Page:Archaeologia volume 38 part 1.djvu/198

172 and shallow work, which may perhaps be Elizabethan. This castle is built over a cavern in the limestone rock; a small river runs under it, and partly round it, forming the moat.

, co. Galway, is a plain square tower of the fifteenth century, very well built of cut stone, three stories high, the walls very thick, with two vaults. The ground-floor room seems to have been a dungeon, and the staircase which now leads from the trap-door is a later insertion. On the first floor the windows are very small, with large recesses within. The upper room has also small narrow lancet windows, one with an ogee head, another with the shouldered lintel; no fireplace or locker in the wall. The staircase from the first floor to the top is in the thickness of the wall, and very well built. The battlement is destroyed, but the alure remains, with the corbels of a bartizan projecting from it. On the first floor is a garderobe, quite perfect, with the passage to it round a corner. There is no original fireplace in any part of the building, which seems to have been a keep only; but there are ruins of a small low building attached to the east end, with a doorway into it, which is said to have been the kitchen of the castle, and this appears probable.

is another fine square tower-house of the end of the fifteenth century. The entrance doorway is large, and was protected by a portcullis, of which the groove only remains; it opens into one of the usual inner porches with three doorways and the "murthering hole" in the vault above; and over this is a small vaulted chamber for the windlass to the portcullis, and to contain a pile of stones for throwing down in case of need on the heads of assailants through the murthering hole. The ground-floor room has three windows, but no fireplace; the large room on the first floor has a fireplace, and a boarded floor, with passages in the thickness of the walls, in which are loopholes; one leads to a garderobe. Over this is another low room under the vault; another small vaulted chamber on this floor has a fireplace and a garderobe, and appears to have been a bed-room. The principal chamber is above the vault, and measures 31 feet by 21, and was 18 feet high to the springing of the roof. Some of the windows are of two lights with ogee heads; others are single-lights pointed; the walls are 5 feet 6 inches thick at the top, but the windows have large embrasures, and there are three closets and two arches in the walls. The garderobe is approached by a staircase and passage in the wall on the way up to the battlements, which are destroyed.

, on the Hill of Howth, near Dublin, is a small tower-house of the fifteenth century, with a stair-turret projecting on one side. The windows are