Chapter XVII: Part 17

The _Middle Ward_ is the most important division of the castle. In it are the domestic and state buildings, the chapel, the kitchen, and the great gatehouse. The principal buildings occupy its north side, resting upon and partly forming the exterior curtain wall. Near the centre is the hall. This was a noble apartment, 60 feet long by 30 feet broad, and 35 feet high to the springing corbels of its open timber roof. The recesses for the hammerbeams remain, and the corbels on which the principals rested. Owing to the low springing of the main timbers, the roof had from within the appearance of a very high pitch, which the water table shows not really to have been the case. The hall is on the first floor, and approached from the court by a broad exterior staircase, opening in the south wall near its west or lower end. In the north wall are three long narrow windows of one light each, trefoiled, and crossed by a heavy transom, and in the east end of this side a small door leads, probably, into a garderobe. The view from these windows is up the Teme and Corvedale. In the south wall are three large windows looking upon the court; they are of two lights, trefoiled, and crossed by a transom. Their recesses have equilaterally arched heads, and the angles are replaced by filleted beads. One window only has a stone seat. The great door, towards the west end of this side, matches with the window recesses, though a little lower. In the west end are two buttery doors of unequal size, and at the north-west corner a door opens, as at Pembroke, into a well-stair to the roof. In the east end of the hall, near the north-east corner, and high up, is a combined door and window—a sort of hatch, by means of which those in the upper state room could either look into the hall or step down into the gallery that ran across above the dais. The central south window has been blocked up, and converted into a late Tudor fireplace. No doubt the original grate, as at Penshurst, stood in the middle of the hall.

West of the hall is the buttery tower, a very fine group, which occupied the north-west angle of the ward. Part of it projects boldly, and caps the north-western angle of the curtain. The part within the ward is also rectangular. The part connected with the curtain is Norman, and was a large rectangular tower with an open gorge. In its base are two round-headed doorways, now nearly buried, whence mural passages led to garderobes in the curtain. The older part has been raised, and a pointed arch turned, and upon it a wall built, closing the gorge at the second floor. This tower has had large additions on its inner face, and is now a part only of the building, of which the basement seems to have been a store, and the first floor, 33 feet by 27 feet, a serving-room and buttery attached to the hall. This room was entered by a side-door on the great hall staircase, so that the dishes were brought from the kitchen up the great stair, but not through the great door of the hall. In the buttery is a large fireplace.

At the other or east end of the hall are the state rooms, contained within a grand and lofty structure, rectangular in plan, and projecting beyond the hall. Whether the foundations are Norman, or whether, like the superstructure, the whole is of Decorated date, is doubtful. The material is excellent ashlar. There are a basement and two upper floors. In the first is a grand fireplace; but the principal apartments were on the second floor. The door and window openings are numerous and varied. Some are excellent Decorated, with lancet and segmental arches; others are insertions in florid Perpendicular; and others, in wretched taste and of base materials and workmanship, are of Tudor date. The upper room has also a large fireplace, and the abutments of the hood are two carved heads. The north window is of one light, and of great length, divided by transoms. The south window is of similar character, but has two lights. This upper room had an open roof of low pitch, supported by three pairs of principals.

Next to these rooms, on the east side, is a smaller pile of buildings, also rectangular, which fills up the space between the state rooms and the north-eastern tower. This, probably, was appropriated below to servants’ apartments, and above to the principal bedrooms. There are, in the basement, three fine early Perpendicular windows of two lights, trefoiled, and with the centre mullion carried through the head. Windows of this size, so low down in an outer wall, are rare, and what is also curious, they open from two rooms by no means remarkable for size or ornamentation. This part of the suite, originally Decorated, on perhaps a Norman foundation, seems to have been remodelled or rebuilt in the Perpendicular period. Connected with these buildings and with the state apartments, and abutting upon both, is the garderobe tower—a grand rectangular structure projecting from the curtain, and wholly of ashlar, and of Decorated date. It is composed of a basement and four upper floors. The basement is occupied by several garderobes, the spacious outlets of which have already been described. The upper floors seem to be connected with the state rooms, and in the walls are many small chambers not accessible. The windows are of one light, trefoiled, usually with a transom. Between this building and the hall, projecting outside the curtain, is a multiangular turret containing a staircase.

The north-eastern tower caps the angle of the ward. It is rectangular in plan and of Norman date. It forms a part of the two curtains of the middle and outer ward, standing upon each. In its base a door leads into a mural passage in the east curtain, now blocked up with rubbish, and in its first floor is a garderobe in the north wall.

The kitchen, wholly of Decorated date, is a large rectangular building, placed against the wall of the inner ward, but free on the other three sides. It has two large windows to the east, and an excellent door in the north wall opposite to the hall staircase. The flagging of the floor remains, and parts of the large fireplace on the west side, with a couple of small side ovens. It has had divers Perpendicular additions. The back kitchen was to the west, and it is probable that a breach in the adjacent wall of the inner ward represents a late doorway, communicating with the well and the great oven.

The _Gatehouse_ is approached from the middle ward by a bridge over the ditch, of which the inner end was broken by a drawbridge, flanked by walls with loops. The gateway has a low-pointed arch, on a tablet above which are the arms of Elizabeth and those of Sir Henry Sydney, with the date 1581. As the curtain is 7 feet thick, and bonded into the keep, it is evidently original, and the door fittings are an insertion. There is no portcullis. The entrance door opened into a passage, having the porter’s prison and the entrance to the keep on the left, and on the right the gatehouse chambers. The building is of the age of Elizabeth, and very inferior to the older work. Probably the original entrance was by a mere archway in the curtain, as at Kenilworth and Bridgenorth.

The _Chapel_, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen, is the most remarkable part of the castle. It stands out in the centre of the middle ward, between the gatehouse and the hall. All of it that remains is the circular nave. This is 28 feet in interior diameter, with walls 4 feet thick. It has an entrance door to the west, and a large chancel arch to the east. The rest of the interior is occupied by a mural arcade of fourteen arches, seven on a side, resting on a low stone bench. The arches are alternately chevron moulded and beaded, the capitals cushion-shaped and roughly ornamented. Above the arcade was a timber gallery resting upon twelve corbels, of which one is decided Norman and one early English. Light was admitted by three windows, to the west, north, and south. That over the door was round-headed, with plain flanking detached shafts, and round the head a chevron and double billet moulding. Outside, these windows rest upon a billeted string, the flanking shafts are engaged, with small plain caps and bases, and the ring-stones, of considerable breadth, rest upon an abacus, and are worked in chevron and billet mouldings. The north and south windows are quite plain.

The west door is a fine example of enriched late Norman work. Outside, it stands in a double recess, having detached nooked flanking shafts, two on each side, with fluted capitals, and the semi-circular spaces above the flutes are covered with a small indented pattern, a sort of hollow nail-head. Of the four, all the caps and one shaft remain. The actual doorway has plain, square jambs. Above, a bold, simple abacus, the under chamfer of which is hollow, has the face carved with the rudimentary dog-tooth ornament. Over the door is a deep chevron moulding. The next ring, over the inner shafts, has a bold beading, and the outer, and much the broadest ring, has a chevron moulding reduplicated, and above it a double billeted drip.

The chancel arch is large, round-headed, and of three ribs, beneath a double billet moulding. The style of ornamentation resembles generally that of the west door. On the west face are two nook shafts on each side, and in addition two half shafts are placed as pilasters in the actual archway supporting the middle rib. This arch and that of the door have become slightly flattened by settlement, as is shown by the gaping of the soffit joints near the crown. The east face of this arch is quite plain, save that the abacus is returned. The original chancel, 42 feet long, had a high-pitched roof, and there is a mark of a second and later one less steep. The side walls are gone. The curtain formed the east wall, and has no window. Outside, the nave is divided into two stages by a billeted string, on which the windows rest, and which is considerably above the top of the door. Above is a plain battlement of no projection, with embrasures one-half the breadth of the merlons.

Two arches of the nave arcade have been pierced for Tudor windows, and a third, to the north, has been converted into a doorway. The north window has also been made a doorway, and it is evident that a light gallery of two stages was laid from the domestic apartments to the chapel, the upper one opening on the circular gallery. The original way to this circular gallery must have been by a wooden stair within the building. The chancel was standing in the reign of Charles II., and had two Tudor windows in its north wall and windows in the roof, also the nave had a saddleback roof, of which the gables were east and west. The material of the chapel is coursed rubble. South-west of the chapel was, in Elizabeth’s time, a fountain. This chapel is, with great probability, attributed to Jocelyn de Dinan in the reign of Henry I. (1100–1135), the Temple Church, which it resembles, dating from 1127.

The _Outer Ward_.—The gatehouse has been much altered and mutilated. In front it presents the appearance of a gateway, with a low-pointed arch, in a curtain about 6 feet thick and 35 feet high, of which the merlons are pierced by plain loops. On each side the gate is a flanking wall, 3 feet thick, and projecting 8 feet, which, no doubt, covered the drawbridge. The arch looks Decorated, as is probably the curtain, though the battlements are probably modern. The ditch has been filled up, and large trees grow along its course. The only buildings in this ward are placed against the curtain, and have already been noticed.

There is no evidence, material or by record, of any castle here before the Norman Conquest. The “low” or mound known to have been removed from the churchyard, and the memory of which is preserved in the name of the town, is the only ancient earthwork connected with the place, and was, no doubt, sepulchral. The original Norman castle seems to have stood on the present lines. It was composed of a keep, placed close to the entrance, and forming a part of the _enceinte_. Westward, the keep was connected by a short curtain with the south-west or bakehouse tower, rectangular, of moderate size, and having its inner face or gorge open. From thence the curtain passed at right angles northwards along the edge of the rock to a second tower, also rectangular, and containing a postern. From thence, still along the edge of the rock, the curtain, probably 25 feet high, reached the north-west angle, where it was capped by a tower nearly rectangular, but placed diagonally, so as to cap the angle, and which was open in the rear. Thence the curtain passed eastwards, along the north front, to the north-east angle, where was a tower, square, or nearly so. No doubt the Norman domestic buildings were placed upon this curtain, and probably there was a central tower on the wall near the present garderobe tower. From the north-east tower to the keep was the curved curtain, probably then, as now, free from buildings, and outside of this a ditch, still remaining, and extending from cliff to cliff. Of this original castle there at present remain the keep, the bakehouse and postern towers, the base of the buttery, and much of the north-eastern tower, and more or less of the curtain.

Later in the Norman period certain changes were made. The keep was raised and enlarged, the curtain forming the inner ward was built, and probably the well was sunk, and in the middle ward the chapel was built. The outer ward may have been part of the original design, or it may have been a late Norman addition; that it was not of later date than this is shown by the square mural tower. All the rest, curtain, gatehouse, and Mortimer Tower are later.

The next changes were in the Decorated period, when very important alterations were made in the older parts, amounting almost to a reconstruction of the fortress. Very early in the period, perhaps before it, the north door and window of the basement of the keep were inserted, the vault turned, and probably the gateway remodelled. At a later date, but still early in the Decorated period, the hall, buttery, and domestic apartments were built along the north front and the kitchen.

The works in the Perpendicular style are few, and are confined to alterations in the domestic apartments, and in the entrance passage to the keep and the kitchen.

Then came the Tudor period, in which the castle had to be converted into a palace for the Presidents of the Marches. The base of the keep became a prison, the well-stair was probably inserted, the rooms fitted with Tudor windows and fireplaces, and the gatehouse was built. Much was done in fitting up the hall and domestic apartments, though in a slight and flimsy manner, so that most of this work has disappeared, and stables were built in the outer ward. The extinction of the Council of Wales, and the civil wars, put a stop to any outlay upon the place, and for some time it seems to have been freely pillaged, until it became a complete ruin, without floors, or roofs, or any kind of fittings in lead, iron, or timber. Of late years it has been so far cared for as to be protected against all injuries save those of time and weather, while at the same time it is freely open to all visitors. What is wanted for antiquarian purposes is that the mural passages should be cleared out, and a plan made of each floor.

HISTORY.

Ludlow is apparently a purely Norman fortress. Its earthworks, such as they are, or were, have nothing in common, either in position or character, with the hill forts of British origin, so common in that district; neither do they at all resemble the later and English works attributed to Æthelflæd and her countrymen in the ninth or tenth centuries, and of which Wigmore, Richard’s castle, and Shrewsbury are adjacent types. In plan, indeed, Ludlow is not unlike those works by which headlands and promontories on the seashore were frequently defended, it is supposed, by the Scandinavian sea kings, and of which the entrenchment at Flamborough Head is the finest example on record; but these are seldom, if ever, found far inland, nor is there anything in the two concentric segments of ditches which constitute, or did formerly constitute, the earthworks of Ludlow, inconsistent with the notion that they are Norman works.

There is no mention of Ludlow in Domesday; but that record gives three places in the district bearing the name of Lude, of which one, belonging then to Osberne Fitz Richard, is demonstrated by Mr. Eyton to be the later Ludlow. The termination necessary for its distinction was derived from a large “low” or tumulus, probably sepulchral, and which stood until 1190 on what afterwards became the burial-ground of the parish church. “Lude” or “lud” is thought by the same author to mean a ford, as, by a common pleonasm, in the adjacent “Ludford.” The two other Ludes were distinguished by the names of their lords, and known as Lude-Muchgros and Lude-Sancy.

Mr. Eyton has further shown, almost to demonstration, that Fitz Richard’s tenant in Lude was the much more considerable Roger de Lacy, and that when he decided here to build a castle, he obtained the lordship from Fitz Richard, and founded the castle within ten years after the survey, or about 1086–1096. Roger was a good type of a Marcher lord. In 1088 he was in rebellion against William Rufus, on behalf of Courthose, and again in 1095, when he took part in the Mowbray rising, was exiled, and so died.

Rufus allowed his estates to pass to his next brother, Hugh, who, however, died childless between 1108–1121, when the estates fell to the Crown by escheat. Henry I. granted Ludlow to Pagan Fitz John, who also held Ewias Lacy, and who was slain by the Welsh in 1136, leaving no male issue. Stephen seems to have seized his lands, and to have placed as castellan in Ludlow a certain Sir Joyce or Gotso de Dinan, evidently a Breton knight. Shortly afterwards, Joyce was in rebellion, for in April 1139, Stephen, accompanied by Prince Henry of Scotland, laid siege to the castle, and constructed against it two “counter-forts.” It was at this siege that Stephen rescued Prince Henry, by his personal strength, from the grasp of a grappling-iron, thrown over him as they walked rather too near to the walls. It would seem that the castle was not taken.

Joyce’s most dangerous foe was his neighbour, Hugh de Mortimer of Wigmore, of whom he obtained possession by means of an ambush, and detained him prisoner in the castle; a tower of which has been supposed by its name to commemorate this event. Joyce died, also without male issue, about 1166, after which event Henry II. gave or restored Ludlow to Hugh de Lacy, a descendant, though not in the male line, from the former family; Emma, the sister of Roger and Hugh de Lacy, having been the mother of a certain Gilbert, who took his mother’s name, and died 1135, leaving Hugh de Lacy, the new grantee of Ludlow. This Hugh, who was a very powerful lord in Ireland, held both Ludlow and Ewias, and was custos of Dublin. Henry II. feared his power, and in 1181 seized upon Ludlow. Hugh was assassinated in Ireland in 1185, and left Walter, his son and heir, to whom Henry, in 1189, restored his father’s lands; but seems to have retained the castle and tower of Ludlow, which thence came to King John, to whom, in 1206, Walter de Lacy paid 400 marks, to be reinstated at Ludlow.

John, however, again seized the castle in 1207, and gave it in charge to William de Braose, and for a time to Philip de Albini, and then to Thomas de Erdington. Nor did the king restore it till 1214, when Ingelram de Cygoigne was directed to render it up, which he did, though unwillingly. Walter, like his father, was chiefly occupied in Ireland. In 1224 he gave up Ludlow to William de Gammages; no doubt to hold as a pledge for his own good conduct. He died in 1241, leaving Walter, his grandson, as his heir, who died under age. Walter left two sisters, of whom Matilda married, first, Peter de Geneva, one of the Provençal favourites of Henry III., and who had the custody of Ludlow. Peter died childless, but in 1234 he made over to William de Lacy the constableship of the castle in fee. Lacy was to keep it in repair, and to maintain there a chaplain, porter, and two sentinels, and the expenses were to be allowed. In time of war, the lord was to garrison the place, and live in the inner, the tenant living in the outer, ward. Peter de Geneva died in 1249. His widow then married Geoffrey de Genville, a Poitevin, who was living in 1283, and who held the castle and half the manor, the other half belonging to Margery de Lacy, sister and co-heiress with Matilda, and who had married John de Verdon. During that period, and immediately after the battle of Lewes, when Simon de Montfort visited Wales in 1264, he took Ludlow Castle, which, however, he could have held but for a short time.

Although Peter de Genville, son of Geoffrey and Matilda, died before both his father and mother, yet he had the castle at his death in 1292. His daughter and heiress, Johanna de Genville, married Roger de Mortimer, Earl of March, who, in 1316, was joint lord of Ludlow with Theobald de Verdon, grandson of John de Verdon and Margaret de Lacy.

The Mortimers held what they probably made the lion’s share of Ludlow for five generations, through some of the most turbulent times in English history; but under their rule Ludlow gave place to Wigmore, their chief seat, and the centre of their oldest estates and main power. Roger, the paramour of the she-wolf of France, received the young Edward III. at Ludlow soon after his father’s death with great magnificence, and not long before his own fall, attainder, and execution. Edmund, his son, recovered this and his other castles in 1354, six years before his death. His grandson Roger, the fourth Earl of March, obtained the long separated moiety of the Lacy property by exchange with William de Ferrars, who had inherited it from the Verdons, and thus transmitted the whole of Ludlow to his son Edmund, the fifth earl, in whose time Sir Thomas Beaufort, afterwards Duke of Exeter, held the castle against the insurgent Welsh. The fifth earl died childless in 1424, when Ludlow Castle and the earldom of March descended to his nephew, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, who held it through the wars of the Roses, and transmitted it to his son, King Edward IV. The borough of Ludlow profited by the assumption of the castle by the Crown. The townsfolk were steady Yorkists, and if they occasionally suffered, and that severely, from the fortunes of war, on the whole they were gainers. Their ancient franchises, dating at the least from the commencement of the thirteenth century, were confirmed in the reign of Henry VI. by Richard, Duke of York, and in 1461 and 1478 Edward IV. gave them an extended charter, under which they were removed from dependence upon the castle. In 1472 the king sent his two sons to remain in the castle, where the Council of Wales established by him, sat in the name of the elder, the Prince of Wales, then but an infant in arms. They remained at Ludlow until 1483, when they were removed to a prison and a grave in the Tower. Henry VII. also sent Prince Arthur, his infant son, born in 1486, to Ludlow, and was himself a frequent visitor here till the prince’s untimely death in 1502. After that event the Council of Wales was established on a more regular footing, and placed under a lord president, who at first was a bishop. Money was granted for the repairs and maintenance of the castle, which, it appears from Bishop Lee’s report, in 1535 was in a ruinous state.

In 1559 Queen Elizabeth appointed Sir Henry Sidney as lord president. He held the office twenty-seven years, keeping considerable state at the castle, where, on his return from Ireland, he passed the latter years of his life. He built the gatehouse within the middle ward, which the inscriptions inserted on the gate show to have been completed in 1581. He built also a bridge leading into the castle, probably one to the outer gate, for the description does not accord with that now standing, and which leads to the middle gate. Also he repaired the chapel, and brought water into the castle, and did much in the way of general repairs, and of buildings and enclosures, to facilitate the business of the council and the custody of its prisoners. The keep, called then the porter’s lodge, was their prison, and the inner ward their court for exercise. Sir Henry died in May 1586. Whatever the Council may have been in his time, it became, in the reign of James, a source of great expense and scandal, and Richard Baxter has left on record the condition, moral and social, to which the purlieus of this provincial court were reduced during his youth. It fell, and it was time, with the surrender of the castle to the parliamentary army in 1646. The place was dismantled, and in 1651 the furniture and fittings were inventoried and put up for sale. At the restoration an attempt was made to revive the Council, but the actual revival was nominal only, and even this was abolished on the coming in of King William. The Crown appointed a governor of the castle, and it would seem, by an inventory of goods there in 1708, that part of it at any rate was in very tolerable repair, especially the rooms of state. The final ruin was commenced under an order by George I., when the lead was removed from the roofs. Buck, whose account was published in 1774, speaks of many of the apartments as still entire, and probably it was not absolutely roofless until the end of the century. In 1811 a lease held by the Powis family was converted by purchase from the Crown into a freehold.

ST. LEONARD’S TOWER, WEST MALLING.

This tower, apparently the earliest built and the last part remaining of the residence of Bishop Gundulf, is probably one of the first Norman keeps, perhaps one of the earliest military towers in masons’ work, after the departure of the Romans, constructed in England. With these pretensions, it deserves more attention than it has hitherto met with.

It stands about a quarter of a mile south-west of the parish church of Town, or West Malling, in Kent, the plain heavy tower of which is also attributed to the bishop; and a little further from the remains of the religious house founded by the same skilful and magnificent prelate, and a remaining part of which seems also to have been his actual work.

The tower stands upon a ledge of horizontally-bedded sandstone rock, of a friable character, which juts out from and forms the east side of a short narrow combe, the defence of the castle on its western front, and which opens upon a stream tributary to the Medway, which stream receives a further addition from a spring which rises from beneath the rock about 100 yards south of the tower, and has been employed to strengthen the defences of the place on that side.

The tower is a very plain rectangular structure of the early Norman type, about 32 feet square at its base, and about 60 feet high on its northern and eastern, and about 70 feet on the two other faces; the difference being produced by the greater depth of the rocky shelf. The walls rise from a plain plinth, the top of which is at the ground level on the east face and north-east angle, and 10 feet above the level on the south and west, so that the plinth is on these sides 10 feet high. The tower is flanked at the end of each face by a pilaster strip, which rises from the plinth, and each adjacent pair meet and cover the contained angle. At three of the angles these strips have 6-inch projection, and are 3 feet 6 inches wide, reduced by two sets-off to 2 feet 6 inches at the base of the parapet, into which they probably died. The pilasters covering the fourth, or north-east angle, are 7 feet broad, and of 18 inch projection. These also have two sets-off. This increased breadth and projection is to accommodate a turnpike-stair, which rises from the base to the roof, and was evidently crowned by a square turret, but whether there were turrets at the other angles is doubtful, though, if present, they must have been of rather smaller dimensions. In the centre of the west face is another pilaster, 3 feet broad, and of 6 inch projection. This also rises from the plinth, but stops at the level of the uppermost floor, at the base of the window, of which it forms the cill. Of the sets-off, that at the level of the first floor is carried round the tower; the upper one is confined to the pilasters. The parapet is gone, and the wall at the head of the staircase, being weakened by it, is somewhat broken down. The tower wall is described as battering, or inclining inwards; if so, the degree must be very slight, for its appearance is vertical, the set-off reducing it by about 6 inches or 8 inches, so that at the summit the dimensions cannot be less than 30 feet square, and the wall appears, from below, to be about 6 feet thick.

The basement is without windows, but in the south face, near the east end, was a round-headed doorway, quite plain, without a portcullis or any moulding, and of about 3 feet 6 inches opening. This is now, and evidently has long been, walled up, so that any rebate it may contain for the door is concealed. It opened on the top of the rock, and probably was approached by a wooden exterior stair, which must have been 10 feet high. The present entrance is opposite to it at the same level, which, there, is that of the ground. This seems to have been a later opening, broken through where the wall was reduced in thickness by a sort of lobby at the foot of the staircase. This is a very common treatment with Norman keeps, the ordinary doorway becoming inconvenient, and the times ceasing to demand extraordinary precaution.

The first floor has a plain round-headed flat-sided opening, that is, without splay, or what in the North is called flanning, placed in the centre of the north, south, and east faces. On the south face this window is in the centre of a plain arcade, having on each side of it two similar arches, about 3 feet broad and 2 feet deep. The singular thing is that these niches are in the outer face of the wall, not, as would seem natural, and as occurs at Chepstow, in the inner face. In the west wall are four similar niches, but the central space is solid, occupied by the pilaster. There are two narrow round-headed loops on the north face, lighting the staircase at two levels.

The second and upper floor has four windows, one in each face. These are round-headed, quite plain, flat-sided, of about 4 feet opening and 8 feet high to the springing. The three floors seem to be,—the basement, 15 feet high; the first or main floor, 30 feet; and the upper floor, 15 feet. The floors were all of timber. There is no visible fireplace, nor do there seem to be any mural chambers or galleries. The walls at the base are 8 feet thick. The staircase communicated with each floor, and with the roof. The line of the lower floor cut off the head of the original entrance doorway, as at Chepstow.

The masonry throughout is of a very sound and solid, though of a rude description. It is evidently original, and does not appear ever to have been repaired or even pointed. It is of rubble, the stones being pretty much as they came from the quarry, of all shapes, but rarely containing more than a foot cube. The work is roughly but decidedly coursed, with a slight tendency to the herring-bone pattern. The joints are very open, and the mortar has been very freely used. The quoins and window-dressings are of a tufaceous ashlar, with wide joints.

It is difficult to form any safe conclusion as to the plan or area of the castle, of which this tower was certainly the keep. No doubt it lay to the north-east and east, where the ground forms a table-land a little above the keep level, and where there are traces of some rather extensive earthworks. There is a short piece of curtain wall projecting a few yards from the south-east angle of the keep, and pointing eastwards. It looks of early masonry, but of rather later date than the keep, against which it is built without bond. It is about 25 feet high. According to this evidence the south and west faces, at the least, must have been the exterior, which, considering the arcades on their faces, and the position of the entrance-door, is curious. Probably the other end of the curtain abutted upon the north-east angle, but if so it did not bond, and has been destroyed, leaving no trace of its presence. This keep stands in three separate premises, two of which are, or rather were when these notes were taken, jealously closed. The only entrance is by the modern door, which was fastened and the key judiciously mislaid; nor, at that time, was there a ladder to be found within reach of the tower. The garden containing the earthworks, and within which probably stood the hall and lodgings, was attached to a private lunatic asylum. It is much to be desired that the Kent Archæological Society should take this curious tower in hand, and obtain proper plans and elevations of so very remarkable a building, with a good photograph of its masonry.

THE KEEP OF MIDDLEHAM CASTLE, YORKSHIRE.

Although the size and extent of Middleham Castle are but moderate for the figure it has made in local story, and the rank and power of the succession of great barons who built, augmented, and have inhabited it, it is in itself a remarkable building, and presents much of antiquarian interest. It is placed on the southern edge of the town of Middleham, and a little above it. Its immediate position presents no great natural advantages, but for the general defence of Wensley Dale, it is not ill chosen, standing between the Yore and the Cover, about a mile and a half above the junction of the two streams.

In plan Middleham is rectangular, composed of a keep about 100 feet north and south, by 80 feet east and west, and to the base of its parapet about 55 feet high, which is placed in the centre of an _enceinte_, also rectangular, 240 feet north and south, by 190 feet east and west, so that the area of its only ward is but limited. The _enceinte_ is a curtain wall, about 30 feet high. At its north-west and south-east angles, it has rectangular towers of slight external projection, which rise above the curtain. Its south-west angle is capped by a drum tower of three stages, and on the north face, but at its north-east angle, is the gatehouse, rectangular, of slight projection, but four stages high, basement included. The east curtain has been destroyed. Upon the south and west curtains are many exterior projections, buttresses, and near the centre of each a rectangular tower. The domestic buildings were chiefly placed against the curtains on the north, west, and south sides, and thus the ward is reduced to a mere passage between these buildings and the keep.

The gatehouse is about 25 feet deep by 50 feet broad. It has in its exterior front a central portal, round-headed, beneath a pointed arch of relief. This is flanked by buttresses, 2 feet broad by 1 foot deep, and the adjacent angles of the building are supported by similar buttresses, two being set on each. At the first story these pass into a single buttress, which caps the angle,—a pleasing arrangement, giving variety to the outline. The entrance vault, like the gateway, is round-headed, with ribs for doors, and it has a single portcullis groove at its inner end. It is all of one date, and in the Decorated style. This gatehouse, and the buildings of the ward generally, are Decorated, and require far more examination than the writer has been able to bestow upon them.

The _Keep_ is reinforced at the four angles by broad, flat-capping buttresses, of variable breadth and projection, and which, no doubt, rose above the battlement into rectangular turrets. The buttress on the north-east angle has a breadth of 26 feet on the north, and a projection of 7 feet, and to the east a breadth of 16 feet, and a projection of 1 foot. It contains the chamber communicating with the battlement of the outer gate of the fore-building, and below is solid. The buttress on the north-west angle has to the north a breadth of 22 feet, and a projection of 3 feet, and to the west a breadth of 12 feet, and depth of 1 foot. On the south-west angle the breadth of the west face is 14 feet, and of the south 11 feet, and the depth of each is 1 foot.

The south-east angle, as at Rochester, contains the staircase. It has no projection on the east face, being covered by the fore-building. On the south its breadth is 20 feet, and its depth 6 feet. This alone preserves the remains of a turret above the battlements. Excepting the stair-turret, the angles of the keep seem solid below, though worked into chambers on the first floor.

There are also projections on the west and south wall. That on the west has a depth of 12 feet, and a breadth of 18 feet. The lower story is broken away; it was hollow, and looks as though meant for a gigantic cesspit. The upper part hangs unsupported save by the cohesion of its cement, and greatly needs conservation. This turret is about 51 feet from the north end, and 31 feet from the south. The projection on the south wall is 12 feet broad, and 8 feet deep. It is placed 24 feet from the west, and 44 feet from the east angle, coinciding with the partition-wall within. This turret is hollow, and forms a great shaft for garderobes in the upper stories. In its face, at the ground level, is a round-headed arch, of 3 feet opening, and 4 feet high, the outlet of the sewer, but above ground. These two turrets at present cease at the level of the parapet, but probably rose sufficiently above it to cover a garderobe. The keep has a plinth on the north, west, and south sides. The east face is covered by the fore-building. The walls are about 9 feet thick.

The keep has a basement floor at the ground level, and a first or state floor, and on the east side an upper floor. It is divided by a wall 9 feet thick into two unequal parts, that to the east being 29 feet, and that to the west 24 feet broad, each being about 84 feet long. A well-stair 12 feet diameter, ascended in the south-east angle from the basement to the battlements, lighted by loops, and with doors to each floor.

The east chamber into which this stair opens by a large and apparently round-headed door, now broken, was vaulted in two lines, each resting upon five cylindrical piers, about 3 feet 6 inches each in diameter, and averaging 14 feet from centre to centre. The vault seems to have been a barrel, groined. At each end were two square-headed loops, high above the floor, with stepped recesses. The east wall contains only three square lockers, and the door of the staircase. The west or partition-wall side is pierced by five openings, about 4 feet broad, and round-headed, three to the north and two to the south of the thick solid central part. Probably these were introduced to lighten the work, and all but one or two thinly walled up. One must have been a doorway, as from the eastern lay the only communication with the western chamber.

The western chamber seems to have been spanned by a single vault, apparently slightly pointed and groined in six bays. In each end is a single square-headed loop. On the west side are seven loops, the central part being occupied by the unpierced rear wall of the turret already described.

First floor, east side. This was evidently the hall. It is very lofty, and in its north end is a round-headed window of 2 feet opening, and 7 feet high to the springing. In the south end are two similar windows, but about 14 feet long, and a curious water-drain between them and the door. This, the door from the stair, is plain round-headed, and of 6 feet opening. Close north of it is a similar door, of 7 feet opening, quite plain, and without a portcullis. This is the main entrance, and opens from the barbican tower. Beyond this is a short window, and then three long ones, like those at the north end, so arranged as to open clear of the exterior barbican stair. The west wall has an opening at each end, the bulk of the wall being solid. The northern of the two openings was probably the great door of passage between the rooms; the southern communicated with the garderobe in the south wall. In the north-east angle is a very curious mural chamber, 12 feet east and west, by 9 feet north and south, vaulted in a single groined bay, round-headed, and springing from half-octagon brackets in the angles, each the cap of a detached shaft, now removed. In the north wall are two and in the east one loop. A door in the south wall opens into the north end of the hall, and one in the east wall passes obliquely through the wall, and evidently led to the battlements of the outer gate of the barbican, over the foot of its staircase. This room is much broken, but its fittings are original, and late Norman. If the hall had a fireplace in masonry, it was in the west wall, at a part recently repaired. It is not clear how the hall was roofed; possibly the original covering was a high-pitched roof, with the battlements above, but at present the side walls carry a table, with corbels of a plain billet moulding, on which an upper wall, about 12 feet high, is advanced 6 inches. In these walls are large window openings, with segmental arches, three on each side, which must have opened clear of the roof of the west chamber, and upon the battlements on the east side. In the south end, above the two narrow windows mentioned, is a third smaller one, as though to light a roof of high pitch. There are no corbels for principals, and no holes for main beams, but above the corbel table on each side is a range of holes, about 9 inches square, and as much apart, neatly stopped with ashlar, as though an original flat roof had been removed, and a roof of high pitch introduced. However this may have been, the windows of the side walls are clearly additional, and belonged to a second floor. Altogether the history of this roof is very obscure, and demands a close local investigation. The upper door in the well-stair is not at a level to suit a second floor, nor consistent with a high-pitched roof.

First floor, west side. In the north end is a round-headed window, 2 feet opening by 7 feet high, and a door into a now inaccessible mural chamber in the north-west angle. At the south end are two similar windows, and a door into a chamber in the south-west angle. In the east wall are the two broken doorways already mentioned, and the broken tunnels of two, if not of three, large fireplaces, the shafts of which, much broken, still rise clear of the roof. The fireplaces are gone, and the wall has been much patched recently to give it support. There are two rather curious lockers in this wall. In the west wall there seem to have been four round-headed windows of 2 feet opening and 7 feet high, and near the middle is a door opening into the middle buttress tower, which contains two chambers of unequal size. These are not accessible, but one was probably a large garderobe, and the other may have been the way to a small drawbridge, opening from the keep upon a rectangular tower in the ward, not 12 feet distant, so as to give direct passage from the keep to the outer walls. In the keep wall, north of this tower, is a large segmental-arched window, evidently an insertion, probably the work of Richard III. In the north-west and south-west angles, as already mentioned, are mural chambers, not accessible. There do not appear to be any galleries in the wall.

This west chamber was probably divided by a brattice, and the north part used as a withdrawing-room from the hall. There does not appear to have been a second floor on this side. It is, however, curious that there should be no corbels, nor any of the usual indications of the principals of an ordinary open roof. In each side wall, high up, is a row of holes, about 9 inches square and 18 inches from centre to centre, so that probably the roof was flat, or at any rate, was composed of heavy rafters, without principals.

The east face of the keep was occupied by the fore-building or barbican, and which, as was not uncommon, contained the chapel.

The approach seems to have been, as at Rochester, Scarborough, and elsewhere, by a flight of stone steps built against the wall, commencing, in this case, about 10 feet from its northern end, and rising about 20 feet to a vestibule, upon which opened, right and left, the great door of the keep, and that of the chapel. The staircase was about 9 feet broad, and 45 feet or 50 feet long to the vestibule. It seems to have been protected by a side wall, reducing the actual stair-breadth to (say) 5 feet or 6 feet, and to have been either vaulted or roofed with timber. Its lower gate must have opened beneath a small tower, the battlements of which were reached from the chamber in the north-east angle of the keep. About half-way up the staircase past what, from the appearance of the wall, seems to have been a second gate in the keep wall, is a large cavity capable of holding comfortably twenty men, evidently as a guard in case the entrance should be forced. Higher up, where the staircase landed on the vestibule, there seems to have been a third door.

The vestibule is part of the second floor of the usual rectangular barbican tower, built against the keep, about 12 feet from the south end of the east face. This tower measures about 33 feet north and south, and about 48 feet east and west. It rose about two-thirds of the height of the keep, and is divided into a basement or sub-crypt, an upper crypt, and a chapel and vestibule floor.

The basement is at the ground level. Next the keep, or rather, next the solid mass of masonry which supports the stair and vestibule, is the sub-crypt, 20 feet north and south, by 24 feet east and west. Beyond, that is, east of it, a passage runs right through the building, 5 feet broad, with a door at each end; and beyond this are the ruins of a small chamber, which probably reached to the outer curtain wall. The passage gave a communication between the north and south parts of the ward, otherwise divided, on this side, by the barbican tower, and from this passage a door led into the sub-crypt. This room was vaulted in two lines in eight bays, springing from a central line of three columns now gone. The arch gables show that the vault was round-headed. In the south wall at the west end is a well-stair leading to the upper crypt, and the only way to it. The sub-crypt is lighted by two small round-headed Norman windows in each of the two open faces, one on each side of an exterior plain pilaster buttress, 3 feet broad by 3 feet deep.

The first floor, or upper crypt, extended eastward over the passage the whole length of the barbican and was 20 feet broad, and probably 40 feet long inside. This also was vaulted, but the vault spanned the whole breadth, and formed two bays only. The ribs of the groining sprang from half-round mural pilasters. In the north wall, near the east end, is a fireplace. This floor has no communication with that above it. It was not uncommon for the basement of the barbican to be quite independent of the keep, and to be entered, as here, by an outer door of its own.

The second floor of the barbican contained the chapel and the vestibule, this floor being on the level of the great entrance to the keep. Whether the vestibule was vaulted is uncertain, probably it was. It is about 20 feet north and south, by 9 feet east and west, the entrance stair arriving at the north end, the keep door being on the west, and the chapel door on the east side. The chapel was loftier and vaulted in a lighter style than the crypts below. Its walls were 7 feet thick, and its area about 20 feet by 40 feet. It was vaulted in two bays in a light style, probably early English. The great door of the keep was plain Norman, but chamfered round the head and jambs. There are traces of caps, and probably there were two flanking shafts, but no mouldings or drip-stone. The walls of the barbican are, no doubt, mainly original, though the vaulting of the sub-crypt and crypt may have been renewed. The chapel probably replaces an earlier building.

Middleham seems never to have had any works beyond the _enceinte_ wall, save a slight ditch, of which traces remain on the south side only. On the east, a field road has superseded the ditch, as have some modern buildings on the west side. There is no present trace of either ditch or drawbridge on the north or town front.

The keep is built of coursed rubble, with ashlar groins and dressings. The Decorated and later work is mostly of excellent ashlar.

As regards the age of the several parts of the castle, the keep is plainly late Norman, and, likely enough, the work of Robert Fitz-Ranulph, Lord of Middleham, in 1190; and to his immediate descendants are certainly due the earlier alterations, especially the chapel, before the extinction of the male line, in 1271.

No doubt the exterior ward is built on the site of a Norman _enceinte_, and some of the original work may remain; but this part of the fortress was completely recast by the Neviles, who married the Fitz-Ranulph heiress, and, no doubt, either by Robert, called the Peacock of the North, who had Middleham, &c., from his grandmother, and who died before 5 Edward II., 1331, or by Ralph, Lord Nevile of Raby, his brother and successor, who died 41 Edward III., 1367.

Of the later residence of Richard, Duke of York (Richard III.) the traces are the large window opening on the west face of the keep, and perhaps the upper story on the east side of the same building, and certain details added to the ward.