Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 1.djvu/49

 THE KEEP PLAN INTRODUCTION stands on the top of a steep rocky promontory, which was originally a Saxon stronghold, with its great ditch and palisaded crest, and lofty motte crowned with a wooden castle. The present castle appears to have been built by Hamelin Plantagenet, who held the Earldom of Warren from 1163 to 1201. The keep is circular, but has six buttresses, half hexagons in form, projecting from it, and giving it at a distance very much the appearance of the older square keep of the Normans. Fio. 23. Conisborough Castle. The keep is 66 feet in diameter, and measures 80 feet over the but- tresses. The walls are 15 feet thick, and 90 to 100 feet high. The entrance door is 20 feet above the ground, and the stairs to the upper floors wind round in the thickness of the walls. The basement floor is vaulted, and has a deep well in the centre, and an aperture in the vault above to enable the water to be drawn up. Neither the basement nor