188 Essay on Caerphilly Castle. 



been long removed. The sills of the windows have been cut away to the 

 soil, and the tracery and moulding which adorned them broken and defaced. 



A window and door at the east end have been shattered into one, and 

 the vaulted passage leading to the offices is a siiapeless and rugged hole. 



The roof of the kitchen is broken, but enough remains to display its 

 original structure. The steps of the water gallery have been removed, but 

 the vaulted roof is but little injured. 



Between the hall door and the eastern entrance, a depression in the 

 sward indicates the ancient well. It has lately been opened a few feet 

 down, but nothing of importance was discovered. 



We shall conclude this description with the four bastion towers, the 

 position of one of which has conferred upon this castle whatever notoriety 

 it may possess. 



Of these towers there are, as has been stated, four; each thirty-eight feet in 

 external diameter, and with a wall of ten feet thick. That they have been 

 mined and blown up with gunpowder, at some period when the effects of 

 that agent were well understood, is evident from a moment's inspection. 

 The mine has been sprung near the centre of eacii tower, and has produced 

 effects, differing in degree only, upon each. That on the north east is 

 altogether levelled, on the outside entirely to the ground, crushing in its 

 descent the very bastion on which its foundation rested — on the inside, the 

 door, and a portion of wall as high as tiie curtain, only remain. The de- 

 struction of the north western tower has not been by any means so com- 

 plete. Only a third of its outer circumference has fallen, and the rest, 

 deprived indeed of its floors, remains as firm as ever. The portion which 

 has fallen, lies in fragments upon the neighbouring bastion. 



With the south western tower the engineer has been eminently success- 

 ful : the whole of the outer portion has fallen upon the bastion and into the 

 ditch ; but the inner strip connecting it with the rest of the building, and 

 containing the entrances to the several stories, has been protected by the 

 outbuildings on its southern side, and is unshaken. 



The last, or south-eastern, is the celebrated leaning tower, the obliquity 

 of which has been so strangely exaggerated and so absurdly accounted for. 

 In the case of this tower, the mine has exploded in a contrary direction 

 from the rest ; and the inner portion, with the adjoining curtain, has been 

 thrown into the court, while the two outer and lesser portions remain 

 standiug, although the force of the explosion has thrown the mass out of 

 the perpendicular, so that it overhangs its base, towards the south-west, 

 nine feet. The parapet at its summit remains quite perfect, and is the 

 only one in the castle that is so. 



The neighbourhood of these four towers, and the intervening gate-houses, 

 upon which the rage of the enemy chiefly expended itself, is a chaos of 

 ruins ; subverted masses of the gallery, staircases, nay, the vaulting of 

 large portions of the chambers themselves, lie in confusion upon the 



