Charles Reed Peers

“ The general masonry details are like those of the gatehouse, but the patterns in black brick are simpler. Each room is lighted by a two-light window, and also by two single light windows in the re-entering angles at north and south. The fireplaces have plain arched brick heads, and two of the three octagonal brick chimney shafts remain. The accommodation on each floor is the same, namely a large room with a small room off it, by which a garderobe is reached ”

“ So little of the older building is left that its date must be a matter of conjecture; perhaps the middle of the fourteenth century. The hall was of two bays, with the screens at the south-west end, entered through porches. The lines of buttery and pantry and the passage to the kitchen are to be seen, but nothing of the kitchen itself is left; a stone drain runs southward from its site. East of the hall, where the solar or great chamber should be, the foundations have been destroyed, and there are traces of a cobbled path running south-eastward across its site and as far as the moat ”

“ The gatehouse is built of thin red bricks, varied with patterns in black: above the gateway are the builder's initials, "W H"; on the right-hand turret the maunch or sleeve which formed the arms of Hastings, and above it a ship; on the left-hand turret what seems to be the lower half of the figure of a man. All angles are of brick, stone being used only for doorways, windows, and string courses. ”

“ The embrasures and ports for small cannon are the most notable feature of the gatehouse; there are two in each of the ground floor rooms of the turrets, one at the north-west end of the guardroom and porter's lodge respectively, and two more in the basement of each turret, but these are well below the water level of the moat, and must have been useless from the first; they can only be seen when the moat is nearly dry. ”

“ The diameter of the gunport is smallest at the wall face, instead of having a wide outer splay, and in consequence the gun only commands a line exactly in front of the port. The gun in the north-east side of the tower would therefore discharge its shot directly at the west wall of the west turret of the gatehouse, only 20 yards away, while that in the stair turret of the same tower would bombard the garderobe chamber of the gatehouse at a range of only 15 yards. And the same thing would have happened on every rampart walk all round the castle! ”

“ The gatehouse is being replaced by that which now exists, the rough masons working on its foundations in May and June. In April is an entry, "circa facturam le murther holies de novo," "for making the murder holes anew." This cannot refer to the "meurtrières"—holes through which missiles of many kinds could be hurled on the heads of attacking parties—in the gatehouse, as that building was then only just begun, and there is not enough now left of the castle to suggest an alternative place. ”

“ Floors and windows are put into some of the towers in May and June 1482, and by September and October the towers are nearly finished and covered in. In November 41 cwt. of lead is brought "from the Abbey"—not further described—and added to 33 cwt. already at Kirby; John Smythson the plumber sees to the melting of it. Building work goes on without a break through the winter, which must have been a mild one, and in January 1483 the centering for the vault over the gatehouse is being made. ”

“ Lord Hastings was beheaded on 14 June of this year, and his fall is reflected in the progress of Kirby Castle. The bricklayers and masons stop work at once, and from 23 June till 1 September accounts are rendered every three weeks instead of weekly. Practically nothing is done, but by September affairs have settled down, and the masons and bricklayers begin again. John Lyle travels between Ashby and Kirby " to speak with the Council," but the nature of his errand is not stated.
Work goes on with roofing of towers and laying floors over the vault (of the gatehouse?) ”

“ A sluice gate at the junction of the two brooks would have been a more obvious device, but the reason for the existing arrangement is that on the course of the little brook there was a stew pond—possibly more than one—the water of which it was not desirable to drain off except at rare intervals. ”