Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/240

224 MedicEval Military Architecture. only remain. Up its southern side is a curtain-wall, much ruined, and about 8 feet thick. This commences at the ground level at the top of the mound, and runs into a fragment of the enceiiite wall of the inner ward. It evidently connected this wall with the keep, and was probably, as at Tamworth, parapeted on either face of its rampart walk. It was not continued down the further side of the mound, which was not a part of the enceinte^ but a citadel placed outside it, and connected with it only by a single wall. Probably the ditch of the mound was originally continued all round it, and simply traversed by the wall. Much of the ditch between the mound and the inner ward is filled up, probably very recendy, as the process is now in progress, the object being to connect the level sward of the enceinte with the mound for pleasure purposes. The inner ward is an oval space, about 500 feet north and south by 300 feet east and west. It is encircled by a wall, about 7 feet thick, and now about 20 feet high, and which may have been 4 feet to 5 feet higher. Traces of the crenellations are visible. This wall is broken down in parts, but nearly three-fourths of it remain. The northern, or end opposite to the mound, is concave, the ditch of the mound having been run into it. There is a fragment of a mural tower on the west face, much mutilated and apparently rectangular. In the east face are two openings, one of which may have been a postern. In the north-east quarter a cross-wall seems to have belonged to a domestic building. The gap for the main gateway is at the south end. There are no traces of towers there, and there do not appear, judging from the wall, ever to have been any. The interior tei-re-pkin^ or platform, is level, no terrace against the wall, and no trace of a bank against which the wall could have been built. Outside the wall is a space of about 5 feet broad, beyond which the ground falls sharply towards the wet ditch. The inner ditch is carried quite round both mound and inner ward wall, being in plan an unbroken oval. It is deep and every- where wet, and in parts it opens out into a pool. This is the case where it gave off the ditch embracing the mound, now in part filled up, and in the south-eastern quarter, where its overflow escapes into the river. Outside, and forming the counterscarp of this ditch, is the second or middle enceinte. This is a steep and narrow bank, carrying a walk of about 8 feet broad, having about an equal slope inwards towards the inner ditch, and outwards towards the outer. For about its northern two-thirds this bank is very uniform, but at the south-west quarter it swells into a small mound or cavalier, about 22 feet in diameter at top, and about 20 feet high, close to which the land has been cut away to effect a modern entry. Opposite to this, on the south-east quarter, is another rather larger mound, about 30 feet across and 25 feet high; and at this point the bank makes a loop outwards, which somewhat destroys the symmetry of its plan. These two mounds are evidently intended to flank the extremities of the outer bank.