Sixteen towers, including Clopton, Godsfoe, Magminot (4), and Crevequer’s Towers (2), protect the north-west face. Clopton is a hexagon; the name of Magminot is borne by four towers. The two towers bearing the name of Crevequer mark the position of the great postern, a very curious work. Passing from the north gate of the inner ward, a range of arches cross the ditch and the outer ward, and terminate abruptly in a large low pier with salient angles to the right and left. Opposite to the pier, and no doubt at one time connected with it by a drawbridge, rise a pair of circular towers (Crevequer), connected by a heavy curtain and flanked by lesser towers (Magminot) at short distances, all forming part of the enceinte of the outer ward. Towards the field the curtain has a salient angle, and from its base a covered gallery descends into the outer ditch, and there reaches St. John’s, a drum tower built in the middle of it. The gallery passes through the first story of the tower, and terminates in the counterscarp, in a circular chamber cut in the chalk, and from this chamber three tunnels radiate to different parts of the glacis, of which one formerly led to a distant postern, and another still communicates with the old spur-work, attributed to Hubert de Burgh, and converted into a modern ravelin. Two other tunnels, apparently of Edwardian date, leave the main gallery under the castle wall, and the basement floor of St. John’s contains two sally ports, opening into the bottom of the ditch. The modern access to these galleries is by a shaft sunk in the pier of the old drawbridge, but the old entrance was nearer the curtain. The French siege of 1216 was directed upon this quarter. The approaches were made from the west below the Constable’s Gate, and under cover of a trench and breastwork. While the attack was impending Sir Stephen de Pencester brought a reinforcement into the castle by the postern under Godwin’s Tower. De Burgh, taught by experience, threw up the advanced work which still, under a changed form, covers the northern end of the castle, and it was to reach this in safety that the gallery from St. John’s Tower was executed.
Fitzwilliam’s Tower (18), placed about 80 yards east of the north gate, was connected with a second postern, not unlike the last, and now connected with a caponnière. Beyond this are 19 and 20, two watch turrets, and farther on 21, Albrinci’s or Avrenches’ Tower. This contains a third postern of peculiar arrangement. It is a low, polygonal structure, placed on a shoulder on the ditch, so as to rake its continuation southward. It was reached by a covered gallery from the south gate of the inner ward, which is continued through its basement so as to open on the counterscarp of the main ditch. Connected with this gallery was Veville or Pencester’s Tower, placed upon the curtain which on this side closed the connexion between the two divisions of the outer ward. Of the remaining towers, five in number, three are called Ashford’s, and near one of them was another well. This part of the defence has been completely remodelled. The names of the several towers are those of the knights by whom they were built, or whose duty it was to defend them, for to no castle in Britain, not even to Richmond, was the practice of tenure by castle guard so extensively applied as to Dover, and very numerous and valuable were the Kentish manors so held, amounting to 230½ knight-fees, of which 115¼ were attached to the office of Constable.
The Keep.—This is a very fine example of a late Norman keep. It is very nearly square, being, at the base above the plinth, 98 feet north and south by 96 feet east and west, with a forebuilding 15 feet broad by 115 feet long, which covers the east side and the south-east angle of the main structure. The angles are capped by pilasters 19 feet broad and of 5 feet projection, which meet to form a solid angle, and, rising to the summit, become the outer faces of four square turrets. On each of the three free faces is an intermediate pilaster, 15 feet broad by 5 feet projection, which rises to the same height with the parapet, and forms a bay in its line. There is a battering plinth, 6 feet high, from which the pilasters rise, and the total height of the wall is 83 feet, and of the turrets 12 feet more, or 95 feet. The base of the keep is 373 feet above high-water mark. The top of the plinth is marked, on the face of the pilasters, by a bold cordon or roll, and there are two sets-off of 6 inches common to both walls and pilasters, one at the first and the other at the second-floor level. The walls are of unusual thickness, even for a Norman keep. That to the west, between the pilasters, is 21 feet reduced to 19 feet at the first and to 18 feet at the second floor. The north wall is 17 feet, the south 19 feet, and the east 18 feet. The cross wall, which runs north and south, and divides the building nearly equally, is 11 feet at the base, and reduced to 7 feet and 6 feet at the top story.
The main entrance is in the east face, near its north end, at the second-floor level. The forebuilding which covers it is the finest in England. It is in fair preservation, all but its roofs and part of its east wall, which are modern. As at Rochester, it is of masonry inferior to the keep, at least outside, and there is no cordon at the base of its pilasters, but it contains within more ornamental work than the keep, with which it is so intimately connected that it cannot be an addition. In the north-east and south-west angles of the keep are well-staircases remarkably commodious and well lighted. They are 14 feet 6 inches in diameter, the stairs being 6 feet 6 inches and the newel 1 foot 6 inches. They rise from the basement to the roof by 114 steps, and communicate with each floor, the two lower by lobbies, the upper and upper gallery by branching passages. From the north-east lobbies doors open into the two tiers of vaults below the upper part of the forebuilding. The extraordinary thickness of the walls is intended to allow of the construction of a very unusual number of mural chambers, of which there are altogether twenty-seven. Besides the main entrance there seems to have been one at the first-floor level, also from the forebuilding. Others have since been made, one probably in the fourteenth century, direct into the basement, and another very recently into the base of the south-western staircase. Besides these, divers loopholes have been converted into doors, to give external entrance to the basement mural chambers which are used as water-tanks and powder-magazines.
DOVER CASTLE.
DOVER KEEP.
Wyman & Sons, Gᵗ. Queen Sᵗ. London.
GENERAL REFERENCES.