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

by George Thomas Clark

The first floor is 20 feet in diameter, and its walls about 8 feet 6 inches thick; its floor rested on two large parallel beams laid north-west and south-east. To the north-east and south-west are large window recesses, 4 feet 6 inches broad, with drop chamfered arches, and having stone seats. In each was a window of one light, about 2 feet opening, with an equilateral arch, and chamfered edges. In the south jamb of the south-west window is a door, the termination of the staircase, vaulted, and lighted by two external loops, and which has been already mentioned as rising from the basement floor. In the north-west wall is a large fireplace, with a bold flat stone hood dying into the wall above, beneath a bold bead moulding, and below resting upon two short columns with bell caps of a stiff early English character. The columns are cut away below, and in fact form corbels. On either side is a rude circular corbel, either to hold a light, or as at St. Briavel’s, to support the lateral thrust of the hood. This floor is 18 feet high. It was the state-room.

The staircase leading to the second floor, after ascending in the curve of the wall a few steps, terminates in a well staircase 6 feet in diameter, which continues the ascent to the second floor, and passes on to the battlements, as at Chepstow, Carlisle, Ludlow, and Newcastle. The staircase opens into the first floor by the intervention of a small recess or lobby in the thickness of the wall, where a door, now broken, opens into the main chamber.

The second floor was also 18 feet high, and had two windows under drop arches, about 2 feet broad and 5 feet high, with equilateral arched heads, closely resembling those below. One opens to the south-east and one to the north-west. The latter has over its outer opening an angular drip, or hood, or pediment, like that over the great entrance below. Here also is a fireplace, and exactly above that in the lower room, and similar to it, only the jambs are rather shorter. The hearth-stone was supported upon a kind of bressummer, formed by a table projecting about 18 inches from the wall below, and appearing as a carved moulding in the lower room. There is a set-off of about 6 inches at this level, to support the floor.

Following the staircase, the third floor is entered by a lobby similar to the one below. The stair is lighted by loops, those near the bottom being flat-topped, those above lancet-pointed. There is one long loop divided by a transom, which forms a part of the set-off on the outside. The third floor has no fireplace, but it has two windows, similar to the others, opening north-east and south-west. The roof seems to have rested upon one main beam, stiffened by spars at either end, the supports of which remain in the shape of two stout plain stone corbels. Thus stiffened, the platform above would have carried an engine of almost any weight. The wall is about 8 feet 6 inches thick at the summit; its thickness above the cordon is, in fact, uniform. To give greater strength to the masonry along the course of the staircase and about the lobbies, the wall is thickened internally by a sort of pilaster, the sharp edge of which remains.

Tretower is a rare, probably a solitary, example of a rectangular Norman keep, which has been gutted, and its central part occupied by an early English round tower. The space between the tower and the keep walls was then roofed in, probably in two floors. The alterations in the exterior Norman wall, blocking up the doors and windows, &c., were probably made when the inner tower was built.

The material of the keep is a hard variety of old red sandstone. The workmanship is good coursed rubble plastered within. The door and window quoins and the fireplaces are of ashlar, well worked, though plain, as is the whole building. The arches of the doors and window recesses are drop. Those of the windows are equilateral, and many of the loops lancet. The inner tower is wholly of one date, apparently late in the early English period.

It is said that Tretower was a residence of the Welsh Lords of Brecknock before the Norman era. If so, they were attracted by the dry gravel tump, covered on three sides by a morass. The Norman occupants seem to have constructed a square tower or keep on the knoll, having, on one side, a base-court, probably also walled in. Late in the reign of Henry III., the Norman keep was gutted, and a central stone tower built, and the triangular base-court enclosed by a curtain and mural towers.

CRICKHOWEL CASTLE.

This castle stands in the suburb of the town of Crickhowel, between it and the Usk, on the left bank of that river, and about a furlong from the parish church.

Its principal and most interesting feature is a large conical mound, wholly artificial, about 50 feet high, and on its table top 60 feet diameter north and south, and 50 feet east and west. This mound has been surrounded by a ditch, traces of which remain on the east, south, and west sides. Towards the north it is encroached upon by a pond and some cottages. Appended to the mound, on its east side, and outside of its ditch, is an enclosure of irregular shape, roughly rectangular, but rounded towards the north-west, and including about two acres. It is contained within a low bank, the exterior slope of which has been scarped, and seems to have descended into an exterior ditch. This was the base-court or ward of the castle, the mound being the keep. On the south face of this ward, where the bank would have abutted upon the ditch of the mound, are the remains of two conjoined towers, one rectangular and one round. The loop-like windows of the former are evidently of Decorated date, and the two towers seem of the same age. Upon the north-east corner of the ward, on the counterscarp of the ditch of the mound is part of a round tower, which, with some heaps of earth about it, seems to be the remains of the gatehouse of the keep, which also was probably connected with a protected staircase ascending the mound, the way up which must have been on this side. These are the only buildings actually remaining upon the enceinte of the ward, but it is evident that a wall was carried round its edge, of which the bank probably contains and conceals the foundation. Buck’s drawing, taken in 1741, shows this curtain, and upon its three angles three drum towers, of which one covered the outer entrance, and is opposite to the gatehouse of the keep. The summit of the mound is much broken up, and there are traces of the foundations of buildings which formerly stood here, and which seem to have been contained within a circular or polygonal shell which formed the keep.