> The story goes that all castle staircases turn clockwise so that primarily right-handed defenders, fighting downwards, would have an advantage over attackers whose weapon would be impeded by the newel post.
Even if the direction was chosen to give downward fighting defenders an advantage, I don't think that would be the specific advantage given.
Consider a person standing on the staircase. Whichever direction they are facing, the wall side is more impeded as far as swinging a sword goes than the newel side. Proof: imagine you are standing on the center of your step facing forward, with identical swords in each hand, holding them in mirrored positions. As you move the swords around in mirrored motion any time the newel side sword hits the newel the wall side sword will be hitting the wall. But there will be many positions where the wall side sword hits the wall but the mirrored newel side sword does not.
The advantage the newel post side has is that the person going up can can lean the top of their body a little ways over the edge, partly shielding behind the newel post from the point of view of someone going down.
If the newel post is on the same side as their sword then when they take advantage of their shielding they make it harder to use their sword (unless they can lean far enough over to attack around the post). If their sword is on the wall side, then they get the newel post shielding for free.
If you were worried about castle defense when designing your staircase, I'd guess that it is this shielding considering that would lead to clockwise.
People clearly have not visited medieval castles and walked on those stairs. They are so STEEP, that your main worry about using those is not to slip on your way down and taking breath, when you are gone through them up to a place where you can rest.
PS those staircases are ideal places to just barricade and set fire and let defenders to die from smoke. People in medieval times were not such morons to fight there...
Even if the direction was chosen to give downward fighting defenders an advantage, I don't think that would be the specific advantage given.
Consider a person standing on the staircase. Whichever direction they are facing, the wall side is more impeded as far as swinging a sword goes than the newel side. Proof: imagine you are standing on the center of your step facing forward, with identical swords in each hand, holding them in mirrored positions. As you move the swords around in mirrored motion any time the newel side sword hits the newel the wall side sword will be hitting the wall. But there will be many positions where the wall side sword hits the wall but the mirrored newel side sword does not.
The advantage the newel post side has is that the person going up can can lean the top of their body a little ways over the edge, partly shielding behind the newel post from the point of view of someone going down.
If the newel post is on the same side as their sword then when they take advantage of their shielding they make it harder to use their sword (unless they can lean far enough over to attack around the post). If their sword is on the wall side, then they get the newel post shielding for free.
If you were worried about castle defense when designing your staircase, I'd guess that it is this shielding considering that would lead to clockwise.