It was by this gateway, between the Brayz and the tilt-yard, that Queen Elizabeth made her celebrated entry. Dugdale’s drawing of 1620 seems to show a wall on the upper side of the dam, but of this there is now no visible trace. The broad and level surface of the dam was well suited for a tilt-yard and seems always to have been so employed, as was also, no doubt, the Brayz. Such exercises, being attended by numbers of armed men, were usually held at the barriers, or outside the main gate of the castle, as a precaution against a surprise. The effect of the dam was to form a sheet of water 90 yards to 100 yards across, half a mile long, 10 feet to 12 feet deep, and covering about 111 acres. Below the dam, where the valley is rather broader and the ground naturally low and marshy, a second, lower and smaller lake has been formed, the dam of which, of a slight character, may be seen along the upper side of the road from the station to the castle. This lower lake must always have been shallow, but it served to protect the great dam, to cover the south-east angle of the castle, and to guard the rear and eastern flank of the great outwork. At Ledes there was a “Stagnum Regis” below the dam of the lake, and at Caerphilly the waste water from the lake was made to cover the principal front of the castle.

There remains, finally, to be noticed the great outwork which completed the defence of the castle on the south side, and formed a noble tête-de-pont beyond the lake. It bore the name of the Brayz, possibly from “Brayda,” a suburban field or broad place.

South of the lake, a tongue of high land intervenes between it and a more or less parallel brook, which descends from Wedgnock Park, by a valley which falls into the Inchford a little below the castle. It was the point of this tongue, lying between the two valleys, that was taken advantage of for an advanced defence. The ground was scarped into a sort of large, flattened half moon, with a front of 300 yards, and covering about eight acres. Along its front is a bank about 20 feet high, and as broad at the top, and upon this are four mounds such as in later times were called “cavaliers,” and of which that at the south-west end was 40 feet diameter at the top. In front of this bank was excavated a ditch, in some parts 40 feet deep and 100 feet broad, and in parts double, and in the rear, where the work rested on the lake it was steeply scarped and guarded by a ditch about 20 feet deep, beyond which, on the edge of the lower lake, was a bank 10 to 12 feet high, so as to make it very difficult to turn the flank of the outwork and to enter it from the rear. Near the middle of this outwork was the entrance to the castle from the south. Its position is marked by two bold drum bastions in ashlar, 25 feet diameter, and 40 feet apart. They rise out of the ditch from a plain plinth to the height of 14 feet, and so high are solid. Their superstructure is gone. There was, no doubt, a drawbridge here, and the road may be traced across the outwork to the Floodgate Tower. Here stood the southern of the four gatehouses mentioned at Elizabeth’s visit, and by this she made her entrance. A little west of the Brayz is a quarry, which probably supplied some of the materials for the castle.

In advance of the Brayz, between it and the Wedgnock brook, are traces of a light bank and ditch, or perhaps two ditches, with flanking bastions of earth, intended to check the advance of an enemy from that side. The lines cross the road, and are protected by the brook, which flows below and in their front. This road—the main approach from Warwick and the south—leads direct up to the Brayz entrance, whence it makes a sharp turn to the right and skirts the counterscarp of the ditch, so as to be completely commanded from the ramparts.

It would add much to the appearance of the castle, and bring some of its most remarkable features prominently into view, if the owner would make an entrance for visitors at the Brayz gate, and allow them to approach the castle along the dam through Mortimer’s Tower.

The history of the construction of Kenilworth is written with tolerable clearness in its earthworks and walls. The English founder probably placed his residence upon what became the inner ward; he there fenced himself in, as was the manner of his nation, with banks and ditches, and walls either of dry stone or timber, taking the highest ground, and quartering his herds and herdsmen lower down, nearer to the meadows and the marshes in what is now the outer ward. Whether he found it necessary to cut the northern ditch to its full depth is uncertain; probably not, for its faces are sharp for so remote a period. Some ditch, however, there must have been, as without it the other works would be of little use. It may be also that there was then dug an inner ditch upon the north and east faces, as these were necessary to complete the security of the inner ward, and of one at least of them there are traces.

There is no mention of Kenilworth as a lordship until it was granted by Henry I. to Geoffrey de Clinton, who is the reputed founder of Clinton’s Tower or the keep; but this is more probably the work of his son, another Geoffrey, between 1170 and 1180, soon after which the estate fell to the Crown. Lunn’s Tower was probably the work of King John, about 1200; and the original curtain of the two wards seems to have ranged between the two dates. If the northern ditch of the outer work was not previously dug, it must have been dug, or at any rate deepened, at this period; and this applies also to the northern and eastern ditches, which seem to have covered the corresponding faces of the inner ward.