Essay on Caerphilly Castle. 137 



benefit of besiegers. These rooms are vaulted. From the first story also 

 a passage leads upon the rampart of the northern curtain, and crosses, upon 

 a temporarj' plank, an abyss in the thickness of the wall, about twenty-nine 

 feet deep and five wide, and opening below between the grates of the 

 grand postern . 



There are in the gate-house and tower connected with it se-ven chambers. 

 From the gate-house a wall runs westward for eighty feet. 

 Dividing Wall. he\x\g twenty feet high and six thick, embattled towards the 

 north, and apparently accessible only by temporary scaffold- 

 ing ; it terminates abruptly on the margin of the inner moat, and thus 

 divides the great fagade into two parts, so that even were the northern or 

 weaker half taken, the southern half would remain almost as impregnable 

 as before. 



The communication between these two parts was carried on above by 

 the door leading from the gate-house tower upon the rampart, and defended 

 as we have seen by an abyss, and below by an arched portal fifteen feet in 

 length, and regularly defended by gates, a portcullis, and a draw-bridge of 

 unusual length. 



If, instead of entering the castle by the draw-bridge, we had 

 Northern crossed the moat just north of it, we should have passed under 

 Curtain. the northern wall of the gate-house, and arrived at a low- 

 browed postern in the curtain, opening at the water's edge. 

 Grand Passing it, first through an iron grate, then under the abyss 



Postern, before mentioned, and finally through a second grate, a gallery 

 leads up a gentle ascent towards the edge of the inner moat. 

 This gallery lies north of the dividing wall, between it and a 

 Covered Way. low wall of inconsiderable thickness, and is in fact a covered 

 way. It is crossed near the postern by the draw-bridge con- 

 necting the north and south lines of front. 



The northern curtain, in which the grand postern opens, runs northward 

 for three hundred and sixty feet, and is strengthened exteriorly 

 Buttress by three buttress towers, quadrangular and solid below, but hex- 

 Towers. agonal and chambered above j each has a projection of twenty, 



with a breadth of twenty-four feet. The chambers have a loop 

 in front, and one at the junction of the tower to the wall on either side : 

 they were accessible only from the rampart, and probably by means of a 

 trap door in the timber roof. A similar buttress tower may be seen at 

 Portchester, next, on the north side, to the Norman keep. 



In the curtain itself are six loops, opening in pairs between 

 North the buttress towers. The curtain terminates northward in a 



Postern. pair of towers, similar in all respects to the other buttress 



towers, but connected together by the vault of a portal, regu- 

 larly <lefendcd with gates, portcullis, and draw-bridge, and leading out as 

 No.'4.— Vol. I. V* 



