machicolation

IPA: mækʌkʌɫˈeɪʃʌn

(architecture) An opening between corbels that support a projecting parapet, or in the floor of a gallery or the roof of a portal, of a fortified building from which missiles can be shot or heated items dropped upon assailants attacking the base of the walls.
(architecture) A projecting parapet with a series of such openings.

Examples of "machicolation" in Sentences

This wooden story probably formed the bell chamber; the machicolation-like supports still existed in 1781.
Of course not, just look at those gigantic windows and lack of machicolation! posted by Carolingian @ 8:14 PM
Tall towers, exactly square and equally bare of carving or machicolation, stood at intervals along this forbidding defence and flanked its curtain.
This wall is far more picturesque than that of Siena, being lofty and built of stone, with a machicolation of arches running quite round its top, like a cornice.
I saw before me a gloomy stronghold of brick, four-square, and built in the old Italian manner, with battlements at the top, and a small machicolation, little more than
Consequently they were abandoned, and their places were taken by projecting galleries of stone, supported, not on wooden beams, but on stone corbels, and it is this second stage in fortification which is called machicolation.
At regular intervals along these walls occur little towers, for their defence, reminding one of beads strung on a rosary; the great watch-tower at the gate, with its projecting machicolation, forming the pendent cross, -- the whole serving to guard the town within from the dangers of war, even as the rosary protects the city of Mansoul from the attacks of Sin and Death -- though, sooth to say, since the invention of gunpowder and the Reformation, both the one and the other appear to have lost much of their former efficacy.