Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/464

 428 MedicEval Military Architecture, the seat and its shoot a second shoot is seen in the outer wall. This probably belonged to a garderobe in the battlements, now gone. The staircase is a well, 6 feet diameter, of which twenty-four steps remain. It evidently led from the first-floor level to the summit. The fragment of the turret seems to show that the original height of the wall was about 32 to 36 feet. This and the main staircase are cut short by the removal of the upper 5 feet or 6 feet of the wall. They open upon the present top of the wall, which has been levelled, and a slight battlement and rear wall built to make the walk safe. There does not seem to have been a second floor. Many years ago, about 1683, the then proprietor of the castle, ignominiously known as having removed the upper part of the walls and gutted the interior of the building, discovered that a part of the ground floor rested upon vaults. These he opened and examined, and they are still accessible. The vaults are two in number, built side by side, each 22 feet wide and 96 feet long. They are crossed by a wall 6 feet thick, and thus formed into two vaults of 60 feet and two of 30 feet. The wall between them is 8 feet thick. When discovered they were full of earth, so full that it was evident the contents of the foundations had been heaped and used as a centring, the arch being turned upon the earth or the stones laid upon it. Of one vault the roof is flat, held up by the mere cohesion of the masonry. These vaults had no original entrance, and were evidently works of construction only, not intended to be used. Several breaches were made, so that one vault can be entered from the other; and a breach was also made in the north wall of the keep below the exterior ground- level, through which a good deal of this soil was removed, and thus the cavities admit of a partial examination. The masonry is wholly rude rubble, composed of large pebbles and boulders and fragments of stone, uncoursed, and with a very free use of mortar. The vaults are described as pointed, but the excessive rudeness of the work and the nature of the centring would account for any irregularity in the figure of the arches. To the eye they appear rudely semi- circular. That these vaults are of the date of the keep is evident from their relations to the other walls, part of which rest upon them. The present entrance is in the floor of the well-chamber. For some reason, possibly from an apprehension of defective foundation in a wet sandy soil, it seems to have been thought necessary to take extraordinary precautions against an unequal settlement of the parts of the keep. Hence probably the extensive area, the low altitude of the walls, and the excessive breadth ot their foundations. Hence, also, probably, the decision to elevate the floor of the interior above the exterior ground, by the use of vaulting. If such was the cause of these unusual precautions, the result has been perfectly successful, for there is no mark of subsidence anywhere to be seen. Although a main entrance at the ground-floor level is by no means unknown in Norman keeps, and is found at Carlisle, Ludlow, and Bamborough, it was not usual, and an examination of the pre-