Castle gate

“ To-day, as we stand in the open space at the head of the Steep Hill, to our left is the gatehouse of the castle; while to our right is the Exchequer gate, the inner gatehouse of the close. This is a lofty oblong building of three stages, with a large central archway, and a smaller archway on each side for pedestrians. On the west or outer side the face is plain, but on the eastern side it is broken by two half-octagon turrets, containing vices. ”

“ Then, when thou goest forth give the word ‘Bedford’ to the sentinels; and, to the porter in the gate, show this written pass of John Grey’s. He knows it already, having seen it this night. Next, when thou art without the castle, fare to the hostelry called ‘The Rose and Apple,’ which is nearest the castle gate, and so straight into the stable, where stand two steeds, saddled and bridled. ”

“ A gateway on the south side of the Castle is called the Queen's Gate, from the circumstance of Queen Eleanor having entered the fortress through this gate, by a temporary bridge erected for the occasion.
Our limits do not permit us to indulge in more minute description of this vast and imposing fortress, which, from the state of repair in which it is still kept, may brave the changes of season and the fury of the elements for many generations to come. Externally it is still entire, and challenges the admiration of all who have the least taste for what is sublime and striking in architecture. ”

“ The outer bailey or base-court of the castle, which is still surrounded by the Roman walls with their semicircular bastions, has two gatehouses. These occupy the sites of the west and east gates of the Roman enceinte, and the east or water-gate is in part Roman. The western gatehouse was rebuilt at a date contemporary with the enclosure of the castle proper within the north-west quarter of the Roman station, and was much altered at a later period. The archways of the Norman building remain, and show no attempt at ornament, the inner one alone having impost-blocks below the arches. ”

“ The curtain falls quickly.]
ACT III. A Castle-Garden.
[At one side high castellated buildings, on the other a low breastwork interrupted by a watch tower; at back the castle-gate. The situation is supposed to be on rocky cliffs; through openings the view extends over a wide sea horizon. The whole gives an impression of being deserted by the owner, badly kept, and here and there dilapidated and overgrown.] ”

“ And then the image, that well-nigh erased
Over the castle-gate he did behold,
Above a door well wrought in coloured gold
Again he saw; a naked girl with wings
Enfolded in a serpent's scaly rings. ”

“ Now to that castle only one lofty narrow gate led, but it had fallen into ruins, was covered up with earth, and overgrown with thorns. It was, meseems, called Virtue. Concerning it I was told that in olden times it had been built as the sole entrance to the castle, but that through some accident it had soon afterwards been covered up with earth; therefore some other smaller gates had been made, while this one was abandoned as being inaccessible and too difficult to enter. ”

“ The castle is now part of the Earl of Clarendon's estate, and he has taken great pains to preserve the famous ruins. The great hall, ninety feet long, still retains several of its Gothic windows, and some of the towers rise seventy feet high. These ivy-mantled ruins stand upon an elevated rocky site commanding a fine prospect, and their chief present use is as a picnic-ground for tourists. Not far away are the ruins of the priory, which was founded at the same time as the castle. A dismantled gate-house with some rather extensive foundations are all that remain. ”

“ But the castles of the keepless kind are not invariably concentric; those built by Edward I. at Conway, Carnarvon, and Flint are not so. [1198] Instead of a dark and comfortless keep, the royal or noble owner is provided in this type of castle with a palatial house. In England this house is frequently attached to the gateway, forming what we may call a gatehouse palace; good examples may be seen at Beaumaris, Harlech, and Tonbridge. [1199] The gate [Pg 376] way itself is always defended by a pair of massive towers. ”

“ The gatehouse itself is chiefly modern, but part is old; and connected with it are the remains of an arch jamb and portcullis groove, probably traces of the main entrance to the castle. This gate leads by a short lane into the market-place. The lower lodge, or entrance from the bridge side, was built in 1810, and with its adjacent wall is wholly of that date.
The mound is crested by a many-sided shell of wall, about 9 feet thick, and from 30 feet to 40 feet high. This wall is in part very old. The base has been supported by a modern facing, which batters considerably, and is about 2 feet high ”

“ There is a further contrivance for the defence of a gate, consisting of a sort of shoot, opening obliquely downwards from the sill of a window, employed in two places in this castle; one over the door of the eastern inner gateway, and the other over the door of the north-west principal bastion tower; in both cases evidently with a view to the defence of the towers when the enemy had gained the inner court.
The battlements and parapets throughout the castle are of a very plain description. They are massy and flat topped, the coping being a rough slab of sandstone. ”

“ The castle is composed of an outer and an inner ward, the keep standing in the latter. The inner ward forms the eastern end or apex of the area, of which it occupies about a fifth, and it is divided from the outer ward by a cross wall, 90 yards long, upon the low salient of which is the inner gatehouse. The other sides of this ward are the east, 96 yards, and the south, 73 yards. The keep stands in the south-west angle, about 20 feet from the two adjacent curtains, of which the south is thrown out about 18 feet to gain space, and to form a shoulder flanking the outer gate. ”

“ Apart from the high road there is a gate-house, ancient, but in excellent repair, towered, turreted, and battlemented, and looking like a castle in itself. Until Cromwell's time, the entrance to the castle used to be beneath an arch that passed through this structure; but the gate-house being granted to one of the Parliament officers, he converted it into a residence, and apparently added on a couple of gables, which now look quite as venerable as the rest of the edifice. ”

“ Along the exterior line of defence to the north-west, the redoubt, fosses, and adjacent earthworks are obscured by young trees and brushwood, by the effects of tillage, and by the buildings of the castle farm.
Entering the castle by the east water gate, the wall parallel to the curtain which formed the back of the northern or stable gallery is seen on the right, levelled nearly with the soil, and, consequently, all regular access to the buttress chambers is thus cut off.
The counterscarp of the inner moat is in ruins, choking up the moat. ”

“ The principal castle, that which belonged to the Bishop of Sarlat, occupies one of the profound horizontal furrows in the face of the rock, that are so common in the limestone and chalk formations. It consists of three towers, two of which are square and one round, with curtains uniting them, and a gate-tower, to which a flight of steps cut in the rock gives access for a part of the way. But to reach this flight one has to mount by a series of posts serving as steps driven into sockets in the rock, with only here and there a sustaining iron bar. ”

“ They are 12 feet apart, and between them lies the entrance. In the line of the curtain this passage is crossed by an acute arch, 2 feet thick, the springing 15 feet high, and above this the curtain rises to 50 feet, forming a sort of screen, giving the appearance of a tower over the gate. The flanking walls, about 20 feet high, form a sort of barbican, and no doubt protected the drawbridge. A door above opened upon these battlements. The work is poor; there is no portcullis or portal vault. The entrance is quite unworthy of the castle. ”

“ The castles of this time (twelfth century) usually consisted of a keep, or castle proper, surrounded at some distance by two walls, one within the other. Each wall was encircled on its outer side by a moat, or ditch, which was filled with water, and was crossed by means of a drawbridge. Before the main entrance of the outer wall was an outwork called the barbacan, which was a high wall surmounted by battlements and turrets, built to defend the gate and drawbridge. Here, also, were placed barriers of palisades, etc., to impede the advance of an attacking force. ”

“ Three others adjoining this are square, and indeed appear to partake as much of the character of buttresses as of towers.
The castle is internally divided into two wards, the first of which, on entering, is every where rough with the remains of foundations: the inner, which is by far the largest, is approached by a square gate-house with high embattled walls, and contains towards its farther end the quadrangular keep, whose shell alone is standing. ”

“ It is not improbable that it was for the repair of this wooden wall that so much timber was sent to Dover in the reigns of Richard I. and John. [398] Dering, who was lieutenant of the castle in 1629, records the tradition that the tower in the outer enceinte, called Canons’ Gate, dates from Saxon times (of course this could only be true of a wooden predecessor of the stone tower) , and that Godwin’s Tower, on [Pg 141] the east side of the outer vallum, existed as a postern before the Conquest. ”

“ It is a veritable strong place, with a fine square tower, tall, massive and imposing. It is covered on one side with ivy and has thus lost much of its ancient grimness, while about its feet cluster, in a curious medley, the red, grey and brown roofs of the faithful town.
Within the keep are a great hall, many vaulted rooms and a vaulted stair which leads to the summit of the castle. Those with an active imagination will find among the ruins the guard-room, the justice chamber, the ladies’ quarters and the dungeons, but the lines which indicate such places have become exceedingly faint. ”

“ The wooden donjon on the mount took the form of a square tower surrounded, at the edge of the mount, by a palisade, and approached, as has been described already, by a steep wooden bridge, which crossed the ditch into the bailey. But it is obvious that the existence of a castle in any given place as a permanent centre of royal influence must lead to the abandonment of wooden defences in favour of defences of more lasting material. ”

“ Rising suddenly from the banks of a brawling crystal stream, a huge mass of grey rocks, thrown in wild confusion one on the other, sustains on its summit the imposing remains of the castle, whose high white tower, alone and in perfect preservation, commands an immense tract of smiling country, and seems to have defied the attacks of ages, as it gleams in the sun, the smooth surface of its walls apparently uninjured and unstained. ”

“ A ruined pier of a bridge, overhung with trees, stands in the middle of the river, which becoming deeper just at the point where the building begins, forms a foaming waterfall, and turns a mill, which appears only like a low abutment of the castle. Going on, you lose sight of the castle for awhile, and soon find yourself before a high embattled wall, built of large blocks of stone covered by Time with moss and creeping plants. Lofty iron gates slowly unfold to admit you to a deep hollow way blasted in the rock, the stone walls of which are tapestried with the most luxuriant vegetation. ”

“ It has an arched roof, and at each end there is a long loophole, now glazed, by which, through the thick walls, the shadowy light reaches its interior. There is also, on the right-hand side of the entrance, the form of a door, now built up, which probably in some remote times led to a staircase, or was the opening of a staircase in the wall, by which it communicated with the upper stories. Standing on this floor, reflections of the stormy past come thickly and fast to the mind. Who, in anguish or despair, had trod that narrow space in the older days of the castle? ”

“ The building has the usual circular towers at the corners and a heavy cornice at the top, and immense stretches of sun-scorched wall relieved at wide intervals by small windows, heavily cross-barred. It has, above all, an extreme steepness of aspect; I cannot express it otherwise. The walls are as sheer and inhospitable as precipices. The castle has kept its large moat, which is now a hollow filled with wild plants. ”

“ Behind the north stable, a great, long, rambling building, thick-walled, and black with age, lay an older part of the castle than that peopled by the better class of life—a cluster of great thick walls, rudely but strongly built, now the dwelling-place of stable-lads and hinds, swine and poultry. From one part of these ancient walls, and fronting an inner court of the castle, arose a tall, circular, heavy-buttressed tower, considerably higher than the other buildings, and so mantled with a dense growth of aged ivy as to stand a shaft of solid green. ”

“ Only the shell of the castle remains, an interesting and picturesque specimen of the half fortress, half mansion of the latter days of feudalism. The main gateway on the southern front has flanking towers over eighty feet high, surmounted by watch-turrets from which the sea is visible. The walls are magnificently overgrown with ivy, contrasting beautifully with the red brick. Great trunks of ivy grow up from the dining-room, and all the inner courts are carpeted with green turf, with hazel-bushes appearing here and there among the ruined walls. ”