PLYMPTON CASTLE. 259 
preferred stone they did not by any means despise wood, and 
frequently used it. 
This eight feet wall is a comparatively thin one. The Norman 
walls were often of enormous thickness, sometimes twelve and 
fourteen feet ; those at Colchester are no less than thirty feet thick 
at the base. At Newcastle it is supposed that the whole of the 
area of the keep, a very large one, has been built up solid from a 
depth of about fourteen feet to the surface. The mortar, or grout, 
was the main-stay of the work; the stones, as may be seen without 
difficulty, were of no great size—not larger than could be easily 
lifted by the workmen ; those on the face slightly dressed. The 
middle of the wall seems to be composed of small stones, but so 
firmly bound together by the mortar, which must have been used 
in a semi-fluid state, that the stones themselves are little harder than 
the mortar is now; and it is the same elsewhere. It was thought 
necessary some little time since to pierce the walls of the White 
Tower at the Tower of London, and the task occupied a party of 
sappers and miners six weeks.” 
Being a shell keep, the interior of Plympton was not divided 
into floors, as were those not erected upon mounds. ‘The centre 
was open to the sky. Arranged around the wall were wooden 
erections, which contained stores, and the various contrivances and 
materials for keeping an enemy at bay—stones, pigs of lead, barrels 
of oil, supplies of lime, and appliances for melting and heating 
them, and otherwise preparing and rendering them fit for their 
descent upon the heads of the assailants of the Castle. Similar 
erections afforded some kind of shelter for the soldiery, but these 
were only of a temporary nature; for the permanent lodgings or 
barracks, as they may be termed, were in the court below. 
In the thickness of the wall are some apertures, which have 
caused a considerable amount of speculation as to their probable 
use. There are two of these apertures, about six feet distant one 
from another, running entirely through the circumference of the 
wall. They are as nearly as possible one foot five inches wide 
by ten inches high. They extend entirely through the existing 
remains of the wall. The lower one is near the present surface 
of the ground, within the wall; the second, as I have just said, 
about six feet above. 
These passages have the appearance of having been carefully 
* “ Journal Arch. Assoc.,”’ vol. vi. p. 215. 
