Page:Kirby Muxloe Castle near Leicester (1917).djvu/29

20 laid out, although no foundations are now to be seen except those of a square dovecot. There is, however, a well to the north-west not far from the present road, and doubtless more might be found if this area were explored.

The arrangements for the supply of water to the moat are interesting. The brook and the little brook mentioned in the earliest entries in the accounts (October 1480) are doubtless much the same to-day. A masonry dam has been built across the brook just below the point where the little brook branches off to supply the moat. When the stream is low the water passes under the dam through a hollowed oak log, which could be blocked by a plug in a square hole at its up stream end, thus holding up a sufficient head of water for the moat. Across the mouth of the little brook are the remains of a grate of oak stanchions set diagonally, to prevent leaves, twigs, and rubbish being carried down towards the moat. Where this brook joins the moat is a second dam, with a sluice beneath it opening from a vertical brick shaft, which can be blocked like the log at the upper dam by a wooden plug. When the shaft was cleared this plug was found still in position, and was a four square block of wood tapering from 5 inches to 3 inches, covered with leather to make it fit tightly in the socket of the sluice. The outlet sluice of the moat at the north-east was very ruinous when cleared, and a modern sluice box has been set in the base of its masonry dam, to allow the moat to be emptied when necessary. In the little brook, a few yards above its junction with the moat, there is an arrangement for diverting its water to the main stream, when it was desired to cut off the supply to the moat; this consists of a hollow log like that in the dam across the brook, through which the water can run into a stone drain leading southeast to the brook. A sluice gate at the junction of the two brooks would have been a more obvious device, but the reason for the existing arrangement is that on the course of the little brook there was a stew pond—possibly more than one—the water of which it was not desirable to drain off except at rare intervals.

In the accounts references occur to a bridge and postern over the new brook, followed by the mention of a bridge and postern towards the new park, and it is not clear whether the two entries refer to two bridges or to one only. In any case there is no evidence of the existence of a third stream.

The site of the garden and orchard, often mentioned in the accounts, probably lay to the north and west of the castle, but this is only conjecture.