RETORT OF MEETINGS FOR 1907 145 



pierced," while its character has been depicted by Freeman 

 as "a good study of the progress by which the purely military 

 Castle gradually passed into the house fortified for any 

 occasional emergency." Its chief value in the history of 

 domestic architecture consists not merely in its practically 

 perfect and unaltered contour, but in the existing internal 

 evidence of the uses to which the several apartments were 

 devoted, a large measure of the builder's skill being directed 

 to their serviceable arrangement. The entrance is by a flight 

 of steps in the South octagon, beyond which is laid a wooden 

 platform above a deep pit, into which an unwary assailant 

 could be precipitated at will. On the ground floor are the 

 guard-chamber, with a deep bottle-shaped dungeon, the cellar, 

 and several other vaulted chambers for the storage of provisions, 

 as well as large stone tanks for collecting water, led from 

 the roof by means of conductors fixed in the impluvium or 

 "lantern," as it has been styled, which extends from the 

 basement to the roof, and supplies light to several of the 

 central apartments of the building. From the hall on this 

 floor springs the grand stair-case leading to the great chamber, 

 the chapel, and the banqueting hall. The last named is a 

 handsome room, which rises to the full height of the second 

 floor, and in which, at its Western end, the usual three doors 

 communicating with the pantries and the kitchen are clearly 

 defined. A passage through a square vestibule conducts to 

 the great chamber on the East side, while admission to the 

 chapel may also be obtained directly from the hall. In the 

 nave of the chapel a wheel-stair at its South-West corner 

 gave access to the chamber above, while the chancel extended 

 to the second floor, being lit by three perpendicular windows 

 on the East side, and two similar ones on the North and 

 South sides. To the South of the altar are a well-preserved 

 piscina and sedile, at the back of the latter of which a mural 

 stair-case, probably for the use of the priests, descends to the 

 basement. Access to the second floor, which contains the 

 drawing, chapel, and privy chambers, and the study house, 

 together with the upper portions of the hall and the kitchen, 

 is obtained by a wheel-stair springing from the doorway of 

 the great chamber, which eventually leads to the battlements. 

 A central turret, or look-out, rises 32 feet above the roof, 



