Image Licence

Most of the images on Histories and Castles are free to reuse. Put them in a school project, a video, a blog post or a book, and give us credit with a link back to historiesandcastles.com. That is the whole deal.

The detail is below, because people reasonably want to know exactly what they can do and which images this covers.

What you can do

You may copy, share, crop, resize and adapt our images, in print or online, for personal, educational, editorial or commercial use. You do not need to ask first and you do not need to pay. You do need to credit us as described below, and to say so if you have changed an image.

Teachers and students: you do not need to write to us at all. Use the images and credit the site.

Which images this covers

Everything we have made ourselves and published in our articles and pages:

• Original photography, such as the photographs of Prestatyn Castle taken by our Editor in Chief, Simon A. Williams.
• Illustrations and scenes created by us with AI tools, which is most of the artwork on the site. Our AI policy explains why we work this way.
• Maps, diagrams and other graphics we have made.

We hold the copyright in our photographs. Whether copyright exists in AI generated images varies from country to country, and the law is still being settled. So we license whatever rights we do hold in those images on exactly the same terms as the photographs, and in practice you can use them in the same way.

How to credit us

Put the credit where a reader will see it: in the caption, beside the image, or in the credits or description if it is a video. Give the name and the web address. Online, link to the page where you found the image or to historiesandcastles.com. In print or video, write the address out in full.

Photographs: Photo: Simon A. Williams / Histories and Castles (historiesandcastles.com)

Illustrations and other graphics: Image: Histories and Castles (historiesandcastles.com)

If an image on our site carries a different credit in its caption, use that one.

A request about our AI images

Many of our illustrations look like photographs. We make them to show what a scene probably looked like, built from the surviving evidence, and nobody photographed a thirteenth century siege. If you reuse one, please do not present it as a real photograph or as proof of a particular event, and say it is AI generated wherever your platform or audience would expect that. Check the history before using any of them in work that claims to be factual. This is a request and not a condition of the licence.

What this does not cover

• Our name and castle logo. Please do not use them in a way that suggests we endorse you or your work.
• Our products and downloads, free ones included: study guides, Investigated Histories, books, posters and illustrated guides, and the material inside them.
• Our articles and podcasts. A short quotation with a link back is welcome. Copying a whole article is not.
• Images that come from somebody else, such as a public domain archive or a contributor. The credit on those says so, and their own terms apply.

The licence in full

Images covered by this page are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). There is a plain English summary at creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 and the full legal text at creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. If this page and the licence text ever disagree, the licence text wins. The images are provided as they are, without warranty.

Questions and permissions

If you want a larger file, want to use something outside this licence, or have found one of our images used without a credit, get in touch.

Last updated: 16 October 2026.