Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/141

The Rectangular Keep of a Norman Castle, 125 step of I foot at each floor level. Occasionally the exterior face slopes inward or batters, but this is unusual. The summit at the level of the allure or battlement walk is seldom less than 6 feet, and often 7 feet or 8 feet thick. Within, the larger keeps are divided by a cross wall, usually ascending to the summit, and pierced in each floor. Sometimes this wall is confined to the basement and first floor. Kenilworth, a large keep, had no cross wall ; Norwich and Canterbury had two, and some have chambers walled off at the ends by secondary cross walls, as Castle Rising, Wolvesey, Colchester, and the White Tower. At Bowes two walls divided the basement into three chambers. Usually these dividing-walls were pierced by doorways, but the openings in the main floor were larger. At Scarborough was, and at Hedingham still is, a single large arch ; at Rochester and at Middleham are several arches. At Porchester are only small doorways. Where there is no cross wall its place was, no doubt, supplied by posts of timber. The smaller keeps have a basement and a first floor ; the larger, a second and third floor, — the latter being often an early addition. The basement chamber is almost always at the exterior ground level, and never much below it ; it is commonly from 1 2 feet to 1 5 feet high, aired, rather than lighted, by one or more narrow loops in each face, splayed and stepped up to within : Richmond has not even these. The basement was evidently always a storeroom. Now and then, as at Scarborough, but not often, its walls contain chambers ; more commonly they are solid. In small keeps, as Ludlow and Carlisle, the first was the main floor, or room of state ; in the larger, as Rochester, it seems to have been a barrack. The apertures were rather larger than those below, but not much. In the walls were commonly chambers. In the large keeps the main floor, usually the second, was from 25 feet to 30 feet high, generally with windows 2 feet or so broad, and often coupled under a single arch outside. Inside, the recess was splayed, and sometimes descended to the floor level, while in the jambs were door-openings into mural chambers. Some of these castle halls must have been noble rooms. Where there was a cross wall, as at Rochester, Norham, and Middleham, there were two rooms ; at Kenilworth the large open space was probably subdivided by a brattice. Usually, in the larger castles, the wall of the main floor is pierced, high up, by a sort of triforium gallery, into which the outer windows open, and which opens into the chamber by lofty and larger arches of 3 feet to 4 feet opening. Possibly these galleries and their windows were intended to give another line of defence ;