Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 29.djvu/399

 ODIHAM CASTLE, HANTS. 833 in modern times, for the convenience of entry, have been converted into a door, and so the present appearance pro- duced. The first or state floor was about 30 ft, high. Its south face was occupied b}' a very capacious fireplace, with a bold hood and mantelpiece of ashlar, now gone, and it had a round back and a large circular chimney shaft carried up vertically in the thickness of the wall. Of the other seven faces two are gone, and four are pierced with lofty round-headed arches, about 8 ft. broad, and slightly splayed. These no doubt terminated in small coupled windows. In the east face is an opening without splay, evidently a doorway, and no doubt the main entrance, with an exterior stair, as at Brunless and Coningsburgh. In an adjacent face is a large square locker. The upper floor also had a fireplace, a smaller one above that on the state floor, and in front of its chiranc}' shaft. This lesser shaft seems to have been of ashlar. The arch of the fire- place is of three pings, each of large thin red tiles, having a very Roman aspect. In this floor the window recesses were ranged in pairs, two in each face. Of these three and a half pairs or seven window arches remain. In the east face is a small locker. This story may have been 18 ft. high. The floors were of timber, and composed of large beams, laid about G in. apart. As the wall is the same thickness throughout there are no sets-off', and the walls are pierced with square recesses for the beams. As these recesses are not parallel but radiating, it is clear that the floor rested, as in the Wakefield Tower in the Tower of London, upon a central pier or post. There are no traces of any mural chamber of any kind. The history of this tower, the character of its casings, the thickness of its walls, and the round-headed figure of such arches as remain point to the Norman, or commencement of the Early English period. Nevertheless, it is in plan very unlike the usual Norman structures, and the buttresses, clearl}' original, are characteristic of a very much later period. If it be Norman or transitional, it is ver}' late, indeed in the style as late as the reign of llichard I., but it must be confessed that the buttresses are much more in harmony with the date of Richard II, The tower stands near the centre of a roughly-circular