The present dining-room and lobby appear to have composed a hall, 62 feet long by 18 feet broad and 13 feet high, having a flat ceiling, probably like that of the hall at Warwick. A passage cut through the wall leads from the lobby into the tower at the foot of the stair, and is no doubt as old as the tower. In recent times, probably by the first Stuart, the face of the great wall has been cut away 3 feet, from the floor level upwards, to give a width of 21 feet to the dining-room. Also, about five years ago, a passage 32 feet long and 3 feet wide, was cut like a tunnel through the axis of this wall, to give a way from the tower to the breakfast-room and offices beyond.
The eastern front of this hall, which looks into the middle ward, forms the centre of the present façade. It is divided into three compartments by four octagonal turrets of half projection, about 4 feet in the side. These rise to the roof. That to the south contains a stair, with an original door from the court. The other three consist of two stages of three windows in each, divided by a string-course. In the lower stage the two central turrets are more ornate than the rest, and have their angles capped with slender buttresses surmounted by pinnacles. This tabernacle work is original in the southernmost of the two, but was added to the other when the windows were pierced in it, and it was cased, a few years ago. These turrets are battlemented and looped above, and range with the regular parapet of the building, but they are not machicolated, their structure being but slight. The stair-turret is much older than the rest. The stair, 7 feet in diameter, rudely restored upon an original newel, communicates with the basement as well as with the court, and by doors, now closed up, opened into the hall and bedrooms. It is from the position of these doors, and from the turret windows, that the height of the old hall has been inferred. The stair is lighted by square-headed windows, and above by a small quatrefoiled opening. It leads up to the roof.
The three curtains or wall spaces connecting the four turrets are also pierced by two rows of single windows, six in all—the lower range square headed, the upper pointed. All are of two lights, with a transom. The turret and curtain windows are all alike, save that in the former the lower tier are pointed.
The present entrance door is modern, made by cutting down a window, and probably all the windows have been renewed during the past half-century. A drawing of this front in 1776 shows, however, windows generally resembling the present, excepting that the turret second from the north, like the stair-turret, has no large windows.
Passing into the interior, the three turrets appear as bays from the main and upper floors, the middle one opening by a sort of passage, as though it had been once a mere dark closet, or perhaps a staircase: the other two open by pointed arches with plain, bold, round, and hollow mouldings. The wall is 5 feet thick, and the passage through it is divided by three ribs into two panels, which are continued through the soffit. The bays themselves, 8 feet wide, with walls only 18 inches thick, have five faces, of which the two inner ones are blank, and the three outer pierced by the windows already described. Each of the six angles, and the centres of the two blank sides are occupied by a slender pilaster shaft, rising from a tall octagonal base, and terminating in a delicate cap, decorated with a sort of trefoil. These shafts are arranged above with some ingenuity, so as to support the sixteen ribs of a groined octagonal roof, meeting at a central boss. In the two northern bays and those of the upper story, this boss is a mass of foliage, probably a very modern restoration; but in the southern bay of the three, that next the stair-turret, it bears an original and elaborate armorial achievement. Within a wreath formed of a vine stem, truncated so as to represent the well-known ragged staff of Warwick, is a shield, set anglewise, of Newburgh and Beauchamp quarterly; and in the centre, Despenser, on an escocheon of pretence. The helmet has large tasselled lambrequins, and upon it is placed the Beauchamp crest of the siren’s head, ducally gorged. The whole is painted in colours, probably after the original pattern; and it is obviously the achievement of Richard Earl of Warwick, and Isabel Despenser, who therefore built these turrets, as is also evident from their style. It is, however, probable, that the ribs and groining of the central bay were copied from the others, and added when its windows were opened, and its walls cased or reconstructed.
It appears from Meyric’s description, and the drawing, two centuries later, by Grose, that the entrance to the hall in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, was at its southern end, at the south-eastern corner, near which were the kitchens. The turret-stair seems then to have been either closed, or used only for communication between the basement, bedrooms, and roof. Grose shows its outer door, as now, partially below the level of the soil.
At the upper or northern end of the hall, on the site of the present drawing-room, was “a fair dining chamber,” and two other rooms; and, above these, two other stories, this being the part of the castle in which the lord and his immediate family and attendants were lodged. It will be observed that all these arrangements, about the existence of which there can be no doubt, leave the most highly decorated bay window, or oriel, and the staircase, at the lower end of the hall. This could never have been intended when the bay was constructed, and this, therefore, indicates an earlier and reversed arrangement.
It is well known that Earl Henry, son of the Herbert purchaser, made considerable alterations in the castle lodgings; but what they were has not been recorded, nor, as yet, inferred. It may, however, be safely asserted that he actually reversed all the internal arrangements. It is clear that in the hall of Richard Beauchamp, the south, with its heraldic oriel, was the dais end; and this will account for the group of buildings convenient to this end, which he raised outside of the great wall; and thus, also, the entrance to the great tower would open, as was proper, upon the lower end of the hall. Meyric says the Herberts removed the flower-garden to the north from the south end of the building, where, no doubt, it had been placed for the convenience of the occupants of the dais. This also accounts for the turret-stair, which gave a ready egress into the lord’s private garden, and an access downwards into the cellar, and upwards into the first floor, where naturally the safest and best bedrooms would be placed. Also, the drawing of 1776 shows certain broken walls about the southern end of the building, on the side of the modern offices, as though the entrance of the Herberts had been accomplished by the incomplete removal of old buildings, an inference which is strengthened by a tower shown in the old oil painting in the castle. It is, therefore, I think, incontestable that the dais of Richard Beauchamp, and probably of the De Clares, was at the southern, as that of the Herberts was at the northern end. The north wall of the former hall is modern, built by the Stuarts; but the south wall is original, and, from the considerable distance between it and the oriel, it is possible that there was a small withdrawing-room cut off from the hall, into which the staircase turret opened.
The basement is composed of one spacious chamber, or cellar, 62 feet long by 18 feet broad, and spanned by a rather highly-pointed and four-centred vault, without ribs or groins, but of good workmanship, and as perfect as when first constructed. This proves, incontrovertibly, the dimensions of the ancient hall above it. It is, of course, of Beauchamp date. At its north end is an original doorway of 4 feet 6 inches opening, with irons for double doors, and holes, showing that these doors were barred from within. One end, possibly of the original oak bar, remains in its hole. There seems to have been a similar door at the southern end; and it is evident from the old work that the turret-stair opened into the south-west angle of this vault. There are also two other openings, each in the old and enormously thick wall, at the south-west angle, which may be original.
The two greater wings are evidently the work of the first Stuart owner, sixty or seventy years ago, when, no doubt, the central wall was first cut into longitudinally. The northern wing is an entire rebuilding of the Herbert residence, of which nothing now remains. The wall between this wing and the central part was built with it, and replaces the original northern end wall of the hall of the De Clares and Beauchamps.