Guildford Keep stands at this day in gardens belonging to the Corporation, and free to all. It is of the Norman type, familiarized to many by prints of such well-known Norman towers as those of Rochester and of Hedingham Castles, and is at this time a mere shell, open to the sky. Within the thickness of the walls are staircases by which it is possible to climb to the summit and gaze thence down upon the red roofs of the town that cluster so picturesquely beneath. Here, too, is a Norman oratory, whose narrow walls are covered with names and figures scratched deeply into the stone, “probably,” says a local guide, “the work of prisoners confined here.” But “J. Robinson, 1892,” was surely no prisoner within these bounds, although he should have been who thus carved his undistinguished name here.
CASTLE ARCH.
THE GUILDHALL
Beside the keep there remains but one archway of all the extensive military works that at one time surrounded the Castle. This is in Quarry Street, and is known as Castle Arch. The chalk caverns close at hand, and the vaulted crypt beneath the “Angel,” although they have long been looked upon as dungeons, had, according to the best-informed of local archæologists, no connection whatever with the Castle. Perhaps even before the Castle keep, the delightfully quaint old Guildhall is the most characteristic feature of Guildford’s architecture. Compared with that old stronghold, the Guildhall is the merest parvenu, having been built in 1683; but, comparisons of age apart, there is no parallel to be drawn between the two. The old tower is four-square and stern, with only the picturesqueness that romance can find, while the belfried tower and the boldly-projecting clock that impends massively over the pavements of the High Street, and gives the time o’ day to the good folks of the town, are the pride of the eye and the delight of the artistic sense of all them that know how to appreciate at their true æsthetic value those memorials of the old corporate spirit of business and good-fellowship that have long since vanished from municipal practice. The legend that may still be read upon the Corporation mace, of Elizabethan date, is earnest of this old-time amity. Thus it runs: “Fayre God. Doe Justice. Love thy Brether.” Set against this, the proceedings of the Kingston-upon-Thames Town Council of some few weeks back make ugly reading, and at the same time illustrate the new spirit very vividly indeed. You who list to learn may read in the records for the present year of that old borough, that while one member of the Council stigmatized another member’s statements as falsehoods, the first rejoined that his accuser was, in plain English, “a liar.” Appealed to by the Mayor to withdraw the offensive expression, he refused, and the Mayor and Corporation filed out of the Council-chamber, leaving him to his own reflections.
That the burghers of Guildford were always the best of friends one with another is not my contention; that the dignity of their ancient surroundings should conduce to loving-kindness may remain unquestioned.