How big is Redwall?

[Ungatt Trunn]

This is a question that has been pestering me for a good long while now. If you have watched the Redwall TV series, Redwall Abbey doesn't look that large. here's an image of it as portrayed in the TV series:

According to this picture, Redwall is technically big; you know, bigger than any normal house or any several houses. But, if you look at it more closely, it really isn't too large. The lawn is pretty short in all directions; anybody could run from the Abbey to the wall at any direction in under 30 seconds. And the Abbey itself doesn't look that large; it looks like it could hold allot of creatures, but not as much as the creature count given in the Redwall series. So, you might say that this is just a "factually incorrect" drawing of Redwall Abbey, but in a way, its hard to imagine anything larger. Think about it; when you give full thought as to how Redwall Abbey looks like, it really doesn't seem that large. Though, there are a few passages in the books that evoke it being a great size; I've been re-reading Mariel Of Redwall, and there are several lines that say things like "They frolicked over the tree and flower dotted lawn towards the Abbey building", or "they raced across the lawn towards the Abbey building". Even though these don't necessarily exactly say that the Abbey is huge, it does mean that there would have to be room enough for them (whatever creatures you want to picture here) to race across the lawn and all things similar. The picture of Redwall Abbey above really doesn't look big enough to do these things.
Also, in the books, it says that there is a "large apple orchard", several fruit trees, flower beds, bushes, plants, and the Abbey pond. Also, if you've seen the "Graves" topic, they would have to bury there dead there. Tam suggested in that topic that the Redwallers had a certain section of the Abbey lawns were they buried all creatures from the Abbey who had died (if you have read the Redwall series, you may see that they had buried creatures there who were not originally from the Abbey). But to do this, Redwall Abbey would have to be REALLY large to do this, much larger than the picture shown above. But even if it was, say, two times bigger than the Abbey drawing above, it would still get quite crowded with all the graves. I read in a Fan Fiction once were it was suggested that they buried some of there creatures out in Mossflower woods near the Abbey. But that idea, though quite practical, is not a proven fact. Over the years (or seasons), there would have to be ALLOT graves dug. This proves a problem, no matter how large the Abbey is.
Sorry if I seam like I've gotten a little carried away with the whole grave thing, but I think that that is an important aspect of guessing the size of Redwall Abbey. They were bound to dig several graves within the Abbey walls, and over the years the amount of graves dug could really add up and really make it crowded in a rather unpleasant way.
Another subject to cover is the amount of creatures who would be staying at the Abbey. But I'd like to see some of yours guy's ideas on the subject before I dive in to the subject of the creature count of Redwall. What do you guys think?

[Blaggut]

H,m. Interesting. Perhaps they just dug a deep pit? In the show, though I haven't read that book yet, Martins crush was buried outside of redwall abbey, at Mossflower. Maybe they even switched to cremating?

[Ungatt Trunn]

H,m. Interesting. Perhaps they just dug a deep pit? In the show, though I haven't read that book yet, Martins crush was buried outside of redwall abbey, at Mossflower. Maybe they even switched to cremating?

Did they even have cement? I know Martin was cased in stone, but isn't that a little different?

[Blazemane]

I'd have to look through the book again to be sure, but I seem to recall in A Redwall Winter's Tale that Christopher Denise's drawings of the Abbey give its walls a lot of different projections, so that it isn't one clean right angle like is shown in the t.v. series. If I didn't already know the series and just looked at those drawings instead, I could imagine that he was illustrating a sort of crammed city. But I might just be exaggerating my own initial impressions to myself. I'll have to check.

Whatever one artist's interpretation might have been, Jacques' descriptions of the building often seemed a bit minimalistic to me. He mentions Cavern Hole, Great Hall, the Kitchens, the Cellars, the Infirmary, the Dormitories, the Bell Tower, the Attic and... that's about it until you read about the stuff hidden underneath the Abbey. I mean, it looks like a long list, but not when the location is featured in 19 (?) of the books. And it's hard to gauge size, because he doesn't really try to describe that in explicit terms--I feel like he was more more focused on the purpose of these places. What does one do in the Kitchens? Why should the characters have their conversation there? And so on and so forth.

I do think it's got to be bigger than that picture from the t.v. show suggests, though. In the first book, when Matthias has to climb up to the attics using ledges above Great Hall, it's made out to be something of a quest. And when Jess climbs up to the weathervane to look for Martin's sword, it's mentioned that people start to have a hard time even seeing her. But I get the feeling from the windows in that picture from the t.v. show that the Abbey is about 4 stories (in mouse terms) tall before the bottom of the sloping roof.

What really gets me is this: when Matthias is making his way to the attic, at one point, he drops his dagger, and the story says "it was a considerable time before they [he and Warbeak] heard the faint clatter as it hit the Abbey floor."

So how long is a considerable time? Time definitely can stretch out in the imagination when one becomes deathly afraid of something. And at this point, Matthias is already above the stained glass windows... I think (he's above at least one of them). But if that puts him at the bottom of the roof, and that's only 4 stories, and it's supposed that a story here is about 10 feet high, it would only take (no, there's no way I remember physics equations off the top of my head, but having looked at them, the math seems to indicate...) about 2.85 seconds to hit the floor. If I'm more generous with the story height and say each story is 15 feet high, it'd take about 3.5 seconds to hit the floor. I mean... that's getting there. I'm still not sure it's quite at "considerable" yet, though.

Of course, that begs the question, "what is 'considerable'?" 4 seconds? 5? Even an increase from 3.5 seconds to 4 seconds would make the height of the Abbey at the very bottom of that roof about 78.5 feet tall. And an increase to 4.5 seconds would make the height almost 100 feet tall.

I can't make an actual, defend-able argument mixing math and word-interpretation like this. But to me it seems like the Abbey's got to be taller than what's shown on the show. And if taller, then arguably larger--maybe more complex, like Denise's illustrations. I could imagine the lawns and walls sort of growing in proportion with all of that.

[Tam and Martin]

I'll have to think on this....

[Ungatt Trunn]

Nice thought, Blazemane! Though, another thing that needs to be considered is how many creatures would be living at Redwall. According to several descriptions in the books, it seems like there would have to be quite a few.

[Blazemane]

Thanks!

Actually, though, last night I accidentally made those estimates by using gravity's acceleration in meters-per-second-squared, which would make the distances I came up with a matter of meters rather than feet. It would also make the times I came up with just plain wrong.

So I'll try this again. If the bottom of the roof of Great Hall is 40 feet tall, it wouldn't take 2.85 seconds for a knife to hit the ground--it would only take about 1.6! If the bottom of the roof was 60 feet tall, it would take the knife about 1.94 seconds to hit the ground.

And if the knife was falling for 4 seconds, the bottom of the roof would be 256 feet tall--not just 78.5 feet. If the knife fell for 4.5 seconds, the bottom of the roof would be 324 feet tall.

All of this would suggest even more so that, because there was a "considerable time" before Matthias and Warbeak heard the knife hit the ground, Redwall has got to be very tall. To me, heights like 256 feet and 324 feet seem way too tall; so unless the roof really is 256 feet tall, I'm thinking now that the knife would have had to take some time less than four seconds to hit the ground, just for the height of the Abbey to seem realistic.

Then again... the internet says that the Cathedral of Notre Dame is 295 feet tall and the Florence Cathedral is 376 feet tall (these numbers being from the tops of the roofs rather than than the bottoms, but still...) So if the builders of the Abbey were capable of that sort of thing (in "animal feet"), then I suppose it's possible.

So to sum up, if we can assume Brian Jacques was into being physically accurate about the speed of falling objects--and no, I don't think we can do that safely--then the argument is maybe less about "how big can the reader imagine it and still be accurate?" and more about "how small can the reader imagine it and still be accurate?"

Basically... I don't know. I feel like the Abbey and the lawns and the walls have to be pretty big, and then I always end up imagining them t.v. series scale when I'm reading. And then my mind tricks itself when the books focuses on a specific area like the orchard. For those moments, I imagine an expansive orchard without really caring about how the expansiveness could actually line up with my concept for the entire grounds.

Now that I've talked myself into all sorts of wishy-washiness...  

Though, another thing that needs to be considered is how many creatures would be living at Redwall. According to several descriptions in the books, it seems like there would have to be quite a few.

I'm honestly having a hard time thinking of a specific passage where Jacques addresses how many creatures live at the Abbey. Maybe there's some point when Matthias and co. are discussing battle strategies and thinking through how many rats Cluny has? Or maybe in that spot in Taggerung when Ruggan Bor comes to the Abbey, there's a moment where the two sides are compared?

But, yeah, I guess I've always figured there were quite a few, too. And if there are, then the Abbey can't be all that small.

[The Shade]

An important thing to remember is the abbey is nearly entirely self substaining. They grow nearly all their food in the abbey grounds. That means a considerable amount of land for the orchards, gardens and even the pond (for the fish).

[Ungatt Trunn]

I wonder, how big do you think the Abbey pond was? In several books, it says that they would go fishing in canoes, which means it would have to be of some size.

[The Shade]

Plus it could hold all the dibbun's little boat things, all of which had a sail.

[Tam and Martin]

I think it would be at least the size of a small, small lake. I mean, you hear about all the things that happen in the pond and then they tell about the fishes in the pond and such.

[Captain Tammo]

The "build your own redwall abbey" kit gives a much different perspective of scale and shape. It's significantly taller and I think is more true to the books, since Brian himself wrote a story to accompany that very set!

In one of the books (I think the bellmaker), the main characters come across some whales! They were described as being the size of the abbey by one. Assuming that these were blue whales, which is absolutely possible, seeing as they live in every area of the oceans (except the arctic regions). So a full grown blue whale can be about 100 feet long, and a mouse is only a couple of inches big, that is a HUGE size. You could easily fit 300 mice in redwall (I believe in the long patrol it mentions that there were 300 creatures living in the abbey at that time) with ample room to spare. And this may not be including the vertical part of the abbey, either!

[Ungatt Trunn]

Intresting thought, Tammo...So, it may be more about hight than wethe...

[The Shade]

In one of the books (I think the bellmaker), the main characters come across some whales! They were described as being the size of the abbey by one. Assuming that these were blue whales, which is absolutely possible, seeing as they live in every area of the oceans (except the arctic regions). So a full grown blue whale can be about 100 feet long, and a mouse is only a couple of inches big, that is a HUGE size. You could easily fit 300 mice in redwall (I believe in the long patrol it mentions that there were 300 creatures living in the abbey at that time) with ample room to spare. And this may not be including the vertical part of the abbey, either!

And also, the abbey could hold even more than that. I think in... Taggerung (?) the hares stay and eat, them being mentioned one hundred.

[Tam and Martin]

In one of the books (I think the bellmaker), the main characters come across some whales! They were described as being the size of the abbey by one. Assuming that these were blue whales, which is absolutely possible, seeing as they live in every area of the oceans (except the arctic regions). So a full grown blue whale can be about 100 feet long, and a mouse is only a couple of inches big, that is a HUGE size. You could easily fit 300 mice in redwall (I believe in the long patrol it mentions that there were 300 creatures living in the abbey at that time) with ample room to spare. And this may not be including the vertical part of the abbey, either!

And also, the abbey could hold even more than that. I think in... Taggerung (?) the hares stay and eat, them being mentioned one hundred.

That is true also. Maybe the actal building is tall.