Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/185

Of the Edzuardian or Concentric Castles. 169 half-round, with slightly prolonged sides, 4 to 6 inches broad by from 4 to 7 inches deep. Above, in the vault, is a chase through which the grate is worked. Sometimes the portcullis chamber is a small cell in the wall, as at Rochester keep and Coucy, but in large gateways where there are two or three grates, they are worked in the chamber above. At Linlithgow and Thornton Abbey, where the grate is single, it is carried up within the wall and worked in the second story. Sometimes the grate had no lateral grooves, and must have either hung loose or been steadied by its spikes resting on the ground below. This is seen at St. Briavels and at the upper gate of Chepstow, though never with an outer portcullis. Sometimes grooves are cut for a spare grate, but do not appear to have been armed. Nothing is more remarkable than the provisions for clean- liness in military buildings. At Ludlow, Langley, and Caerphilly Castles are large mural towers appropriated to garderobes. At Goderich they occupy a broad buttress. At Beaumaris the sewers are of very large size, and run within the main curtain like galleries. Such sewers are often sup- posed to be secret passages, though the garderobes above, and the character of the outlets below, should correct this notion. At Coyty the filth was collected in an enormous vaulted chamber. The ramparts of the curtains are also usually provided with garderobes. Subterranean chambers were not more frequent in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth than in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and if we have nothing like the magnificent tiers of vaulting in the tower of Coucy, neither have we anything like the wretched cells and oubliettes found in German castles, and of which those of Baden-Baden are examples. The basement chambers of mural towers are, indeed, often below the level of the court-yard, but they are above that of the ditch outside. At Castel Coch, near Cardiff", is about the worst dungeon in Britain, but even this is not underground. The posterns in these castles are often very elaborate. There is a very fine one at Windsor, opening in the castle ditch, and intended for the passage of cavalry. This is pro- bably of the age of Henry IIL At Caerphilly are two with regular gatehouses and drawbridges. Sometimes the pos- tern is a small door with a grate. That at Goderich was worked in the floor above, so that it required two men in two several places to open or close the postern. At Caerphilly are two water-posterns ; one out of which a boat could be lowered into the lake, the other at the water-level, as at