Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/282

262 Mediceval Military Architecture, wall, and terminating in a small chamber about 8 feet by 4 feet, which occupies the south-west angle, and was lighted by a loop in the west wall. A fourth chamber was contained within the west wall. It was entered by a doorway now broken down, opening into a passage 2 feet 8 inches broad by 19 feet long, lighted by two loops in the outer wall, one of which was in a garderobe, and in the broken wall is seen a shaft descending from an upper garderobe, possibly in the second floor or on the battlements. The mural chambers are all vaulted. At the south-east angle a doorway and lobby lead into the winding staircase. This main floor was lighted by three windows, one in the north and one in the south wall of the larger apartment, and one in the west wall of the smaller room. These windows are all alike. Their recesses are flat sided and round headed, and are open to the floor-level. They are 8 feet wide. Their framework or tracery is gone, so that it is impossible to say precisely how they were closed in. Their flat sides give to these three window recesses very much the appearance of doorways. This floor was not vaulted, but ceiled with timber in the ordinary way. The upper or second floor is a mere ruin and inaccessible, only fragments of its walls remaining. The least injured part is about the head of the staircase at the south-east angle. Here the sides of the doorway and one wall of the lobby remain. The material of the building is a rough strong sandstone, weathered to a dark colour. The walls, inside and out, were faced with coarse ashlar, well executed, and on three of the exterior sides remaining unhurt. The west face has been stripped, no doubt for use for later buildings. The interior also has been almost wholly stripped, just enough remaining to show what has been. The basement is encum- bered with the fragments of the vaulting, so that the floor is nowhere to be seen. There may therefore have been a well. The stairs have been designedly broken away, so that the staircase remains an empty cylinder. The entrance to it, at the base, is much broken. The three southern loops are tolerably perfect ; one quite so. On the first floor the larger or eastern chamber was probably the Hall. The main entrance had no forebuilding or exterior covering, nor is there any trace of a stone staircase or of a drawbridge. It seems to have been reached by steps of wood. The chamber in the north-east angle, containing a fireplace, full large for its size, may have been the kitchen. This is the only fireplace now seen in the building, though there may have been others in the cross-wall. The two chambers about the south-west angle seem to have been garde- robes, one opening from each of the main rooms. The three windows are unusually large, and being only 12 or 14 feet from the ground, must have much weakened the strength of the place. No doubt the framing or tracery filling up the apertures was heavy and strong, but still no tracery or mullion could have resisted a heavy stone from a catapult, nor indeed could the shell of wall containing