38 



SAXDSFOOT CASTLE. 



each took one. We were a happy trio as we wended our way 

 homewards. 



A few years later I found an iron shot, about Sin. diameter, 

 18 inches beneath the surface of the gun-room floor. 



Some years after this, when visiting the Tower of London, 

 I found that the iron cylinder was a breech chamber of a 

 15th Century cannon in which the charge of powder was placed. 

 It was then inserted in an aperture in the cannon and pressed 

 forward in the direction of the muzzle, and secured in this 

 position by a bar of iron which passed through holes in the sides 

 of the gun and rested against the end of the chamber, thus 

 preventing it from moving. There was a touch hole in the 

 chamber. The shot was then inserted in the muzzle and 

 rammed home, and the gun was ready for action. 



Formerly there was a tradition that when Henry VIII. built 

 Sandsfoot Castle, he used some of the material which he 

 obtained from Bindon Abbey (which, like so many other religious 

 houses, fell a victim to his rapacity) for its construction; but 

 there appears to be no proof of this. However, a close 

 inspection of the Castle walls show that there are, among the 

 rubble, many fragments of worked and carved stone, including 

 two archaic corbel heads which evidently came from some 

 ecclesiastical building. This appears to give a little colour to the 

 report; but it is too slight for anything but the merest conjecture. 



My three " finds " at Sandsfoot Castle referred to in the 

 foregoing pages, viz., the breech-chamber, stone shot and iron 

 ball, are in the Dorset County Museum. 



In writing the above I merely desired to place on record 

 circumstances which are in my personal knowledge, and which 

 otherwise might have been lost sight of. 



Since this paper was written I have received information from the Royal 

 United Services' Institution, Whitehall, to the effect that this early breech- 

 loading weapon, known as the cannon pierricr, was much used in the early 

 part of the Sixteenth Century for throwing stone shot from small castles. 

 The accompanying sketch, from a drawing by Grosse, in the Royal United 

 Services' Institute shows the progress of loading the cannon pierrier. The 

 small stone or iron balls were apparently inserted at the breech. (See 

 middle gun). 



The large stone balls, 6in. diameter, which we found, would be used not 

 in a picrricr, but in a howitzer. 



