Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/396

316, and a few crumbling walls and great elm trees full of rooks' nests rise in the place of towers and battlements. The grounds about the ruins have been nicely laid out, and what remains of the castle is saved from further disintegration. The character was very much that of other castles in the West, as Rougemont, Plympton, and Launceston. There was no square keep, but a circular drum, and a large yard surrounded by walls that stood on earlier earthworks. A picturesque gate gives access to the town near the castle. The town itself is quaint and full of interesting relics. A great number of the houses date from Elizabethan times, and belonged to the wealthy merchants of Totnes, which was a great place for the manufacture of woollen cloth. Indeed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was already famous.

Totnes is one of the oldest boroughs in the country. Its earliest charter dates from 1205, and I believe I am right in saying that at a dinner at the Mansion' House given by a Lord Mayor of London within the last few years to the mayors of England, precedence was given to the representative of the borough of Totnes over all others.

The houses of the merchants of Totnes have been sadly tampered with. The requirements of modern trade exact large shop-fronts, and to satisfy the demand of the public to see at a glance what is to be sold within, the venerable houses have been transformed externally, at all events on the ground-floor. But let anyone interested in such things go within and ask to be shown the panelled rooms and