Rock Castle

“ On the highest point of the ruin is an iron machine like a kibble, which serves as a beacon. A large tar-barrel is placed in it and set on fire. It burns like a flaming torch the night through. The Castle stands on a projecting rock, which rises to the height of a hundred and fifty or two hundred feet perpendicular from the sea. Around the Castle its summit is like a bowling-green. ”

“ A spur of the hill is crowned by a small keep, with a round tower attached to a square mass within its compass. But in the days of the Red King, the Guy’s Cliff of the Vexin, now the site of a castle so preeminently visible, was specially known as the site of the stronghold that was invisible. The castle bored in the rock. The lords of the rock had, like the Kenite of old, literally made their nest in the rock itself. The chalk is to this day habitually bored to make houses, churches, [458] any kind of excavation that may be needed. ”

“ All the strength of this Towne is first the hard and dangerous entrance into the Haven; and secondly, a rock which lyeth before the Town lesse then a Musket shot off; upon which is built a Castle, and in the Castle a slight Garrison of Souldiers. In the Town there is neither Fort, nor Castle, nor scarce any people of warlike mindes. The Rocke and Castle are as a Wall, defence, and inclosure to the Haven, which otherwise lyeth wide open to the Ocean, and to the Northern Winds. ”

“ The giant walls and mighty buttresses look as if they had been carved by wind and weather out of some solid rock-mass, rather than as if wrought by human handiwork. But when, in the middle of the twelfth century, in the earliest days of the reign of Henry Plantagenet, the castle was built by Robert, son of Harding, he built it with outer walls ten to fifteen feet thick, without definite plan as it would seem, but, as the work went on, suiting the building to the shape of the hillock and to the existing demands of defensive warfare. ”

“ All we do know is that they, as well as the Burggrafs' possessions, were purchased in succession by the town, into whose hands by degrees came the whole property of the Castle rock. Above the ruins of the "little fort" of the Burggrafs rises the first plateau of the Castle rock. It is surrounded by a wall, strengthened on the south side by a square tower against which leans the Walpurgiskapelle. ”

“ The whole castle occupies a precipitous mass of rock overhanging the lake, divided by two or three islands in that place, which form a snug little harbor under the walls. There is a courtyard looking out upon the sea, protected by a battery, at least a succession of embrasures, for only two guns are pointed, and these unfit for service. The ancient entrance rose up a flight of steps cut in the rock, and passed into this courtyard through a portal, but this is now demolished. You land under the castle, and walking round, find yourself in front of it. ”

“ Those who enjoy the privilege of raising it consider the money very hardly earned.
I reached the ruined castle at the foot of the limestone buttresses supporting the plateau above. Enough is left of the wall to show that it must have been a strong place at one time. It is attributed by common consent to the English. Protected on one side by the abrupt rock, it overlooked the valley from a height that to an enemy must have been very difficult of access. The fortified cavern is in the escarped cliff above the castle, with which there was, perhaps, a secret communication. ”

“ The Burg, or castle, and the Rath-haus are the two most important buildings of the secular order. The castle is highly irregular in design, conforming itself to a rock which forms part of the outline of the town, and it holds a commanding position. In its court-yard is a lime-tree which has seen out seven centuries. Its top has been lost, and its bole is plastered over to keep it from further decay. Round it have recently been set up four well-executed figures in bronze. Here, too, is a well, in depth 300 feet, and on which the garrison in the castle depend entirely for their supply of water. ”

“ After its surrender to Cromwell, the Castle was partially dismantled and reduced to ruins. What remained of it was, like the Bass Rock, used as a State prison for the Covenanters during the persecutions under Charles II. and the Duke of York. One hundred and sixty-seven men and women were imprisoned at one time in its ‘Whig’s Vault,’ or Black Hole, and nine of them speedily died of suffocation. Driven to despair, some twenty-five of them one night crept out of a window and along the face of the cliff, in the hope of effecting their escape. ”

“ The Castle is at one of the extremities of the city, on a rock, and surrounded with deep moats, cut in the rock, which is an escarpment on the bank of a river that flows at its base, and from which they lift, by means of a very convenient machine, all the munitions which are necessary. ”

“ As soon as I arrived at my anchorage, I sent Lieutenant Spilsbury and a guerilla officer to hoist the British and Spanish flags on the castle; and immediately began to demolish the works, which are exceedingly strong, as it is built on a peninsula of high rock, scarped all round the sea-face, with a wall 30 feet high. At the land-side the rock is excavated nearly 30 feet deep and 60 wide, with a narrow draw-bridge, which is the only entrance into the castle. I intend to fill up us much of the ditch as possible, by springing mines under each bastion. ”

“ A narrow ledge of rock, of which you can scarcely make out whether it is natural or artificial, connects the castle with the mainland, and here through an arch in the wall you look down into a second bay, where the precipices, crested by a huge red fragment of tower, descend direct upon the water. High up in one of the turrets lives the keeper, a girl, who said that she was so used to climbing, that she could go anywhere where there was the least rest for the sole of her foot ”

“ In much the same condition is another cliff castle in the rocks of the valley of the Alzou, between Grammat and Rocamadour, a little above the cascade of the mill Du Saut.
I have elsewhere [Footnote: "A Book of the Cevennes," Lond., J. Long.] given an account of the curious castle of La Roche Lambert at Borne in Haute Loire, built in a basaltic cleft through which roars the river. It is the theatre of George Sand's novel, Jean de la Roche. "I may say without exaggeration that I was reared in a rock. ”

“ The elevated rock on which the castle is built stands wholly insulated, forming a site which, without much trouble or expense, might soon be converted into a stronghold. In support of the theory as to its Saxon origin, it may be mentioned that, since the demolition of the castle, it has been found that the great round tower stood upon a raised hill of stiff hard clay, of which material the Saxons usually made their foundations. ”

“ The site of the castle much resembles Dunnottar, but it is on a smaller scale. The ruins occupy perhaps (p. 230) more than an acre of ground, being the level top of a high rock advanced into the sea, by which it is surrounded on three sides, and divided from the mainland by a deep chasm. The access was by a narrow bridge, of which there now remains but a single rib, or ledge, forming a doubtful and a precarious access to the ruined castle. On the outer side of the bridge are large remains of outworks, probably for securing cattle, and for domestic offices—and the vestiges of a chapel. ”

“ The castle itself stands back on the northern edge of the cliff. Nearer at hand are the remains of dwellings that are nothing but caves in great jutting masses of rock. But they are caves with a difference. They are carefully squared chambers, with chimney places still showing the marks of fire, with holes into the walls that were once cupboards, with ceilings cut into so as to provide hanging for lamps. They are open to the south, and the entrances blocked with débris ”

“ The land, in general, seems well cultivated and enclosed—but in some places the enclosures seem too small, and the ridges too crooked, for proper farming. We pass two gentlemen's seats, called White Castle and Red Castle; the last a large good-looking mansion, with trees, and a pretty vale sloping upwards from the sea. As we approach the termination of the Lough, the ground becomes more rocky and barren, and the cultivation interrupted by impracticable patches, which have been necessarily abandoned. Come in view of Green Castle, a large ruinous castle, said to have belonged to the MacWilliams. ”

“ In a historical and antiquarian point of view, however, Ross Castle is indeed one of the most interesting objects to be found in connection with the enchanting scenery of the lakes. It is the time-worn fortress of their ancient chiefs, and its presence connects the history of man in distant times with the objects of eternal natural beauty by which it is surrounded, and imparts to them that delightful feeling or charm of romance which, exquisite as they are, they would necessarily want if it were absent. ”

“ The windows are so battered, that no idea can be formed of their original style. The walls of the keep are filled with small square apertures. At Rochester, and at many other castles in England, we observe the same; and unless you can give a better guess respecting their use, you must content yourself with mine: that is to say, that they are merely the holes left by the scaffolding. At the foot of the hill to the west is a gate-house, by no means ancient, from which a wall ascends to the castle; and another similar wall connects the fortress with the ground below, on the north-eastern side ”

“ They are eight or nine feet thick in many places, a stone staircase having been cut in the south side, from the second to the third story through the breadth of the wall, leaving still a breadth on both sides equal or more than equal to the thickest modern walls, a fact pregnant with history—a stony tome, from which we may gather the perils, and prescience, and laborious endeavours of a brave, persistent, deed-living, deed-loving race, now but too inadequately represented. The part of the castle now converted into a dairy seems to have undergone the least change. ”

“ Rochester Castle—the stately ruins of which, hard by the Medway, still attest its ancient grandeur, and recall the days when it stood in feudal pride, guarded by moat, and rampart, and lofty battlements—was deemed a place of immense importance; and Robert Fitzwalter and his confederates had intrusted it to the keeping of William Albini, Earl of Arundel, a great noble whose family had long maintained feudal state at Castle Rising, in Norfolk, and whose ancestor had acquired Arundel with the hand of Adelicia of Louvaine, the young widow of Henry Beauclerc. ”

“ From the first time I saw him climb the outside of the Queen's Tower, swinging himself upwards from branch to branch of the old ivy, he became my pattern: I resolved to follow him, and if it made Granny scream to see us, why, so much the better.
The Castle ruins were the best play-ground that children ever had. On half-holidays the whole school used to troop up there directly they were let out, and the old walls rang with shouts and laughter. Cuthbert and Hildred were always glad to see them, but I liked it best when we had it all to ourselves. ”

“ Over it went a narrow drawbridge and then one was confronted with a high palisade of logs set in the ground. This extended entirely around the castle. The castle itself was built on the model of another, earlier age; being more for strength than beauty. Built of stone brought from a great distance; years of labor and a thousand negroes toiling beneath the lash had reared its walls, and now, completed, it offered an almost impregnable appearance. Such was the intention of its builders, for Barbary pirates ranged the coasts, and the horror of a native uprising lurked ever near. ”

“ A carriage road from the town of Killarney crosses the small connecting bridge and brings the tourist under the walls of Ross Castle, where there is a landing-place for those who come by water.
Ross Castle is still a splendid old fortress, far less injured by time or mischance than most of its contemporaries in Kerry. A tall and stately building, it is seen from far, dominating Lough Leane and adding additional charm to the view, with its massive buttresses and battlements, reminders of the old fighting days. ”

“ It will clear the ground greatly if it is recognised at the outset that these earthworks are castles, in the usual sense of the word; that is, the private fortified residences of great landowners. It was the chief merit of Mr G. T. Clark’s work on Mediæval Military Architecture, that he showed the perfect correspondence in plan of these earthen and timber structures with the stone castles which immediately succeeded them, so that it was only necessary to add a stone tower and stone walls to these works to convert them into a Norman castle of the popularly accepted type. ”

“ On the western edge of the downs there are the scanty ruins of Charles’s Castle, which is probably the one described by Leland as “a lytle pyle or fortres.”
As we stand by the ruins and look down we can see below us, on a ledge of rocks jutting out into the sea, our old friend Cromwell’s Castle—a strong little tower, with walls twelve feet thick. The flooring and other woodwork of the interior has mostly disappeared, and what remains is green with damp; but the outer walls are just as strong as ever. The flat bomb-proof roof, once armed with a battery, is now overgrown with grass and brambles. ”