Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/411

Chdtea2t- Gaillard. 381 30 feet wide, and 40 feet long, having a basement excavated in the chalk rock. It is of two floors, with fireplaces and segmental arches, and has an appendage on the north, perhaps for offices. It has windows in the curtain looking over the cliff towards the river. Stairs from hence descend to the postern, and the keep stair lies between this building and the keep. At the northern point outside of, but engaged in, the wall, is the foundation of a round tower, now included in a square bastion, belonging rather to the outer ward than to this. The postern is common to this and the outer ward, or rather at this point the two run into one, and the postern pierces the common wall. It is a narrow door having a flat top supported by two brackets, and above a round-head arch with closed tympanum. It opens in a re-entering angle of the wall, covered by the bastion, and upon the scarp, so that it must have been reached by a shifting bridge or ladder, the arrangements for working which seem indicated by some recesses for bars just within the portal. There is no port- cullis ; the defence was a barred door. The cill of this postern is about 30 feet below the base of the keep. It is reached by steps cut in the chalk rock, and but little worn. The great gateway of this ward opens in the curtain to the east, and had a gatehouse almost entirely within the wall. This gate is considerably below the level of the ward. A steep descent leads to it, and the portal vault has three hanging ribs or arches, with a port- cullis inside them, with a square groove. The inner half of the portal is gone ; probably there was a second vault and portcullis, and an open space between. The face of the porter's lodge is gone, but the lodge is seen to have had a plain segmental vault. Outside the gate is a curious square groove as for a portcullis, but it is stopped, and does not descend below the springing level of the gate arch. This gate opens upon the ditch. The base of the scarp-pier of the bridge remains. The counterscarp has tumbled in. There was, probably, a central pier in the ditch. The present bridge is not original. The approach to this gate left by Coeur-de-Lion was a causeway, formed by leaving the rock uncut. It was over this causeway that the inner ward was stormed and taken. Just within this gate was a well 270 feet deep, now blocked up. Outside the enceinte is the ditch, about 20 feet deep, and 30 feet wide at the gate, and along the south front, with vertical sides, but running out to nothing on the steep ground as its ends pass northwards. This ditch is, in fact, in the outer ward, yN{ch envelopes the inner ward. This ward is oblong, about 325 feet north and south, and 200 feet east and west. Its northern half is of an irregular oval form, following the rock, and terminating in two large rectangular conjoined bastions upon the precipitous north end. The southern half is nearly rectangular; having a straight south face 125 feet long, flanked by two drum towers. From these pass off the lateral curtains, forming the east and west front, and ending in two other drum