Page:The histories of Launceston and Dunheved, in the county of Cornwall.djvu/269

 ITS ARCHITECTURE. 241 architecture to our theory are not difficulties in fact. When the Normans found the remains of an ancient building on a site which suited them, they often added their own work, thus leaving a mixed piece of Norman and Saxon parts. The general shape and plan of a castle depended on the form of the ground occupied. Naturally the favourite situation was an eminence, or the bank of a river. In Dunheved Castle there is no British or Roman masonry, no course of Saxon bonding. The cordon, the chamfered pointed arches, and the portcullis grooves are all Anglo- Norman in character. S. R. Pattison, Esq., F.G.S., writing in 185 1, says : It has been commonly said that the ruins exhibit traces of various workmanship, and show the adoption of different styles. The solidity of the west gate [south-west gate to keep court], and the better cement of the inner keep tower, are appealed to in support of this opinion. The inner keep tower is built from a hard blue layer of stone, which appears to have been exhausted before its summit was reached, and the mortar contains a greater proportion of lime ; but the circle of cut stones round the centre of the tower is of Poliphant stone, similar to that used in all other portions of the building ; and the quartz gravel, used with the lime, is the same as that used in all other parts also. The doorways of the inner tower, and the gateway of the great [south] western entrance, are as modern as anything about the ruins, save that the [north] east gate, being less required for defence, was probably the last portion erected. The castle, as it now stands, appears to have been raised on one uniform plan, and to have been built all at one time, with such lapse only as the exigences of a large work will require. We entirely agree with the opinion thus expressed, adding a single sentence in order to bring further attention to the materials and the construction of the buildings ; viz., there is no instance of the use of granite, and no evidence that the timbers which supported the floors or the roofs were embedded in the masonry. These timbers rested on project- R