Page:Kirby Muxloe Castle near Leicester (1917).djvu/25

16 arms of the builder. On either side of it are two-light windows with transoms, lighting a large room over the gate. The plan of the gatehouse is a rectangle with octagon turrets at the four corners, those towards the court containing newel stairs, while those towards the moat have small rooms on each floor, giving access to garderobes at the north and west of the gatehouse. The shafts of these garderobes do not discharge into the moat, but into vaulted chambers opening to the rampart walks. All the ground floor rooms of the gatehouse are vaulted in brick, but the vault of the gatehouse passage has fallen. The rooms on either side of the passage served as guardroom and porter's

lodge, and each contains a large fireplace and a two-light window towards the court: the porter's room has also a window towards the passage. There is no connection between these rooms and the staircases, which are entered from the courtyard, but doorways lead from them to the ground floor rooms in the north and west turrets. These turrets have basements, the earthen floors of which are below the water level of the moat, but were originally intended to be yet lower, by what must have been a miscalculation of levels. The embrasures and ports for small cannon are the most notable feature of the gatehouse; there are two in each of the ground floor rooms of the turrets, one at the north-west end of the guardroom and porter's lodge respectively, and two more in the basement of each turret, but