Page:Kirby Muxloe Castle near Leicester (1917).djvu/20

Rh occupied by a moated house, approached through a gatehouse with a drawbridge. The moat was probably smaller than the present one, and in setting out the new building the old gate-house and several other buildings were cleared away. The hall and the north wing, containing the principal living rooms, were, however, retained to form part of the new house, and their foundations may be seen to-day, within the lines of Lord Hastings' work. So little of the older building is left that its date must be a matter of conjecture; perhaps the middle of the fourteenth century. The hall was of two bays, with the screens at the south-west end, entered through porches. The lines of buttery and pantry and the passage to the kitchen are to be seen, but nothing of the kitchen itself is left; a stone drain runs southward from its site. East of the hall, where the solar or great chamber should be, the foundations have been destroyed, and there are traces of a cobbled path running south-eastward across its site and as far as the moat; this has probably to do with later farm buildings, of which some rough foundations were found in the course of clearing the site. The north-east wing of the old house shows two projecting chimney breasts on the east side, with the pit of a garderobe between them; all the walls of this date are of stone, and it can here be seen how they were thickened with brickwork when incorporated in the later work of Lord Hastings. In December 1480 the tiled roofs of the hall and various chambers were being repaired, and throughout the winter stores of rough stone and of timber were collected for use in the new work. In February 1481 the old gatehouse was being pulled down, and in March and April the débris of the destroyed buildings was removed, and timber for a new-bridge prepared. The site of the old buildings is called the inner court, or the placea, the manor-place, or simply manerium, the manor.

In May 1481 the work begins in earnest, and the first mention of a master-mason at eightpence a day occurs. His name does not occur till some six weeks later, where he is called John Cowper; the leading freemason under him was Robert Steynforth, and it is worth noting that a considerable proportion of the men seem to have been Welshmen, as John and Hugh Powell, William Griffith, and Maurice Aprice. Carpenters are now making a forge, scaffold poles, etc., and squaring timbers for the bridge and the postern over the new brook, and for what are perhaps a second bridge and postern "made afresh towards the new park." This is the park enclosed by licence of 1474. The moat is being dug out and the lines of the new court laid