DELAMOTTE & HEAVISIDE SC.
CAERPHILLY.
The portal, 10 feet wide by 20 feet high, was defended by gates, portcullis, and stockade. It is guarded by loops on each side from the lodges. Those opening from the portal, measure 20 feet by 10 feet, have fireplaces, and were floored with timber. The walls are 9 feet thick, and are looped in various directions for defence.
Caerphilly Castle.
- A Inner Ward.
- B Middle Ward.
- C Kitchen Tower and Water Gate.
- D Outer Ward.
- E Great Gatehouse and Pier.
- F North Postern.
- G South Postern.
- H Sluice.
- I Outer Water Gate.
Passing through the gatehouse, behind it is a broad platform, which extends behind the southern curtain, and is scarped and revetted towards the inner moat; on the right of this is a prolongation of the gatehouse westwards, into the gatehouse tower. One of two doorways leads up this tower by a hexagonal well-stair, 9 feet in mean diameter; this opens upon seven apartments in two stories, and terminates in a lofty quadrangular turret. In the first story are devices for working the portcullis, and a small fireplace and oven, probably intended to serve the purpose of a cooking-place for the porter and his assistants. These rooms are vaulted. From this story a passage opens upon the rampart of the northern curtain, and led, probably by a temporary plank bridge, across an abyss in the thickness of the wall, about 29 feet deep and 5 feet wide, and opening below between the grates of a water gate. A passage, at the ground level, leads from the platform through the gatehouse tower, across the ditch or canal from the water gate, to the northern curtain, and was defended by gates, portcullis, and drawbridge.
From the gatehouse a dividing wall, 20 feet high and 6 feet thick, extends westward 80 feet to the edge of the inner moat, and thus cuts off the platform and the whole of the southern from the northern curtain. Each face has been embattled, so that should either curtain be taken, the other could still be defended.