A second chamber, 8 feet by 9 feet, also vaulted, is placed in the north wall, and is entered by a small and much mutilated doorway and a short oblique passage. This chamber has a loop towards the ditch, and a garderobe, the outlet from which seems to join that from the dungeon.
The staircase is contained within the wall at the south angle of the chamber, and is lighted by two loops from the inner ward. It is entered from the kitchen by a small door opening into a straight passage, whence the well-staircase rises. This leads to both the first and second floor, and has a stone hand-rail carved in the wall. It is 2 feet 6 inches radius.
There remains only in the basement to be mentioned the Porter’s Lodge. [[B. Fig. a.]] It is composed of a couple of cells, at present occupied by the keeper of the castle. The outer cell is entered by a small door very near to the passage between the outer and inner ward. The hollow angle formed by the junction of the cross wall with the keep is crossed by a squint, or oblique arch, which supports a bartizan turret above, and affords a sort of hood over the door. The outer cell, vaulted, measures 12 feet by 9 feet. One angle is filled up. There is a small two-light window towards the inner ward. From this cell a door opens into an inner cell, 7 feet by 8 feet, also vaulted, and with a small window or sort of loop, now broken down, which is formed in the south-east wall, and seems to have opened beneath the first arch of the bridge which carried the ascending road from the outer ward to the level of the first floor of the keep.
The first or main floor of the keep presents its chief peculiarities. [[B. Fig. b.]] It is, or was, a rectangular chamber 24 feet 6 inches by 31 feet, and 19 feet high to the boarded floor of the room above. The north-west end, which is tolerably perfect, is wholly occupied by a segmental arched recess with a handsome moulding. It is 2 feet 9 inches deep, and contains a sort of table or shelf 2 feet high and of 1 foot projection, the upper part of which is hollowed into a narrow trough, as though for animals to drink from, had it been a little broader. It is much broken, so it does not appear whether it was provided with a feed-pipe and drain. What it was intended for it is difficult even to guess. The wall is broken, and within it is seen the flue from the kitchen fireplace below. Above, a weather-moulding in the wall shows that at some time there was a low-pitched roof.
Of the adjacent north-east side only about 12 feet remains. It is chiefly occupied by a large fireplace, 7 feet broad by 4 feet deep. It was flat-topped and quite plain. The wall has been broken down and the flue is disclosed. Next south of this is the jamb of a bold arched recess which runs through the wall, 14 feet deep, and must have contained a large window opening over the ditch.
With the eastern angle is also gone the south-eastern side. Much of this must have been occupied by a large doorway, of which the south-west jamb remains, and its external and internal mouldings, in the Decorated style and of a very elaborate character. The wall was 10 feet 6 inches thick, and in its centre, half-way between the two moulded arches, is a rectangular portcullis groove. It is evident that this was a regular gateway, fortified in the usual manner, and, as what remains of the arch shows, of a large size.
The south-west wall, which is tolerably perfect, contains at its north end a door of the same size as that just described, saving that there is no portcullis, which, this being the inner gate, was not needed. The wall is here 11 feet thick, giving a very deep recess 10 feet broad, in which the doorway was placed. It is panelled and 15 feet high to the arch crown; the recess narrows to 7 feet 6 inches width, which was that of the doorway. The doorway is richly moulded, and the mouldings are continued down to the cill, showing that it was a door, and not, as some suppose, a window. There was, however, tracery in the head, of which a fragment remains, but not enough to show the pattern. In the jambs are a set of stanchion-holes, too large for the rods by which window-glass was usually supported, and which are evidently the remains of the bars inserted when the keep was used as a prison. The outermost hollow of the mouldings contains a band of delicate ball-flowers. There is also a handsome drip supported by two heads as corbels.
Outside the doorway, in the wall on either hand, are two square grooves 7 inches broad and about 6 inches deep, and 11 feet apart. They commence at the stringcourse, which corresponds with the cill of the doorway, and are 6 feet high. Above this, 10 feet 6 inches from the stringcourse, and 12 feet apart, are two similar grooves, 7 feet 6 inches long, and which, therefore, reach a little above the level of the top of the doorway arch. It is evident that these two pair of grooves were connected with the drawbridge, the lower pair probably receiving the ends of the parapet rail, and the upper the struts supporting the beams of the bridge.
Next to this door recess, in the inside of the chamber, is a small plain fireplace, placed in a tall pointed recess, like a doorway, and beyond this again is a lower recess, but broader, and also pointed, in which is a plain, square-headed window, 4 feet high by 1 foot broad, looking towards the inner ward. In the jamb of the recess is a side door, leading by a short passage into the well staircase from the kitchen, which also, at this level, has a loop towards the inner ward.
The floor of this chamber at present rises about 2 feet, or 1 in 26, from the outer to the inner gate. This, however, may be a modern arrangement, intended to carry off the water from the asphalt with which the floor has been paved.