The first or state floor was about 30 feet high, fairly lighted, and contained various mural chambers. In the centre of the west side was the entrance from without, and in each of the other three sides a window. These were of two lights, or rather composed of two tall, narrow, round-headed windows, coupled under one round head outside and a similar recess inside. These recesses commenced about a foot above the floor level, and are 4 feet 4 inches wide and to the springing about 12 feet high. Their sides are parallel, not convergent, and each contained four steps ascending towards the window. There are no mouldings or decorations, but the quoins are ashlar. The window, arches, imposts, and jambs are plain and good. The central window piers or mullions are gone, but in two cases the small head arches remain. In the third case, that in the east face, the window has been removed and replaced by one in brick, but the recess is untouched.
The entrance is 3 feet 4 inches broad, 9 feet high, and about 14 feet from the ground. It is lined with good ashlar; but with a barrel-vault, round-headed, in rubble. The outer portal occupies the whole breadth of the central pilaster, being about 5 feet wide. It is very slightly, but decidedly, pointed. There is no portcullis groove, and but one, an outer, door, well strengthened by bar holes. Below the springing are two small holes, now stopped, for an iron bar, rather low for a centring, and possibly connected with a light drawbridge. The door is in the centre of the west face, as is the opposite window of the east face; but the north window is at the west end of its face, about 3 feet from the corner, and the south window is placed diagonal to it at a similar distance from the south-east corner. The three windows were all of one pattern.
Besides these openings, there are at the same level three mural chambers and a staircase. The principal chamber occupies the south-west angle, and is in plan a right angle with two limbs, like the capital letter L. That in the west wall is 5 feet 6 inches broad by 14 feet long; that in the south wall, 4 feet 10 inches broad by 23 feet long; but as each is measured over the breadth of the other, the total length of the chamber measured on the outer wall is 37 feet and measured along the inner wall only 26 feet 8 inches. The chamber is partly lined with chalk ashlar and partly with rubble, and the vault, barrel and round-headed, is of rubble. The vault springs from a plain Norman abacus. The height to the springing is about 7 feet. The outer wall of this chamber has been lined throughout with an arcade, originally of ten arches, of which six remain quite perfect, and of most of the others there are traces. The arcade is of late Norman work, the piers delicate, the caps very highly carved, the arches round-headed. The whole is recessed in the wall, reaches to the springing of the vault, and rests upon a low plinth or dado. There is a loop in the west wall near the north end of the chamber and another in its south end in the south wall. There is also a third and longer and lower loop at the other end of the south limb, close to, and on the right of, the priest as he stood before the altar, the place of which at the east end is marked by a bench or step in the wall. One original door was in the west limb, close to the main entrance. In King’s time it was perfect, and was round-headed, 2 feet 4 inches wide and 7 feet 7 inches high, but it has since been broken away. There is a larger, rude opening in the south limb, which may represent the place of another door. That this singular and highly-ornate chamber was originally an oratory is evident, both from the care bestowed upon it, from the traces of an altar in the east wall, and from the window next the altar.
In Tudor times, the south wall was breached, and a clumsy, flat-topped window of three lights inserted, for which much of the arcade has been cut away; and a rude wall with a door in it has been built across the south limb, probably to convert the oratory into two sleeping places. Upon the chalk ashlar of this chamber have been carved a considerable number of rude representations, apparently the work of one period. Some are simply incised, others carved in relief. There is one very evident Crucifixion, with a soldier piercing our Lord’s side, the disciples attending, and something like a veiled female figure about to faint. There is also a St. Christopher; a bishop recumbent beneath a crown; and other figures, both ecclesiastic and military. They are evidently the work of persons confined in this apartment, and as they are rude, illiterate, and without any trace of heraldic emblems, they are probably the work of common gaol prisoners, and are likely enough to be of the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the prison was over-crowded and every available space sure to have been employed. There was, of course, a larger chapel in the lower ward, not to mention the parish church of St. Mary, hard by. These carvings have been engraved, but not with the necessary correctness. It speaks little for the public spirit of Guildford that they are not photographed.
On the other or north side of the main entrance, also in the west wall, is a second mural chamber, entered by a narrow, round-headed, original door, 2 feet 4 inches broad by 7 feet 7 inches high, quite plain, of ashlar. This chamber has a rude, round-headed barrel vault, and is 9 feet 2 inches long by 5 feet 1 inch broad. There is one loop in the west wall. The walls are rubble, but the internal jamb of the door, being of chalk ashlar, bears some carvings in the style of those described above.
The third chamber is in the north wall, at its east end. Its door and much of its inner wall and floor have been removed to allow of the insertion of a fireplace and chimney-shaft, but enough remains to show that the chamber was 14 feet long by 3 feet 2 inches broad, and had a loop in the north wall. The eastern third of this chamber is uninjured. A depression in the floor, quite at the east end, looks as though it had been a garderobe for the state floor, and this idea is strengthened by the quoining and ashlar-work about the angles at that end. Brayley prolongs this chamber at a right angle into the east wall. This is a pure fiction. The quoining of the end shows that there was nothing further, and the groove in the wall is only meant to support the ends of the boards upon which the vault was turned. The fireplace, close west of this chamber, of which the flue remains, is an insertion. The position of the mural chamber and of the window shows, however, that there may have been an original fireplace here.
There remains to be mentioned the well-stair, which occupies the north-west angle of the keep, commencing at the first-floor level and ascending to the roof. This stair does not communicate directly with the main chamber, but opens by a small, round-headed door in the jamb of the adjacent north window, where three steps in a short, narrow passage lead up into the base of the well-stair. The stairs are gone, but the cylinder of the well-stair, 8 feet diameter, remains. As high as the second floor it is lined with excellent chalk ashlar, and lighted by two loops on the west side. A door and passage, similar to that below, ascends by four steps into a recess, not a window, in the north wall of the upper floor. This side door is pointed, but this seems the effect of modern cobbling. It should further be mentioned that the four hollow angles of the first or state floor are quoined with chalk ashlar. The floor rested on no set-off, the walls being of the thickness of the basement.
The second, or upper floor was about 15 feet high. There is a set-off at the floor level, reducing the east and west walls by about 2 feet. In this floor are four windows in broad recesses. Those on the west and east and south faces are central. The fourth window is towards the east end of the north wall, the centre of that side being occupied by a fireplace much modernised, but which the displacement of the window shows to be original. In the south wall, close to the south-east angle, a door leads into a small mural garderobe, with two vents corbelled out over the exterior wall and a loop above them. With this exception, there are no mural chambers on this floor, which is singular, seeing that the wall is quite thick enough to carry them. There is, however, in the west wall, near its north end, one jamb of a walled-up door, which may have been meant to communicate with the stair or with a mural chamber. It seems never to have been completed. The four angles of this room are quoined in chalk ashlar, as in the room below, and the window recesses had, and one still has, round-headed arches. This floor is very inaccessible, but was reached by a ladder when these remarks upon it were recorded. The walls are evidently, in the main, original, though much pulled about by the Carter family when they lived here. The recesses also are original, but the windows themselves are cut-brick insertions of two lights, arched.
It will be observed that the eastern wall, though very thick, is pierced by no galleries, and, with the exception of two windows, is absolutely solid from base to summit. Probably the object was, by placing this mass of firm masonry on the solid ground, to give support to the other three sides, and thus prevent them from sliding down the slope of the mound, as was the case with some much lighter and later buildings in a similar position at Cardiff.
It has been stated that the keep stands upon the south-eastern slope of the mound, consequently there is to the west, and in front of its entrance, nearly the whole table summit. This was enclosed by a circular wall, like a shell-keep, about 25 feet high, which, springing from the south-eastern angle of the keep, seems to have been carried round the mound, commencing at about half its height, until it reached the north-east angle of the keep, at which junction there seems to have been a gateway. Of this circular wall about one-half, either actual or in foundations, remains. The fragment of wall, about 5 feet thick and 20 feet high, is evidently of the date of the keep, the same thin red tiles being used in its chalk masonry. Also in this wall is an original garderobe, apparently of three stages: one at the ward level, one half-way up, and one on the battlements; the three seem to have united in a common shaft, the vent of which is seen outside the base of the wall.