The exterior of the keep has suffered so much that hardly any detail is left, nearly all the facing stone having disappeared. The most perfect side is that towards the gorge, difficult of access (Fig. 10). From it, however, we learn that the building consisted of a plain mass of ashlar work broken at the angles and the middle of each side by a shallow projecting pier. Each corner of the building has a small circular shaft with cap and base of the ordinary Norman type. The window openings must have been narrow, as was usually the case, and probably of very simple detail, matching that of the doorway and the shoot of the garde-robe. At the parapet level there were probably four turrets rising from the angle buttresses, but all traces of them have gone. Indeed all that can be gathered of the external appearance is that it was of the usual severe type and that the detail was of the simplest.
While castles and their keeps were still in full occupation, but towards the later years of their existence, there were built a number of fortified manor houses of stone. It is quite probable that these buildings embodied in permanent materials a type of plan that had long prevailed in a less durable form. The keep was contrived so as to be as economical of space as possible; the rooms were piled one on the top of the other. But where defensive precautions were not so imperative, and space was not so valuable, the rooms were placed alongside of each other on the ground. The manor house, therefore, followed a type of plan somewhat different from that of the keep, but in both cases the hall was the principal apartment; it was the sleeping, eating, and living room of the household. As years went by the keep type of plan fell into disuse; its singular lack of comfort may easily account for this. The manor house type, on the contrary, survived, and it is this type which has been developed, through century after century, into the house of modern times. It is, however, curious to find a few late survivals of the keep, some of them built long after the necessity for castles had disappeared; others, owing to their geographical position, being the natural expression of the wants of the district. Among the former is Tattershall Castle in Lincolnshire, built by Lord Treasurer Cromwell in the fifteenth century, the same who built the great manor house of South Wingfield in Derbyshire. Both of these houses will be more fully mentioned in their chronological order. Among the latter are many of the peel-towers of Northumberland, which continued to be built with the ancient restricted arrangements until the accession of James I. Cocklaw Tower, near Hexham, is a fairly late example (Figs. 11, 12); it was built in the sixteenth century and contained hardly more accommodation than the Peak Castle. At the ground level was a cellar entered from the outside by a doorway protected by machicolations. Above the cellar was the hall, entered by an external door several feet above the ground, and above this was another room of the same size. Each of these rooms had a fireplace, and a few small windows, unglazed. A small chamber also led from each of them; that on the principal floor retains traces of painted decoration. In its floor is a square hole which afforded the only access to a blind chamber or vault beneath, which may have been a dungeon or may have been merely a garde-robe pit. A circular staircase led from the cellar to the upper floors and thence to the battlements. The fact that so small and uncomfortable a house was built at a time when further south there were already large and commodious mansions, is an eloquent commentary on the disturbed state of the Border. This is further illustrated by the fact that almost immediately after the two kingdoms were united under one sovereign, many of the old peels were enlarged by the addition of a Jacobean wing of considerably greater capacity than the original house. Chipchase Castle is one of the most striking instances, as the new work took the form of a fair-sized manor house to which the peel became a mere antiquated adjunct. Other instances, some of rather later date, are to be seen at Belsay Castle, Halton Castle, and Bitchfield Tower.
11. Cocklaw Tower, Northumberland (16th cent.).
Plan of Principal Floor.
D, Door, several feet above the level of the ground; H, Hole in floor; F P, Fireplace.
12. Cocklaw Tower, Northumberland (16th cent.).
Another notable example of the survival of the keep is that at Warkworth Castle in the same county (Fig. 45, p. 82). This is of peculiar interest inasmuch as it was built about the year 1440, and exhibits a great amount of skill in packing into a small compass the various rooms which, by that period, had become necessary to the comfort of the more wealthy. But in spite of the ingenious planning, this keep was deserted within thirty years of its erection in favour of a new hall built on the ground floor with contiguous kitchens in the usual fashion. These places are mentioned here before taking leave of the keep, to show how its influence survived long after it had been generally abandoned.