Page:Kirby Muxloe Castle near Leicester (1917).djvu/26

Rh these are well below the water level of the moat, and must have been useless from the first; they can only be seen when the moat is nearly dry. The gunports are circular and have over them a narrow slit ten inches high for sighting; they are widely splayed inwards and their sills are at the same level as the floor, so that the mounting of these small guns must have been of the slightest description. The first floor of the gatehouse has one large room with fireplaces at north-east and south-west, and had four two-light transomed windows towards the court and two overlooking the moat. The floor is of two layers of brick, laid flat on the crown of the vaults below; this work can be dated from the accounts to February 1483. The portcullis and drawbridge were worked from this room, but it was certainly intended to be a living room also and was perhaps divided into two by a wooden partition. There was another story above it, but this no longer exists and was perhaps never finished. It was presumably for the front of the gatehouse that the stones from Swarkeston Bridge were being worked into machicolations in April 1483. The garderobe chamber in the north turret on the first floor level has been made into a pigeon house in later times.

The ranges of buildings running north-east and south-west from the gatehouse were designed with two stories having embattled parapets towards the moat, but little of them exists beyond the broken wall-ends on the gatehouse, with remains of fireplaces, and the toothings on the west tower, and the condition of these latter suggests that the work came to an end before the ranges were finished.

The west tower is the best preserved part of the castle, and shows clear evidence of having been completely finished. It is in plan a square of 25 feet projecting 6 feet into the moat from the line of the revetment wall, and has square turrets on the north-east and south-west, the former containing a newel stair and the latter the garderobes, the shafts of which discharge like those of the gatehouse into a chamber opening on the rampart walk. The tower is of three stories, with a splayed plinth at the ground floor level, and weathered strings at the first and second floors; the two turrets rise one story higher. The wall tops are embattled, with stone copings to the vents and crests, and the roofs were leaded and flat or of very low pitch. The general masonry details are like those of the gatehouse, but the patterns in black brick are simpler. Each room is lighted by a two-light window, and also by two single light windows in the re-entering angles at north and south. The fireplaces have plain arched brick heads, and two of the three