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.