[714] A.-S. C. in anno.
[715] Round’s History of Colchester, ch. iv.
[716] The keep of Norwich Castle measures 100 × 95 feet; Middleham, 100 × 80; Dover, 95 × 90. These are the largest existing keeps in England, next to the Tower and Colchester. The destroyed keep of Duffield measured 99 × 93 feet; that of Bristol is believed to have been 110 × 95.
[717] The reader will find little help for the structural history of the Tower in most of the works which call themselves Histories of the Tower of London. The plan of these works generally is to skim over the structural history as quickly as possible, perhaps with the help of a few passages from Clark, and to get on to the history of the prisoners in the Tower. For the description in the text, the writer is greatly indebted to Mr Harold Sands, F.S.A., who has made a careful study of the Tower, and whose monograph upon it, it is hoped, will shortly appear.
[719] Many of the larger keeps contain rooms quite spacious enough to have served as banqueting halls, and it is a point of some difficulty whether they were built to be used as such. But as late as the 14th century, Piers Ploughman rebukes the new custom which was growing up of the noble and his family taking their meals in private, and leaving the hall to their retainers. Every castle seems to have had a hall in the bailey.
[720] Mr Sands says the main floors are not of too great a span to carry any ordinary weight.
[721] The keep of Pevensey Castle, the basement of which has been recently uncovered, has no less than four apsidal projections, one of which rests on the solid base of a Roman mural tower. But this keep is quite an exceptional building. See Excavations at Pevensey, Second Report, by H. Sands.
[722] Mr Sands has conjectured that the third floor may be an addition, and that the second storey was originally open up to the roof and not communicating with the mural passage except by stairs. This was actually the case at Bamborough keep, and at Newcastle and Rochester the mural gallery opens into the upper part of the second storey by inner windows.
[723] Until the end of the 12th century the roofs of keeps were gabled and not flat, but probably there was usually a parapet walk for sentinels or archers.