REPORT OF MEETINGS FOR 190V 143 



and by a letter dated 1672 from John Clarke, one of the auditors 

 of the estates, to "my lovinge friend, William Milbourne, at his 

 house at Birlinge," the doom of the donjon was sealed. In it 

 he declares that permission had been given him to appropriate 

 such materials from it as would contruct a mansion for 

 himself at Cherton, and requests that instructions be given 

 the tenants on the various estates belonging to the Earl, 

 to assist him in driving lead and timber, and such other 

 materials as might be fit to be removed. This act of 

 spoliation was effected with the aid of 272 waggons in 

 accordance with his request. 



The remembrance of such depredations prepares the visitor 

 to find transcribed on the existing buildings the melancholy 

 legend — Ichabod ! and yet through the labour and munificence 

 of later possessors the ruins have retained a stately and 



imposing appearance. Viewed from the gate- 

 Architec= house the court-yard, which forms an irregular 

 tural triangle terminating in a donjon of such pro- 



Peatures. portions as to win from Francis Grose, in his 



account of the Castle,''^ the distinction that 

 "nothing could be more magnificent and picturesque," is 

 intersected towards its Northern extremity by the foundations 

 of an ancient college, the moulded bases of whose columns are 

 so simple as to preclude the possibility of determining its precise 

 date. The South- Western portion was occupied by the chapel 

 and Lion Tower. On either side of the gate-house is an 

 arched doorway leading to what may have served as a porter's 

 lodge and a temporary prison, while the floor above, comprising 

 several apartments, may have been used as the Constable's 

 lodging. The chapel already referred to, which stands immed- 

 iately to the West of the gate-house, leads by a stairway to the 

 great chamber, and thence by a mural passage to an octagonal 

 tower, named Crakefergus, perhaps after the town of Carrick- 

 fergus with which through inheritance the Clavering family 

 was connected. Though believed to have been built by Eobert 

 fitz Roger for defensive purposes, it must have been altered 

 in later times into a place of residence, as the existing windows 

 would seem to indicate ; and it now possesses a special interest 



* Antiquities, iv., p. 152. 



