Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/365

Cardiff Castle, Glamorgan. 339 being prisons, known as Stavell-y-Oged and Stavell Wen. One, the larger of these prisons, now disused, has a pointed vault and a small loop, high up in the east wall. This tower has four original entrances : one to each of the basement prisons, one from the remains of the great curtain, and one from the ramparts of the castle wall. All are on the north and western faces, and there is no doorway opening towards the great gateway. It is thus clear that this tower, though placed close to the gateway, was never used as a gatehouse. The northern bank of the general enclosure presents a slight angle outwards, and near the salient a tunnel has been cut through it. This was done about thirty years ago, to give a carriage drive towards the Senghenydd road. Outside, at the foot of the bank, along the north, south, and east fronts, was a wet ditch, anciently fed by the Taff through the inter- vention of the mill leat. This moat covered the three fronts, extending as far as the north or Senghenydd gate of the town. In the time of Meyric it was dry and silted up. More recently the eastern portion has been to some extent superseded by the Gla- morganshire canal, and the northern, at a lower level, is now a part of the feeder by which the river water is conveyed under the canal to the Dock re -ervoir. The southern arm has been filled up and built over for many centuries, and its existence is only known from the soft, black soil found in occasional excavations. The mill leat which supplied the lord's mill, at which the people of Cardiff were bound to grind, and which was occasionally used to flood the low ground for purposes of defence, still runs along the west front of the castle. In the reign of Elizabeth there were three grist-mills and a tucking-mill dependent upon the castle, and one grist-mill was standing in 1660, but was afterwards replaced by a tanyard, removed in 1 86 1, when the new lodge and town bridge were erected. The birdge then destroyed was built about 1796, and replaced a structure of four stone arches, probably of the age of Elizabeth (and referred to in certain Acts of Parliament), placed rather above the castle ; so that the high-road from it, towards the west gate of the town, crossed the marsh by a causeway and the leat by a bridge of three arches, and defiled close under the main buildings of the castle. Part of the old gate of the town, with its iron gudgeons, may still be seen in the brushwood a few yards in advance of the great tower, showing how the road entered the town under the castle wall. A small Tudor archway still remains on the right of the old entrance, nearly in a line with the Red House, a building of considerable antiquity, now much altered, and known as the Cardiff Arms Hotel. Recently some excavations between this building and the castle disclosed the foundations of the old town wall, and a large arched passage which might be either a postern or a sewer. It was not followed up. The area. within the castle wall is about 10 acres, and within the counterscarp of the moat about 13 acres. Within the great enclosure, near to, and a little west of, the centre z 2