The state apartments and chapel occupied the east side, and the former seem mostly to have been of two floors.
Behind the end of the hall was a large room, called the armoury, from which opened the south-east tower. Here the sub-basement is hexagonal, and was vaulted and groined. The vaulting has fallen away, but the corbels remain, and the six gables and wall-ribs. Probably this was a private store or cellar, for it has no fire or garderobe, and though the vaulting was elegant, the chamber, being at or a trifle below the water-level, must always have been damp. The upper floors were of timber.
Probably the term armoury is modern, and here were the withdrawing-rooms, to which a passage led from the north end of the dais, outside the hall. There remains a platform of masonry, which seems to have been laid to carry such a passage.
North of these rooms are traces of others, which communicated with the east tower and chapel, and were probably private apartments, with windows to the court. Under the whole was a range of cellars, below the court level, but with doors and loops ascending to it.
Next comes the chapel, 29 feet by 19 feet, having a large pointed window of three lights at the east end. The floor, of timber, covered a cellar, having a loop, rising to the court, and a door in the south wall. The eastern end has a solid raised platform for the altar, and near it a small north window. To the south is a small plain-pointed piscina, and near it a lancet door, opening by steps into a vaulted and groined mural chamber, 11 feet by 6 feet, intended as a sacristy, having two lockers, and a small window to the moat. The chapel door was in the south wall, leading from the lower private apartments. Above the sacristy is a rather larger room, having a door from the upper apartments, and a square-headed window, of two trefoiled lights, looking into the chapel; evidently the lord’s private seat, whence, unseen, he could be present at mass. There was no west door, or direct entrance from the court. The chapel seems to have had an open timber roof.
The masonry throughout the castle is excellent ashlar, the material a fine-grained, soft, but durable sandstone. There is but little ornament. There were seven main well-staircases, each terminating in an octagonal turret, serving as a head. The stairs did not ascend to the top of the turret, which was domed over, and inaccessible. The rooms are almost all furnished with fireplaces, and very many with mural garderobes which seem to have been closed with curtains, or not at all, since there are no marks of doors. Their shafts descend within the walls, and discharge into the moat below the surface. The windows generally are small, that of the chapel and of the hall are the only ones even of tolerable size, towards the moat.
The drum towers look older than their real date, their gorge-walls, general proportions and arrangement, well-staircases, and lancet and often trefoiled windows, savouring of the Edwardian period. Their hexagonal interiors, however, and the bold and simple moulding that crowns their parapets, belong to the Perpendicular style. The chimneys throughout are octagonal, well-proportioned, but plain, save the embattled moulding above. They may be later than the castle.
The three armorial shields over the great gateway represent Bodiham or Bodeham, Dalingruge, and Wardeux. The central, being that of the founder, is placed angle-wise beneath his helmet and crest. There were also three shields above the lesser gateway. One was, no doubt, Dalingruge, as before, another was Knollys, out of compliment to that commander.
The battlements generally have a plain ∧ coping, with a beaded ridge towards the field. The merlons are much broader than the embrasures, but are not pierced. The coping is not repeated in the embrasures. No well has been discovered, nor any lead piping, as at Ledes, where the castle was supplied with pure water from a spring at some little distance. On the whole, the castle, for its period, is unusually severe in its arrangements, there being scarcely any traces of luxury. It was a castle, not a manor house, nor palace.
There remains to be described a very singular feature in this castle, the approach to the great gateway. At present, a causeway of earth, about 6 feet broad, springs from the north bank of the moat, and proceeds direct, about 62 feet, towards the opposite gateway. It then stops abruptly, and its head is revetted in masonry, which, however, is modern. Opposite, 11 feet distant, the water flowing between, is an octagon of 16 feet on each face, or 40 feet diameter, rising as an island out of the moat, and revetted all round. There was evidently a shifting bridge of some kind between this octagon and the causeway. Whether this octagon carried any superstructure is uncertain, probably it had only the parapet, of which traces remain.