PLAN OF THE CASTLE OF ARQUES, NORMANDY.
- A. Keep.
- B. Inner Ward.
- C. Outer Ward.
- D. Walls of Le Bel.
- E. Old Ditch.
- F. Glacis.
- G. New Ditch.
- H. Norman Gate.
- I. South Gate.
- K. Barbican.
- L. North Gate.
- a. Galleries.
The supposed two upper floors were very possibly intended for one floor of state, with two tiers of windows and a chapel above. The chapel seems to have had a barrel round-headed vault, probably groined. The accounts show this eastern side to have been the royal chamber in the fourteenth century. The fireplaces seem to be confined to the upper floors. As now seen, they are of the date of the vaulting.
In the south-west angle of the keep, very near the wall, is the well, of which the pipe was continued at least to the first floor, as in the additions at Richmond. It is about 6 feet diameter, lined with ashlar, and in 1768 was choked up at 254 feet deep, or about the level of the river; a depth now reduced to 30 or 40 feet.
Outside, between the buttresses, are traces of walls, as though the spaces between them had been turned to account below as well as above; but these walls are thin, and do not seem original.
M. Deville cites the public records for the existence in 1318 of four turrets on the keep, roofed with lead.
M. Le Duc, in his Dictionary, Art. “Donjon,” gives a great variety of very curious detail connected with this keep, detail unknown to M. Deville, and for which there should be some authority other than the traces actually existing, which are very unsatisfactory.