Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/491

Conisborough Castle. 447 The inner circle, or chamber within the inner walls, was 27 feet diameter, and its flooring rested upon a range of nineteen plain corbels. Only the lower part of the wall of this chamber remains, but the jambs of a doorway show that it was entered from the ram- part walk. The wall, and consequently the chamber, was about 7 feet high, and upon it was a conical covering, the eaves of which must have projected somewhat over, and discharged their water into the rampart walk. This mode of finishing off the summit of a tower, by placing the uppermost floor within the circuit of the rampart walk and leaving the battlements free from the roof, is seen in its greatest completeness at Coucy, and what is there seen illustrates what must have been the arrangement here, at Pembroke, at Martens Tower, Chepstow, and in the smaller and later flanking towers of Holyrood House. It is obvious that unless the roof sprung here from a wall within the parapets, or unless there was a timber gallery carried round outside the wall, such a tower as this could not be defended. Its loops were intended for light and air, not for defence; this could only have been directed from the battlements. Hence the absurdity of covering in towers intended for defence, or at any rate to have the appearance of being defensible, with conical roofs springing from the outer wall. Of course the accommodations of such a tower as this of Conis- borough were not such as to suit its lords, still less their ladies, save under the pressure or in expectation of a siege, a remark which applies to all, save the largest, keeps. The passive strength of Conisborough, and its rocky base, secured it against attacks even if seconded by engineering machinery. No catapult or battering-ram would be at all likely to shake or break it. The peril to be guarded against was a blockade, and with this view there was a well within the tower, and the two lower floors, it is clear, were intended for the storage of provisions. The first floor would be the ordinary room of the constable, or lord, and of his family or guests ; the men, probably, also sleeping there. The room above would be the ladies' room, with the oratory close at hand. The kitchen was above all, and there, also, at the battlement level, would be the lodging of the small garrison, probably of not more than ten or a dozen picked men, with a ready communication with the ramparts. The fashion of round keep towers, quite different from the shell keeps, came in towards the close of the Norman and during the Early English period of architecture, when frequent communication with the East had affected men's military ideas. A few, such as Brunless, Tretower, Launceston, and Orford, are found in England of that time, but in France there are many, widely spread, and very grand examples. Philip Augustus was a great builder of such towers. That of the Louvre, of which the circular foundations, with the well and the sewer, were uncovered a few years ago, was his work, and to the same period, though late in it, 1223-30, belongs the Tower of Coucy, probably the finest military structure ever built. Taking a general view of the Castle of Conisborough, and giving