Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/123

Rh, and is used to give breadth to the top of the wall. It is common to all periods, being found upon Norman walls as well as upon those of late Perpendicular date, as Coity and Newport.

Some of the smaller Edwardian castles in Wales are very curious; that of Morlais, near Merthyr, has a circular keep of two stories, of which the lower is internally a polygon of twelve sides, with a vault springing from a central pier. The up-filling of the vault is a light calcareous tufa. This castle contains within its enclosure a singular pit, twenty-five feet square, and excavated upwards of seventy feet deep in the mountain limestone rock. It was probably intended as a well, though a clumsy one. The ruins of a somewhat similar castle remain at Dinas, near Crickhowel. The upper story of the tower of Morlais, as of Castle Côch, contains a number of large fire-places; something of the same sort is seen at Coningsborough, with the addition of an oven.

The Edwardian castles are frequently quite original ; they occur also as additions encircling a Norman keep, as at Dover, Portchester, Bamborough, Corfe, Goodrich, Lancaster, Carlisle, and Rochester. Edward I. completed the tower-ditch of London. The existing walls of towers are commonly Edwardian, though on an older foundation, as York, Canterbury, Chester, Chepstow, and their various bars and gates.

The Norman and Edwardian, the solid and concentric, may be regarded as the two great types of English castles, of which other military buildings are only modifications. After the death of Edward III., the Decorated gave place to the Perpendicular style; and though a few fine castles, and very many embattled gateways, continued to be erected, far less