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

by George Thomas Clark

The space thus enclosed by the keep and the circular curtain was the inner ward. How the main door of the keep was reached does not appear. There was not the usual fore-building, as at Norwich or Rochester; the circumscribing wall and the lofty position of the keep rendered this unnecessary. A row of small holes at the door level may have belonged to a sort of timber landing, to be reached by a flight of steps of the same material. There is said to have been a well in this ward, about 6 feet from the west wall of the keep, south of the door.

There remain two wards to be described. The line of the enceinte of the castle seems to have been much as follows: Commencing at the angle of Castle Street and Quarry Street, where the site of the present “King’s Head” inn was probably marked by a tower, the west front took the line of Quarry Street, past the great gateway, to the tower containing a postern, which still marks the south-west angle of the enclosure. Thence the wall passed east till it reached the boundary of the extra-parochial ground, whence, in the line of that boundary, it probably took the curve of the counterscarp of the main ditch, in the direction of the Bowling Green Cottages. There, on the platform at the end of the causeway, was no doubt a barbican covering the direct approach to the keep. Thence the wall seems to have been continued along the line of the ditch, shown by the curve of Castle Street, until it again reached Quarry Street, thus enclosing what corresponds tolerably well to the area of the castle at the sale of 1612, which is described as 5 acres, 3 roods, 10 perches; or nearly six acres. Of this area, the part north of the great gateway was shut off by a curtain, parts of which remain, and which seems to have run up the mound to the enceinte of the inner ward. In this, the middle ward, stood the hall and principal buildings, as is clear from the considerable, though fragmentary, Norman walls still to be seen, two of which, forming two sides of a large chamber, are very perfect, and one is pierced by a very perfect Norman window recess and loop.

GUILDFORD CASTLE.

What stood in the area south of the gateway, into which the postern led, is not known. It long contained the gardens of the governor of the gaol, when the castle was employed for that ignoble use, and in it is the celebrated well connected with the caverns.

The great gate in Quarry Street, though large, is at present a mere opening, perhaps of the age of Henry III., in an older, and probably Norman, curtain. Whether it was connected with the gatehouse is uncertain, but there is, as already stated, an indication in the masonry that such was the case. Also the portcullis groove is large, and so heavy a grate could not have been worked without a chamber above carrying a winch. Outside the gate are two buttresses, which have a late Norman aspect. One is nearly perfect, the other has been replaced in brick, but probably upon the old base. The south-west angle of the Quarry Street front is marked by the not inconsiderable remains of the postern tower, adjacent wall, and a large buttress, all pretty clearly late Norman. Towards the north and east the walls are entirely removed, but in these quarters the line of the ditch affords a clue to the original boundary. The enceinte thus laid down measures about 535 yards; its greatest north and south diameter, 170 yards; and east and west, 140 yards. The Quarry Street front is straight and 138 yards long, with the gate nearly in the middle. From the postern tower to the end of the keep causeway is 213 yards, and thence to the “King’s Head” angle, 184 yards.

Captain James has detected traces of a line of wall parallel to, and about 30 yards south of, the High Street, which may not improbably have been the boundary of an enclosed area appended to the castle, as may the extra-parochial lands on the east and south-east, but the actually defended area of the castle seems to have been as above described.

It may further be observed that Quarry Street, which runs along the foot of the west wall of the castle and lay between it and the river, seems to have been defended on that side by the low cliff and talus already mentioned, supported probably by the retaining wall, of which traces and the jamb of a gate remain; while there is a tradition of a gate crossing the street near the postern of the castle, which probably guarded the approach to the town from the south, the only quarter from which a hostile approach would be apprehended.

Not only are the remains of the domestic buildings of a late Norman character, but among the repairs of the hall, in the reign of Henry III., two of the piers are mentioned as out of the perpendicular, a tolerably conclusive evidence that the hall resembled Oakham and Leicester and was of Norman date. Altogether, it is sufficiently evident that the whole area of the castle was enclosed by its original founder, and is not later than the middle of the twelfth century, the detached fragments of walls and buildings being in substance of the same date with the keep. The castle is in St. Mary’s parish, bordered on the north-east by Trinity and on the east by the extra-parochial plot, the origin of which is not known. Probably the enceinte took in the whole of the residence of the royal Saxon owners.

Those who have supposed that the enceinte of the castle extended to the present High Street have regarded the two well-known crypts remaining there as proofs of this extent. One of these, on the south side, the writer has not been able to visit; but the other, exactly opposite the former, and about 160 yards from the keep, he has examined, and it is said that the two are of the same age and dimensions and very nearly alike.