from the ground. It is lined with good ashlar; but with a barrel-vault,
round-headed, in rubble. The outer portal occupies the whole breadth
of the central pilaster, being about 5 feet wide. It is very slightly,
but decidedly, pointed. There is no portcullis groove, and but one,
an outer, door, well strengthened by bar holes. Below the springing
are two small holes, now stopped, for an iron bar, rather low for a
centring, and possibly connected with a light drawbridge. The door is
in the centre of the west face, as is the opposite window of the east
face; but the north window is at the west end of its face, about 3 feet
from the corner, and the south window is placed diagonal to it at a
similar distance from the south-east corner. The three windows were all
of one pattern.
Besides these openings, there are at the same level three mural
chambers and a staircase. The principal chamber occupies the south-west
angle, and is in plan a right angle with two limbs, like the capital
letter L. That in the west wall is 5 feet 6 inches broad by 14 feet
long; that in the south wall, 4 feet 10 inches broad by 23 feet long;
but as each is measured over the breadth of the other, the total length
of the chamber measured on the outer wall is 37 feet and measured
along the inner wall only 26 feet 8 inches. The chamber is partly
lined with chalk ashlar and partly with rubble, and the vault, barrel
and round-headed, is of rubble. The vault springs from a plain Norman
abacus. The height to the springing is about 7 feet. The outer wall
of this chamber has been lined throughout with an arcade, originally
of ten arches, of which six remain quite perfect, and of most of the
others there are traces. The arcade is of late Norman work, the piers
delicate, the caps very highly carved, the arches round-headed. The
whole is recessed in the wall, reaches to the springing of the vault,
and rests upon a low plinth or dado. There is a loop in the west wall
near the north end of the chamber and another in its south end in the
south wall. There is also a third and longer and lower loop at the
other end of the south limb, close to, and on the right of, the priest
as he stood before the altar, the place of which at the east end is
marked by a bench or step in the wall. One original door was in the
west limb, close to the main entrance. In King’s time it was perfect,
and was round-headed, 2 feet 4 inches wide and 7 feet 7 inches high,
but it has since been broken away. There is a larger, rude opening in
the south limb, which may represent the place of another door. That
this singular and highly-ornate chamber was originally an oratory is
evident, both from the care bestowed upon it, from the traces of an
altar in the east wall, and from the window next the altar.
In Tudor times, the south wall was breached, and a clumsy, flat-topped
window of three lights inserted, for which much of the arcade has been
cut away; and a rude wall with a door in it has been built across the
south limb, probably to convert the oratory into two sleeping places.
Upon the chalk ashlar of this chamber have been carved a considerable
number of rude representations, apparently the work of one period.
Some are simply incised, others carved in relief. There is one very
evident Crucifixion, with a soldier piercing our Lord’s side, the
disciples attending, and something like a veiled female figure about
to faint. There is also a St. Christopher; a bishop recumbent beneath
a crown; and other figures, both ecclesiastic and military. They are
evidently the work of persons confined in this apartment, and as they
are rude, illiterate, and without any trace of heraldic emblems, they
are probably the work of common gaol prisoners, and are likely enough
to be of the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the prison was
over-crowded and every available space sure to have been employed.
There was, of course, a larger chapel in the lower ward, not to mention
the parish church of St. Mary, hard by. These carvings have been
engraved, but not with the necessary correctness. It speaks little for
the public spirit of Guildford that they are not photographed.
On the other or north side of the main entrance, also in the west
wall, is a second mural chamber, entered by a narrow, round-headed,
original door, 2 feet 4 inches broad by 7 feet 7 inches high, quite
plain, of ashlar. This chamber has a rude, round-headed barrel vault,
and is 9 feet 2 inches long by 5 feet 1 inch broad. There is one loop
in the west wall. The walls are rubble, but the internal jamb of the
door, being of chalk ashlar, bears some carvings in the style of those
described above.
The third chamber is in the north wall, at its east end. Its door and
much of its inner wall and floor have been removed to allow of the
insertion of a fireplace and chimney-shaft, but enough remains to show
that the chamber was 14 feet long by 3 feet 2 inches broad, and had a
loop in the north wall. The eastern third of this chamber is uninjured.
A depression in the floor, quite at the east end, looks as though it
had been a garderobe for the state floor, and this idea is strengthened
by the quoining and ashlar-work about the angles at that end. Brayley
prolongs this chamber at a right angle into the east wall. This is a
pure fiction. The quoining of the end shows that there was nothing
further, and the groove in the wall is only meant to support the ends
of the boards upon which the vault was turned. The fireplace, close
west of this chamber, of which the flue remains, is an insertion. The
position of the mural chamber and of the window shows, however, that
there may have been an original fireplace here.
There remains to be mentioned the well-stair, which occupies the
north-west angle of the keep, commencing at the first-floor level and
ascending to the roof. This stair does not communicate directly with
the main chamber, but opens by a small, round-headed door in the jamb
of the adjacent north window, where three steps in a short, narrow
passage lead up into the base of the well-stair. The stairs are gone,
but the cylinder of the well-stair, 8 feet diameter, remains. As high
as the second floor it is lined with excellent chalk ashlar, and
lighted by two loops on the west side. A door and passage, similar to
that below, ascends by four steps into a recess, not a window, in the
north wall of the upper floor. This side door is pointed, but this
seems the effect of modern cobbling. It should further be mentioned
that the four hollow angles of the first or state floor are quoined
with chalk ashlar. The floor rested on no set-off, the walls being of
the thickness of the basement.
The second, or upper floor was about 15 feet high. There is a set-off
at the floor level, reducing the east and west walls by about 2 feet.
In this floor are four windows in broad recesses. Those on the west
and east and south faces are central. The fourth window is towards the
east end of the north wall, the centre of that side being occupied by
a fireplace much modernised, but which the displacement of the window
shows to be original. In the south wall, close to the south-east angle,
a door leads into a small mural garderobe, with two vents corbelled
out over the exterior wall and a loop above them. With this exception,
there are no mural chambers on this floor, which is singular, seeing
that the wall is quite thick enough to carry them. There is, however,
in the west wall, near its north end, one jamb of a walled-up door,
which may have been meant to communicate with the stair or with a mural
chamber. It seems never to have been completed. The four angles of
this room are quoined in chalk ashlar, as in the room below, and the
window recesses had, and one still has, round-headed arches. This floor
is very inaccessible, but was reached by a ladder when these remarks
upon it were recorded. The walls are evidently, in the main, original,
though much pulled about by the Carter family when they lived here. The
recesses also are original, but the windows themselves are cut-brick
insertions of two lights, arched.
It will be observed that the eastern wall, though very thick, is
pierced by no galleries, and, with the exception of two windows, is
absolutely solid from base to summit. Probably the object was, by
placing this mass of firm masonry on the solid ground, to give support
to the other three sides, and thus prevent them from sliding down the
slope of the mound, as was the case with some much lighter and later
buildings in a similar position at Cardiff.
It has been stated that the keep stands upon the south-eastern slope
of the mound, consequently there is to the west, and in front of
its entrance, nearly the whole table summit. This was enclosed by a
circular wall, like a shell-keep, about 25 feet high, which, springing
from the south-eastern angle of the keep, seems to have been carried
round the mound, commencing at about half its height, until it reached
the north-east angle of the keep, at which junction there seems to have
been a gateway. Of this circular wall about one-half, either actual or
in foundations, remains. The fragment of wall, about 5 feet thick and
20 feet high, is evidently of the date of the keep, the same thin red
tiles being used in its chalk masonry. Also in this wall is an original
garderobe, apparently of three stages: one at the ward level, one
half-way up, and one on the battlements; the three seem to have united
in a common shaft, the vent of which is seen outside the base of the
wall.
The space thus enclosed by the keep and the circular curtain was the
inner ward. How the main door of the keep was reached does not appear.
There was not the usual fore-building, as at Norwich or Rochester; the
circumscribing wall and the lofty position of the keep rendered this
unnecessary. A row of small holes at the door level may have belonged
to a sort of timber landing, to be reached by a flight of steps of the
same material. There is said to have been a well in this ward, about 6
feet from the west wall of the keep, south of the door.
There remain two wards to be described. The line of the _enceinte_
of the castle seems to have been much as follows: Commencing at the
angle of Castle Street and Quarry Street, where the site of the
present “King’s Head” inn was probably marked by a tower, the west
front took the line of Quarry Street, past the great gateway, to the
tower containing a postern, which still marks the south-west angle
of the enclosure. Thence the wall passed east till it reached the
boundary of the extra-parochial ground, whence, in the line of that
boundary, it probably took the curve of the counterscarp of the main
ditch, in the direction of the Bowling Green Cottages. There, on the
platform at the end of the causeway, was no doubt a barbican covering
the direct approach to the keep. Thence the wall seems to have been
continued along the line of the ditch, shown by the curve of Castle
Street, until it again reached Quarry Street, thus enclosing what
corresponds tolerably well to the area of the castle at the sale of
1612, which is described as 5 acres, 3 roods, 10 perches; or nearly
six acres. Of this area, the part north of the great gateway was shut
off by a curtain, parts of which remain, and which seems to have run
up the mound to the _enceinte_ of the inner ward. In this, the middle
ward, stood the hall and principal buildings, as is clear from the
considerable, though fragmentary, Norman walls still to be seen, two of
which, forming two sides of a large chamber, are very perfect, and one
is pierced by a very perfect Norman window recess and loop.
[Illustration: GUILDFORD CASTLE.]
What stood in the area south of the gateway, into which the postern
led, is not known. It long contained the gardens of the governor of the
gaol, when the castle was employed for that ignoble use, and in it is
the celebrated well connected with the caverns.
The great gate in Quarry Street, though large, is at present a mere
opening, perhaps of the age of Henry III., in an older, and probably
Norman, curtain. Whether it was connected with the gatehouse is
uncertain, but there is, as already stated, an indication in the
masonry that such was the case. Also the portcullis groove is large,
and so heavy a grate could not have been worked without a chamber above
carrying a winch. Outside the gate are two buttresses, which have a
late Norman aspect. One is nearly perfect, the other has been replaced
in brick, but probably upon the old base. The south-west angle of the
Quarry Street front is marked by the not inconsiderable remains of
the postern tower, adjacent wall, and a large buttress, all pretty
clearly late Norman. Towards the north and east the walls are entirely
removed, but in these quarters the line of the ditch affords a clue to
the original boundary. The _enceinte_ thus laid down measures about
535 yards; its greatest north and south diameter, 170 yards; and east
and west, 140 yards. The Quarry Street front is straight and 138 yards
long, with the gate nearly in the middle. From the postern tower to the
end of the keep causeway is 213 yards, and thence to the “King’s Head”
angle, 184 yards.
Captain James has detected traces of a line of wall parallel to, and
about 30 yards south of, the High Street, which may not improbably have
been the boundary of an enclosed area appended to the castle, as may
the extra-parochial lands on the east and south-east, but the actually
defended area of the castle seems to have been as above described.
It may further be observed that Quarry Street, which runs along the
foot of the west wall of the castle and lay between it and the river,
seems to have been defended on that side by the low cliff and talus
already mentioned, supported probably by the retaining wall, of which
traces and the jamb of a gate remain; while there is a tradition of a
gate crossing the street near the postern of the castle, which probably
guarded the approach to the town from the south, the only quarter from
which a hostile approach would be apprehended.
Not only are the remains of the domestic buildings of a late Norman
character, but among the repairs of the hall, in the reign of Henry
III., two of the piers are mentioned as out of the perpendicular, a
tolerably conclusive evidence that the hall resembled Oakham and
Leicester and was of Norman date. Altogether, it is sufficiently
evident that the whole area of the castle was enclosed by its original
founder, and is not later than the middle of the twelfth century, the
detached fragments of walls and buildings being in substance of the
same date with the keep. The castle is in St. Mary’s parish, bordered
on the north-east by Trinity and on the east by the extra-parochial
plot, the origin of which is not known. Probably the _enceinte_ took in
the whole of the residence of the royal Saxon owners.
Those who have supposed that the _enceinte_ of the castle extended
to the present High Street have regarded the two well-known crypts
remaining there as proofs of this extent. One of these, on the
south side, the writer has not been able to visit; but the other,
exactly opposite the former, and about 160 yards from the keep, he
has examined, and it is said that the two are of the same age and
dimensions and very nearly alike.
The north crypt, beneath the Angel Hotel, is a rectangular chamber,
31 feet north and south, by 19 feet east and west, and divided into
two aisles and six bays by two central piers. The piers are plain
cylinders, 18 inches diameter and 5 feet 6 inches high. The bases are
now concealed; the piers are without caps and quite plain. The roof is
vaulted, and 10 feet 3 inches from the floor to the cornice, groined
and ribbed. The arches are drop and pointed, the ribs chamfered and
springing from carved corbels in the wall. At the south end of each
aisle is a window recess, converging and rising to a loop at the street
level. The entrance is by a narrow drop-arched door, opening from a
rising passage, vaulted, with hanging ribs. This opens into a small
chamber, north of, and 4 or 5 feet above, the vault, whence another
narrow door probably led up to the ground level. The date of the crypt
seems to be of the thirteenth century, and it is quite clear that it
never was prolonged southwards towards the other crypt, and was always
and only lighted, as now, from the street level. In all probability
this was the cellar of some considerable hostel, situate, as now, in
the High Street, which, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as
now, was probably the main thoroughfare of the town.
In the immediate neighbourhood of the castle, and, indeed, running
under the southern edge of its _enceinte_, are the celebrated caverns
which have recently been explored, and for the first time correctly
planned by Capt. James, whose excellent account of them is well known.
These caverns are excavated in the chalk, which forms a cliff south of
the town, and from the base of which they are entered. The chalk here
dips northerly, at about ten degrees, and the hardest bed and the most
suitable for building purposes lies at the base of the cliff and is
about 6 or 7 feet thick. This bed has been largely quarried by open
“patching” in the broken ground south of the cliff, which, indeed, is
apparently artificial, and produced by these excavations, and it was
only when the bed became too deep for that mode of working that the
quarrymen had recourse to mining operations. These later works are,
in general plan, composed of a gallery parallel to, and a few feet
within, the face of the cliff, from which, at a right angle, eight
parallel stalls are carried north-eastwards. The extreme points of the
excavation are a little over 55 yards north-west and south-east, by 32
yards north-east and south-west; but the area actually excavated is
only about 1,150 yards, and the cubical contents about 2,330 yards. The
plan alone would show that they were opened for quarries. But, besides
this, although much solid chalk has been removed, the excavation is
nearly choked up with the immense quantity of “small” produced by
unskilful working, and through which narrow paths are left to get at
the face of the work. It is evident that this is not _débris_ brought
in, nor caused by the fall of the roof, which is remarkably sound.
It is simply broken chalk which has been thrown back as the miners
proceeded, and remains undisturbed. The character and presence of this
rubbish not only shows that the excavation was a quarry, but that it
never was used for anything else, neither as a granary, nor a cellar,
nor for human habitation, for nowhere has it been cleared away so as to
set any part of the cavities free for such purposes.
Nearly in the deepest part of the working, about 60 feet below the
surface, the caverns have been pierced by a well, sunk, it is said, in
the garden of the governor of the old gaol. This well has been carried
through the caverns, if to water, probably to a depth of another
hundred feet, but it has subsequently been covered over with plank,
at the level of the cavern floor, and so now remains. The pipe of the
well above is very rugged, as though sunk by unskilled workmen—perhaps
convicts,—and is stained, as though used as a cesspool. Also, for many
yards around, the rubbish, elsewhere of pure white, is dark and foul,
as though, failing to reach water, or afterwards disused for that
purpose, the well had been employed as a receptacle for all the filth
of the prison.
As to the age of these quarries, it is not easy to form a sound
opinion. They have been supposed to be British, and various uses have
been found for them, quite at variance with the appearances they
present. The only argument for such an origin has been overlooked. The
town is in Woking hundred, and Woking, like Wokey in Mendip, may be a
corruption of the British “Ogof” (fovea), a cave. But Woking was never
the name of the town, and the material evidence of the caverns does not
favour this theory. They are certainly not British: the plan of the
workings excludes this view. No doubt they might be Roman, but there
are no traces of Roman buildings in the neighbourhood, and chalk, even
hard chalk, is too plentiful all along the ridge to be carried hence
to any great distance. The most probable supposition seems to me to be
that they were opened by the builders of the Norman castle, who used
chalk largely for their inner, and, indeed, for much of their more
exposed, work. The quarries have no communication with any part of the
castle. Where they infringe upon its borders, they are far too deep to
have been employed against it during a mediæval siege.
HARLECH CASTLE, MERIONETH.
DESCRIPTION.
The Castle of Harlech occupies a bold and rugged headland of rock
which juts forward upon the coast-line of Merioneth over the broad
alluvial plain known as Morfa Harlech, near to its southern and
narrower extremity. Six centuries back, when the Traeth was an estuary,
and the waves may have washed the foot of the rock, Harlech, as now
Criccaieth, was probably accessible by water,—a circumstance likely
to have governed its founder in his selection of the site. Although
scarcely 200 feet above the sea level, and connected with a much higher
background, the rock of Harlech is nevertheless a very striking object,
and by the extreme boldness of its outline and its almost isolated
position does justice to its very significant appellation. It commands
one of the most remarkable prospects in Britain. Before it is the Bay
of Caernarvon with its vast sweep of sandy shore, contained on the
right by Snowdon and its subordinate peaks; whence the high land, after
rising into the elevations of Carn Madryn, Carn Bodfuan, and Yr Eifl,
gradually subsides into the Bay of Aberdaron and the Sound and Isle of
Bardsey. Caernarvon and Conway are fortresses more ornate in character
and of larger area; but they are not equal to Harlech in natural
strength and in grandeur of position; nor is, in these respects,
Beaumaris itself, though placed in the very eye of the Snowdon group,
by any means its superior.
Harlech is a concentric castle of the Edwardian type, and of that type
a simple and excellent example. It is composed of a central four-sided
ward contained within four lofty curtains, and capped at each angle
by a drum-tower of three-quarter projection. In the centre of the
landward or eastern side is the great gatehouse; opposite to which,
built against the curtain, are the remains of the hall and domestic
buildings; and contiguous to them, against the north side, is the
chapel.
The main or _Inner Ward_, thus composed and occupied, stands within
the second or middle ward, which resembles it generally in plan, save
that the four corners are not symmetrical, one being merely rounded,
two others capped by more or less of three-quarter bastions, and the
fourth rounded on one face and fashioned as a bastion on the other. In
the centre of the south side is a half-round smaller bastion, corbelled
out from the retaining wall below; and in the centre of the north
side are two others, also small, between which is the postern of this
middle ward. In the east face, opposite the great gatehouse, are two
“tourelles,” or round bartizan turrets, corbelled out from the wall;
and parts of a small low gatehouse, which contained the outer gate.
[Illustration: HARLECH CASTLE, MERIONETHSHIRE (_in part restored_).]
[Illustration: HARLECH CASTLE.
Wyman & Sons, Gᵗ. Queen Sᵗ. London.]
This middle ward is narrow and of unequal breadth, varying from 8 feet
to 30 feet. It is rather below the level of the inner ward, and the
ground outside it is from 10 feet to 15 feet lower still; and its walls
are revetments crested with a parapet which seems to have ranged from
6 feet to 12 feet in height; in the latter case having a rampart-walk
reached by open steps. The several bastions seem to have risen a little
higher than the parapet, and to have contained each a low chamber,
probably with a flat roof. This ward is protected on the east and south
sides by a broad and deep dry ditch, quarried in the rock, and running
out until it ends on the cliff. The other two sides are covered by an
outer ward of considerable breadth, but composed for the most part of
steep slopes and abrupt ledges of rock. A part of this ward towards
the west or sea front contains a long passage which ascends by a lower
traverse from a water-gate at the foot of the rock, resting partly upon
a shelf of rock, and which by a second and upper traverse reaches the
postern of the middle ward.