Mediæval Military Architecture in England, Volume 1 (of 2)

by George Thomas Clark

The inner ward is the most perfect and really curious part of the castle. It is in level about 30 feet above the rest, commands the whole area, and predominates grandly over the Tees. It contains the keep, northern tower, the domestic buildings between them, the curtains and buttresses, and the remains of the gatehouse. The keep caps the north-east angle, and is half within and half without the curtain. It is a very grand piece of masonry, built of blocks of coarse red grit of moderate size, square and coursed, with rather open joints. It is circular, about 40 feet diameter, and about 50 feet high to the base of the parapet, now gone. It rises from the rock. Its base for about 6 feet batters slightly, but above that it is cylindrical. It is absolutely without ornament, and there is not even the usual cordon to mark the top of the base. The loops are of unusual length, and slightly dovetailed at the lower end; never cruciform. The original openings are mostly square-headed, and without mouldings or labels. One large window, high up, towards the north, is round-headed, and probably original. Towards the town ward is a five-light late Tudor window, an insertion. Probably the parapet rested on bold corbels, but, if so, they are gone. There are no strut-holes nor indications of a bretasche. Though circular above and towards the field, the southern or interior face is capped by a bold spur, a pyramid cut diagonally, with the apex dying into the round wall about four-fifths of the way up. This spur contains a mural chamber. It is much shattered.

THE KEEP, BARNARD CASTLE.

The keep is cylindrical within, and has a basement and three upper floors. All its original openings seem to have been either flat or round-headed. There is no original pointed arch; that over the main door is clearly an insertion. The basement is on the ground level, about 20 feet diameter, and the walls about 10 feet thick, and it is covered in with a flattish dome of inferior rubble, but probably original. On the south side are traces of a fireplace, of which the vertical tunnel remains in the wall. The entrance-door is on the west side, and so also is the main door. It is much broken, and has at present a late flat-pointed arch, but it seems to have been round-headed. It opened not, as now, from the court, but from the passage-room leading to the postern. In the outer wall, a couple of yards to the right of the door, is a recess like a sepulchre in the keep wall, and in it is laid a stone coffin, probably found in the outer ward. The recess may have been a seat; it can scarcely have been a tomb. The entrance-door has no portcullis. In its left jamb a flat-topped mural passage, 3 feet wide, leads into a garderobe which projects outwards between the keep and the curtain, and has a short exterior loop. The shaft of a garderobe in the floor above so drops that it is evident that here, as at Corfe, there was a wooden partition within it.

Entering the keep, on the right a door leads up half a dozen steps into the north side of what is called the guard-chamber, a barrel-vaulted room, 14 feet east and west, by 7 feet, with a loop to the south. This looks very much like an oratory, though it is a passage-room. It is contained partly within the spur buttress, and is evidently the cause of that appendage. From near the west end of the chamber, a second door leads by a mural stair, 3 feet broad, to the first floor, a circular chamber, 21 feet diameter, with walls about 8 feet 6 inches thick. This stair opens by a narrow, round-headed door in the jamb of a doorway, also round-headed, which seems to have led from this floor into the “great chamber,” the withdrawing-room of the hall. In the opposite door jamb, a similar door leads by a mural passage to a garderobe above that already mentioned.

The first floor was evidently the state-room. It has traces of a fireplace to the south side, but the hood is gone, and opposite to it is a round-headed window of 4 feet opening, looking up the Tees. Another window, probably of the same pattern, looked towards the tower ward. This has been altered to suit a Tudor five-light flat-topped window. This seems to have been called “My Lady’s Chamber.”

In the left-hand jamb of the north window, now much broken, another narrow door opens on a mural stair, 2 feet 6 inches broad, which, following the curve of the wall, and lighted by small loops, led up to the battlements, opening, on the way, upon the second floor, of which the floor and roof, both of timber, are now gone. This floor also had a fireplace, and a sort of magnified loop, which did duty as a door, and opened upon the battlements of the hall, and led also to a third garderobe, corbelled out above the other two. This has an open vent, while the shaft of the other two descends within the wall to a sewer, the arched mouth of which is just visible at the foot of the wall, outside.

There seems also to have been a square-headed opening in the stair, to give a way to the top of the ward-curtain, of which the allure was 2 feet 6 inches wide, having a parapet of 3 feet, and a rerewall of 2 feet. As the parapet of the keep is gone, the stair terminates abruptly at the level of the rampart wall, where the wall is 7 feet 6 inches thick; and thence is a good view of the castle and town, and of one of the most lovely reaches of the Tees. In 1592 this keep was roofed with lead. The roof was probably always flat.

Mortham Tower capped the north-west angle of the ward, rising from the rock high above the river. It is a mere fragment. It seems to have been of irregular plan, built to fit on to the hollow bend of an existing wall. When it was built, it was thought prudent to strengthen the wall by stout exterior buttresses. The original wall is Norman. The first built part of the tower seems to have been Early English, and its completion Decorated.

The space between Mortham Tower and the keep was occupied by the hall and withdrawing-rooms, the latter being next the keep. The hall was on the first floor, as shown by its two windows in the curtain. These are of two lights, with a transom and trefoiled heads, and an oval quatrefoil in the head. They are placed in recesses with plain segmental arches, and side seats of stone. They are of the best Decorated period, and evidently insertions into an older wall, which has also been strengthened with Decorated buttresses.