Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/370

 342 MedicBval Military Architecture. present stairs and the groining above are very modern, though the latter may cover older work. The shell is original and untouched. The material is lias ashlar, backed with rolled pebbles from the Taff. The quoins and batde- ments are chiefly of a white limestone, dressed with care. This tower gives character to the whole mass of the building. It has been compared with Guy's tower at Warwick, which, though of smaller dimensions, it much resembles ; and it is, no doubt, the work of the same nobleman or his wife, possibly of the same archi- tect, and probably was built between the years 1425 and 1439, during which period Richard, Earl of Warwick, was lord of Cardiff. ^ Some of the prints of the last century show a turret rising out of the Cardiff tower ; but this seems to have been a fiction, for no traces of such a turret are found, and in that position it would have been inconsistent with the internal arrangements of the tower. Immediately behind the tower is the central part, or body of the building, about 70 feet by 30 feet, now composed of a dining-room and entrance lobby on the main floor ; a basement, with cellars and offices below, and a range- of bedrooms above. The tower is divided from this building by the older main wall of the castle, 10 feet thick and 40 feet high, which runs through the whole, and is .much cut about and mutilated by later communications. The present dining-room and lobby appear to have composed a hall, 62 feet long by 18 feet broad and 13 feet high, having a flat ceiling, probably like that of the hall at Warwick. A passage cut through the wall leads from the lobby into the tower at the foot of the stair, and is no doubt as old as the tower. In recent times, probably by the first Stuart, the face of the great wall has been cut away 3 feet, from the floor level upwards, to give a width of 21 feet to the dining-room. Also, about five years ago, a passage 32 feet long and 3 feet wide, was cut like a tunnel through the axis of this wall, to give a way from the tower to the breakfast- room and offices beyond. The eastern front of this hall, which looks into the middle ward, forms the centre of the present fagade. It is divided into three compartments by four octagonal turrets of half projection, about 4 feet in the side. These rise to the roof. That to the south con- tains a stair, with an original door from the court. The other three consist of two stages of three windows in each, divided by a string- course. In the lower stage the two central turrets are more ornate than the rest, and have their angles capped with slender buttresses surmounted by pinnacles. This tabernacle work is original in the southernmost of the two, but was added to the other when the windows were pierced in it, and it was cased, a few years ago. These turrets are battlemented and looped above, and range with the regular parapet of the building, but they are not machicolated, their structure being but slight. twelve sides, with five vaulted stories.
 * The tower at Warwick is 105 feet high and 38 feet diameter ; a polygon of