The portal leading from this passage into the inner court has a second pair of doors, and beyond them a second portcullis. This chamber is not a part of the regular gatehouse. It forms a sort of porch projecting from it into the court, and has no upper story. A well-stair on the left opened from the court, and led up to the embattled platform which rested on the vault. This subsidiary prolongation of the length and defences of the entrance passage is believed to be peculiar to Bodiham.
Over the outer part of the passage is the portcullis chamber. It has at each end a low four-centred arch, which concealed the head of the grate, when lifted, and above this, at each end, is the customary small window. The lobby between the well-stair and this chamber is groined and ribbed, and in the centre is a large boss carved in foliage. The gatehouse lodges have a pit or sub-basement, perhaps a cellar, perhaps merely a cavity to keep the floors dry. If cellars, they were entered by traps in the floor above. There are also, above the basement, two upper floors.
The lesser gatehouse is placed opposite to the main gate, in the centre of the southern face of the castle, and though equally lofty, is much smaller. It is a plain tower 22 feet square, projecting 15 feet in advance of the curtain, but with no internal projection. The outer gate is in the centre of the tower, and had a portcullis, and behind it were folding doors. The entrance passage is 11 feet square, vaulted as the great gateway, but not so lofty. Right and left are loops raking the curtain. A door in the west wall opens into the usual well-stair, contained within the north-west angle. There is no lodge. The inner portal was closed by doors only. It opened into a passage at the lower end of the great hall.
In front of, and outside this gatehouse, there project 9 feet into the moat two walls about 3 feet thick. They seem to have contained between them a bridge pit, over which a bridge dropped from the gateway, upon a cross wall which remains. The pit is filled up. Opposite, the counterscarp of the moat, 62 yards distant, is revetted, and from it projects a half-hexagonal pier. How this intervening space was traversed is not now seen. Scarcely by a boat, for the pier is evidently intended to support a timber bridge, and a boat could not conveniently be reached from it. Probably there was a footway upon tressels or wooden piers.
Thus much of the two gatehouses, the only towers which are machicolated. Each leads into the court of the castle, an open space 86 feet south and north, by 76 feet east and west; round which are placed, against the curtains, the domestic buildings, 22 to 30 feet in depth, some of one floor, some of two, but all of nearly equal height, and so placed as to conceal the curtain and the lower parts of the towers from the inner court.
Right and left of the great gatehouse the buildings had a ground and first floor. Those on the left, or to the east, were rather more ornate, as being nearer to the state apartments. The north-east and north-west towers communicated on each side with these rooms. They have sub-basement pits, with loops, a ground and two upper floors. They differ somewhat in details, but each has a well-stair in its gorge wall, and mural closets and fireplaces at the several levels. The pits are circular, the chambers above hexagonal.
Along the west side are offices, and probably servants’ apartments, and rooms for the garrison. In the centre a large and handsome doorway, with a window on each side and traces of a porch, opens into a small kitchen, a room 21 feet by 16 feet, having on each side a fireplace, with a converging tunnel, and an arched head of 12 feet span and 2 feet rise. There is no hood or projection. The roof was open, and at the battlement level. A gallery seems to have run across above the door, entered from the room to the south, and beneath it in the wall is also a door.
The enclosure next south seems to have been of two floors. The lower room, 38 feet by 22 feet, was probably for stores or for the servants; the upper was the lesser hall. The lower room had two windows to the court and a small door, and perhaps between the windows a shallow fireplace with a bold hood. Above was a noble room of the same size. The lower room opened into the west tower. This, like the east tower, is 25 feet broad, by 21 feet deep, and of 15 feet projection from the curtain. The sub-basement here was evidently a cellar. It has three loops a little above the water-level. A well-stair in the south-east angle leads upwards from the ground-level.
Along the south side were placed the great kitchen, buttery, and great hall. The kitchen, 33 feet by 24 feet, occupies the south-west angle, and communicates with the adjacent angle tower. It has two large fireplaces, of 12 feet span, in the north and south walls. The former has an oven in its west jamb, an afterthought, as it projects into the adjacent room. The other had a large stone hood, of which one springing stone remains, and is buttressed by a corbel, placed in the hollow angle to receive its thrust, as at St. Briavels. The kitchen had an open, lofty roof. Next is the buttery, of two floors, with traces of a cellar below. It is 18 feet by 24 feet, and opened into the hall by three equilaterally arched doorways side by side, each towards the hall, having a deep hollow early Perpendicular moulding. These opened into a passage under the music-gallery.
The hall was about 50 feet long by 26 feet broad, with an open roof. It had, at the dais end of the south wall, a window of two lights, with a transom; the lower pair square-headed, the upper pair pointed. The whole is in a recess, with a flat segmental arch. There are said to have been two windows in the north wall, looking into the court, and here probably was the fireplace, for fireplaces and not central hearths seem to have been in fashion here. The hall door remains. It is a handsome archway with a double ogee moulding. It opened below the music-gallery, and at the other end of this passage was the entrance to the lesser gatehouse, so that there was access from the court to the gate, through a passage screened off from the occupied part of the hall. Of course, the lesser gateway was used for foot-passengers only. A passage somewhat similar crosses the lower end, not of the hall itself, but of the vaults below the hall, at Kenilworth.