethora of watchtowers, or . Although they were built mainly as protection against forays by bandits, many of them also served as living quarters. Some of them were built by a single family, some by several families together or by entire village communities.
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