Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/250

 232 Mediceval Military Architecture, level, which opens into the chapel by four foliated arches, each corresponding to a window or loop in the curtain. There is a small Decorated piscina. Against the west wall is a sort of pew of two stages, the upper being an enclosed gallery for the family, opening from the principal rooms. The roof is open, at a very low pitch, with timber ribs rising from corbels. These, with cross ribs, divide the roof into large panels of a very curious character. The walls of the chapel are Norman, but the roof and fittings are mostly Decorated. Maurice, Lord Berkeley, 38 Edward III., obtained from Pope Urban II. a bull bestowing certain spiritual privileges upon all who worshipped here or in the chapel in the keep. The Cellar below the chapel is part of the original castle. Its level is a litde below the floor of the hall. It is in plan an equi- lateral triangle about 40 feet in the side. Its roof is vaulted and groined in three hexagonal bays, springing from three shafts of late Norman character. Nine triangular vaultings, abutting on the walls, complete this very curious roof Opening from this is another vault, also a cellar, at a lower level by about 5 feet. It is much smaller, and has a ribbed and vaulted roof. Unfortunately it is used as a cellar, and obscured by modern fittings. It has a small Tudor window. From the chapel and drawing-room a broad wooden seventeenth century staircase descends into the hall at its south or dais end, in which is a large and handsome fireplace, probably of the same date. The Hall is 32 feet broad by 61 feet long, and has an open pointed roof. It is built at the ground level against the east curtain, which is, or was, pierced by four windows, three in the hall and one within the buttery screen. The latter is late Norman, with slender flanking shafts. The other three are full centred, with a keel bead at the angle, and an interior drip. They seem Decorated, and no doubt replace Norman loops. In the west or court wall are four large and lofty flat-topped and somewhat peculiar windows of two lights each, broken into four by a heavy transom. The upper lights are trefoil, the lower shoulder-headed. Between each pair, outside, is a triangular buttress. The entrance from the court is in the west side, at the north end, by a handsome and spacious porch, vaulted and groined. The exterior doorway is an arch composed of four quite plain straight sides, parts of an octagon, similar in outline to those above the Berkeley tombs at Bristol, known locally as the Berkeley arch. This is repeated with the addition of some orna- ment in the inner doorway, which opens into a narrow strip of the hall cut off by the screen. On the left, in the end wall of the hall, are three fine Berkeley arches opening into the butteries, of which the central was formerly a door. Above this passage, high up, is a small music gallery, probably of Tudor date, or even later. The roof of the hall is poor, but said to be of the fourteenth century. No doubt this represents the original Norman hall, rebuilt, as regards the court wall, in the Decorated period.