'' prison in Paris, from the commentary speculates that the structure depicted, may actually have been an
ice well built to keep ice. If so, whether or not it was known to also have been used as an oubliette is not clear. Although many real dungeons are simply a single plain room with a heavy door or with access only from a
hatchway or
trapdoor in the floor of the room above, the use of dungeons for
torture, along with their association to common human fears of being trapped underground, have made dungeons a powerful
metaphor in a variety of contexts. Dungeons, as a whole, have become associated with underground complexes of cells and torture chambers. As a result, the number of true dungeons in castles is often exaggerated to interest tourists. Many chambers described as dungeons or oubliettes were in fact water-cisterns or even
latrines. An example of what might be popularly termed an "oubliette" is the particularly claustrophobic cell in the dungeon of
Warwick Castle's Caesar's Tower, in central England. The access hatch consists of an iron grille. Even turning around (or moving at all) would be nearly impossible in this tiny chamber. However, the tiny chamber that is described as the oubliette, is in reality a short shaft which opens up into a larger chamber with a latrine shaft entering it from above. This suggests that the chamber is in fact a partially back-filled drain. The positioning of the supposed oubliette within the larger dungeon, situated in a small alcove, is typical of
garderobe arrangement within medieval buildings. These factors perhaps point to this feature being the remnants of a latrine rather than a cell for holding prisoners. , Croatia A "bottle dungeon" is sometimes simply another term for an oubliette. It has a narrow entrance at the top and sometimes the room below is even so narrow that it would be impossible to lie down but in other designs the actual cell is larger. The identification of dungeons and rooms used to hold prisoners is not always a straightforward task.
Alnwick Castle and
Cockermouth Castle, both near England's border with Scotland, had chambers in their gatehouses which have often been interpreted as oubliettes.
Folklore often has it that one mode of use for oubliettes in the Borders, which would
obviate latrines anyway, was to throw attackers into the oubliette, close the latch, and leave them to die. It seems likely that this gruesome act was threatened more often than it was carried out in practice, with the real aim being
deterrence of potential attackers via the notoriety of the rumor that such a fate was entirely possible, and (plausibly) perhaps not unlikely, for anyone who might dare to attack. ==In fiction==