The north crypt, beneath the Angel Hotel, is a rectangular chamber, 31 feet north and south, by 19 feet east and west, and divided into two aisles and six bays by two central piers. The piers are plain cylinders, 18 inches diameter and 5 feet 6 inches high. The bases are now concealed; the piers are without caps and quite plain. The roof is vaulted, and 10 feet 3 inches from the floor to the cornice, groined and ribbed. The arches are drop and pointed, the ribs chamfered and springing from carved corbels in the wall. At the south end of each aisle is a window recess, converging and rising to a loop at the street level. The entrance is by a narrow drop-arched door, opening from a rising passage, vaulted, with hanging ribs. This opens into a small chamber, north of, and 4 or 5 feet above, the vault, whence another narrow door probably led up to the ground level. The date of the crypt seems to be of the thirteenth century, and it is quite clear that it never was prolonged southwards towards the other crypt, and was always and only lighted, as now, from the street level. In all probability this was the cellar of some considerable hostel, situate, as now, in the High Street, which, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as now, was probably the main thoroughfare of the town.
In the immediate neighbourhood of the castle, and, indeed, running under the southern edge of its enceinte, are the celebrated caverns which have recently been explored, and for the first time correctly planned by Capt. James, whose excellent account of them is well known. These caverns are excavated in the chalk, which forms a cliff south of the town, and from the base of which they are entered. The chalk here dips northerly, at about ten degrees, and the hardest bed and the most suitable for building purposes lies at the base of the cliff and is about 6 or 7 feet thick. This bed has been largely quarried by open “patching” in the broken ground south of the cliff, which, indeed, is apparently artificial, and produced by these excavations, and it was only when the bed became too deep for that mode of working that the quarrymen had recourse to mining operations. These later works are, in general plan, composed of a gallery parallel to, and a few feet within, the face of the cliff, from which, at a right angle, eight parallel stalls are carried north-eastwards. The extreme points of the excavation are a little over 55 yards north-west and south-east, by 32 yards north-east and south-west; but the area actually excavated is only about 1,150 yards, and the cubical contents about 2,330 yards. The plan alone would show that they were opened for quarries. But, besides this, although much solid chalk has been removed, the excavation is nearly choked up with the immense quantity of “small” produced by unskilful working, and through which narrow paths are left to get at the face of the work. It is evident that this is not débris brought in, nor caused by the fall of the roof, which is remarkably sound. It is simply broken chalk which has been thrown back as the miners proceeded, and remains undisturbed. The character and presence of this rubbish not only shows that the excavation was a quarry, but that it never was used for anything else, neither as a granary, nor a cellar, nor for human habitation, for nowhere has it been cleared away so as to set any part of the cavities free for such purposes.
Nearly in the deepest part of the working, about 60 feet below the surface, the caverns have been pierced by a well, sunk, it is said, in the garden of the governor of the old gaol. This well has been carried through the caverns, if to water, probably to a depth of another hundred feet, but it has subsequently been covered over with plank, at the level of the cavern floor, and so now remains. The pipe of the well above is very rugged, as though sunk by unskilled workmen—perhaps convicts,—and is stained, as though used as a cesspool. Also, for many yards around, the rubbish, elsewhere of pure white, is dark and foul, as though, failing to reach water, or afterwards disused for that purpose, the well had been employed as a receptacle for all the filth of the prison.
As to the age of these quarries, it is not easy to form a sound opinion. They have been supposed to be British, and various uses have been found for them, quite at variance with the appearances they present. The only argument for such an origin has been overlooked. The town is in Woking hundred, and Woking, like Wokey in Mendip, may be a corruption of the British “Ogof” (fovea), a cave. But Woking was never the name of the town, and the material evidence of the caverns does not favour this theory. They are certainly not British: the plan of the workings excludes this view. No doubt they might be Roman, but there are no traces of Roman buildings in the neighbourhood, and chalk, even hard chalk, is too plentiful all along the ridge to be carried hence to any great distance. The most probable supposition seems to me to be that they were opened by the builders of the Norman castle, who used chalk largely for their inner, and, indeed, for much of their more exposed, work. The quarries have no communication with any part of the castle. Where they infringe upon its borders, they are far too deep to have been employed against it during a mediæval siege.
HARLECH CASTLE, MERIONETH.
DESCRIPTION.
THE Castle of Harlech occupies a bold and rugged headland of rock which juts forward upon the coast-line of Merioneth over the broad alluvial plain known as Morfa Harlech, near to its southern and narrower extremity. Six centuries back, when the Traeth was an estuary, and the waves may have washed the foot of the rock, Harlech, as now Criccaieth, was probably accessible by water,—a circumstance likely to have governed its founder in his selection of the site. Although scarcely 200 feet above the sea level, and connected with a much higher background, the rock of Harlech is nevertheless a very striking object, and by the extreme boldness of its outline and its almost isolated position does justice to its very significant appellation. It commands one of the most remarkable prospects in Britain. Before it is the Bay of Caernarvon with its vast sweep of sandy shore, contained on the right by Snowdon and its subordinate peaks; whence the high land, after rising into the elevations of Carn Madryn, Carn Bodfuan, and Yr Eifl, gradually subsides into the Bay of Aberdaron and the Sound and Isle of Bardsey. Caernarvon and Conway are fortresses more ornate in character and of larger area; but they are not equal to Harlech in natural strength and in grandeur of position; nor is, in these respects, Beaumaris itself, though placed in the very eye of the Snowdon group, by any means its superior.
Harlech is a concentric castle of the Edwardian type, and of that type a simple and excellent example. It is composed of a central four-sided ward contained within four lofty curtains, and capped at each angle by a drum-tower of three-quarter projection. In the centre of the landward or eastern side is the great gatehouse; opposite to which, built against the curtain, are the remains of the hall and domestic buildings; and contiguous to them, against the north side, is the chapel.
The main or Inner Ward, thus composed and occupied, stands within the second or middle ward, which resembles it generally in plan, save that the four corners are not symmetrical, one being merely rounded, two others capped by more or less of three-quarter bastions, and the fourth rounded on one face and fashioned as a bastion on the other. In the centre of the south side is a half-round smaller bastion, corbelled out from the retaining wall below; and in the centre of the north side are two others, also small, between which is the postern of this middle ward. In the east face, opposite the great gatehouse, are two “tourelles,” or round bartizan turrets, corbelled out from the wall; and parts of a small low gatehouse, which contained the outer gate.