The kitchen, wholly of Decorated date, is a large rectangular building, placed against the wall of the inner ward, but free on the other three sides. It has two large windows to the east, and an excellent door in the north wall opposite to the hall staircase. The flagging of the floor remains, and parts of the large fireplace on the west side, with a couple of small side ovens. It has had divers Perpendicular additions. The back kitchen was to the west, and it is probable that a breach in the adjacent wall of the inner ward represents a late doorway, communicating with the well and the great oven.
The Gatehouse is approached from the middle ward by a bridge over the ditch, of which the inner end was broken by a drawbridge, flanked by walls with loops. The gateway has a low-pointed arch, on a tablet above which are the arms of Elizabeth and those of Sir Henry Sydney, with the date 1581. As the curtain is 7 feet thick, and bonded into the keep, it is evidently original, and the door fittings are an insertion. There is no portcullis. The entrance door opened into a passage, having the porter’s prison and the entrance to the keep on the left, and on the right the gatehouse chambers. The building is of the age of Elizabeth, and very inferior to the older work. Probably the original entrance was by a mere archway in the curtain, as at Kenilworth and Bridgenorth.
The Chapel, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen, is the most remarkable part of the castle. It stands out in the centre of the middle ward, between the gatehouse and the hall. All of it that remains is the circular nave. This is 28 feet in interior diameter, with walls 4 feet thick. It has an entrance door to the west, and a large chancel arch to the east. The rest of the interior is occupied by a mural arcade of fourteen arches, seven on a side, resting on a low stone bench. The arches are alternately chevron moulded and beaded, the capitals cushion-shaped and roughly ornamented. Above the arcade was a timber gallery resting upon twelve corbels, of which one is decided Norman and one early English. Light was admitted by three windows, to the west, north, and south. That over the door was round-headed, with plain flanking detached shafts, and round the head a chevron and double billet moulding. Outside, these windows rest upon a billeted string, the flanking shafts are engaged, with small plain caps and bases, and the ring-stones, of considerable breadth, rest upon an abacus, and are worked in chevron and billet mouldings. The north and south windows are quite plain.
The west door is a fine example of enriched late Norman work. Outside, it stands in a double recess, having detached nooked flanking shafts, two on each side, with fluted capitals, and the semi-circular spaces above the flutes are covered with a small indented pattern, a sort of hollow nail-head. Of the four, all the caps and one shaft remain. The actual doorway has plain, square jambs. Above, a bold, simple abacus, the under chamfer of which is hollow, has the face carved with the rudimentary dog-tooth ornament. Over the door is a deep chevron moulding. The next ring, over the inner shafts, has a bold beading, and the outer, and much the broadest ring, has a chevron moulding reduplicated, and above it a double billeted drip.
The chancel arch is large, round-headed, and of three ribs, beneath a double billet moulding. The style of ornamentation resembles generally that of the west door. On the west face are two nook shafts on each side, and in addition two half shafts are placed as pilasters in the actual archway supporting the middle rib. This arch and that of the door have become slightly flattened by settlement, as is shown by the gaping of the soffit joints near the crown. The east face of this arch is quite plain, save that the abacus is returned. The original chancel, 42 feet long, had a high-pitched roof, and there is a mark of a second and later one less steep. The side walls are gone. The curtain formed the east wall, and has no window. Outside, the nave is divided into two stages by a billeted string, on which the windows rest, and which is considerably above the top of the door. Above is a plain battlement of no projection, with embrasures one-half the breadth of the merlons.
Two arches of the nave arcade have been pierced for Tudor windows, and a third, to the north, has been converted into a doorway. The north window has also been made a doorway, and it is evident that a light gallery of two stages was laid from the domestic apartments to the chapel, the upper one opening on the circular gallery. The original way to this circular gallery must have been by a wooden stair within the building. The chancel was standing in the reign of Charles II., and had two Tudor windows in its north wall and windows in the roof, also the nave had a saddleback roof, of which the gables were east and west. The material of the chapel is coursed rubble. South-west of the chapel was, in Elizabeth’s time, a fountain. This chapel is, with great probability, attributed to Jocelyn de Dinan in the reign of Henry I. (1100–1135), the Temple Church, which it resembles, dating from 1127.
The Outer Ward.—The gatehouse has been much altered and mutilated. In front it presents the appearance of a gateway, with a low-pointed arch, in a curtain about 6 feet thick and 35 feet high, of which the merlons are pierced by plain loops. On each side the gate is a flanking wall, 3 feet thick, and projecting 8 feet, which, no doubt, covered the drawbridge. The arch looks Decorated, as is probably the curtain, though the battlements are probably modern. The ditch has been filled up, and large trees grow along its course. The only buildings in this ward are placed against the curtain, and have already been noticed.
There is no evidence, material or by record, of any castle here before the Norman Conquest. The “low” or mound known to have been removed from the churchyard, and the memory of which is preserved in the name of the town, is the only ancient earthwork connected with the place, and was, no doubt, sepulchral. The original Norman castle seems to have stood on the present lines. It was composed of a keep, placed close to the entrance, and forming a part of the enceinte. Westward, the keep was connected by a short curtain with the south-west or bakehouse tower, rectangular, of moderate size, and having its inner face or gorge open. From thence the curtain passed at right angles northwards along the edge of the rock to a second tower, also rectangular, and containing a postern. From thence, still along the edge of the rock, the curtain, probably 25 feet high, reached the north-west angle, where it was capped by a tower nearly rectangular, but placed diagonally, so as to cap the angle, and which was open in the rear. Thence the curtain passed eastwards, along the north front, to the north-east angle, where was a tower, square, or nearly so. No doubt the Norman domestic buildings were placed upon this curtain, and probably there was a central tower on the wall near the present garderobe tower. From the north-east tower to the keep was the curved curtain, probably then, as now, free from buildings, and outside of this a ditch, still remaining, and extending from cliff to cliff. Of this original castle there at present remain the keep, the bakehouse and postern towers, the base of the buttery, and much of the north-eastern tower, and more or less of the curtain.
Later in the Norman period certain changes were made. The keep was raised and enlarged, the curtain forming the inner ward was built, and probably the well was sunk, and in the middle ward the chapel was built. The outer ward may have been part of the original design, or it may have been a late Norman addition; that it was not of later date than this is shown by the square mural tower. All the rest, curtain, gatehouse, and Mortimer Tower are later.
The next changes were in the Decorated period, when very important alterations were made in the older parts, amounting almost to a reconstruction of the fortress. Very early in the period, perhaps before it, the north door and window of the basement of the keep were inserted, the vault turned, and probably the gateway remodelled. At a later date, but still early in the Decorated period, the hall, buttery, and domestic apartments were built along the north front and the kitchen.