On the north side an Early Perpendicular window marks the chapel. The central doorway opened into the large and almost square guard-room, and on the north side of this room a pointed doorway leads into the chapel, which keeps some of its special characteristics. At the east end a square space is sunk in the wall above the spot where the altar stood, and in this space the faint traces of a fresco can still just be seen. In the wall that shuts off the guard-room is a cinquefoiled piscina and a four-light window, the stonework of which is like that in the east window, and this window allowed anyone in the guard-room to join in Divine service. In the west wall is a hagioscope, and from a room next the chapel a newel staircase led to the priest's room on the floor above. A little window with two cinquefoiled openings in his wall enabled the priest to look down into the chapel., and the height of the sill from the floor suggests that it may have served him as a prie-dieu. The moulded base of a stone cross still remains over the ancient belfry, which rises out of a mass of ivy.
Compton Castle
There are a bewildering number of rooms, many now inaccessible, and the height of the walls shows that there were two or three, and in the north-east block four, stories. The banqueting-hall, forty-two feet in length and twenty-three in width, has utterly disappeared, and only the gable-marks of the roof against the buildings on the south side have enabled Mr Roscoe Gibbs to draw his very careful deductions. In the kitchen the huge fireplace, stretching the whole width of one wall, still keeps its great fire-bars; next the kitchen is the steward's room, above which two stories still stand, though the upper one is absolutely in ruins.
Outside these rooms is a large open space, now grass-grown, and the sprays and buds of a cluster-rose tap against the massive walls. Close by lies a heavy round of granite, slightly hollowed out towards the centre, which is shown as one of the stones used for grinding corn. In an upper room is a hiding-place for treasure—two long, shallow cavities in the floor, of which there cannot have been the slightest sign when the floor was covered with planking. A vaulted passage leads to the south court, and in one corner of this court rises a watch-tower over a horrible little dungeon or chamber of torture.
The walls throughout the whole building are from two and a half to four feet thick, and a thick and solid wall nearly twenty-four feet high protects an inner court, where even in January the turf is firm, springy, and close. At the farther end, on steps leading into the garden, a peacock looks wonderfully appropriate, and some white fantails strutting in front of the heavy walls add very much to the picture. There is scarcely any sign of the old 'pleasaunce,' except a low and fairly broad box-hedge, which runs each side of a path in the present garden, where a few violets and one or two strawberry-blossoms are tokens of the softness of the air.
The Castle has changed owners many times. 'Stephen' held it of Judhael of Totnes; then it passed to the De la Poles; Lady Alice de la Pole gave it to the Comptons, and seven generations later a Compton heiress brought it, in the reign of Edward II, to the family of Gilberts, of whom Sir Humphrey Gilbert was a descendant. The Gilberts seem to have lived alternately at Compton and on their older property, Greenway, and with one interval the castle belonged to them till nearly the end of the eighteenth century. The only trace of them now to be seen is in the spandrels of a small cinquefoil-headed opening on the projecting gabled wing to the south of the central door. Each spandrel is sculptured with their crest, a squirrel holding a hazel branch.
Mr Eden Phillpotts has painted the ruins with a characteristic touch:
'At gloaming time, when the jackdaws make an end of day, when weary birds rustle in the ivy ere they sleep, hearts and eyes, gifted to feel and see a little above the level prose of working hours, shall yet conceive these heroes of old moving within their deserted courts. Some chambers are still whole, and bats sidle through the naked window at the call of dusk; some are thrown open to sun and rain and storm; the chapel stands intact; the scoop for holy water lies still within the thickness of its wall. But aloft, where rich arras once hid the stone, and silver sconces held the torch, Nature now sets her hand, brings spleenwort and harts-tongue, trails the ivy, the speedwell, and the toad-flax....
'Ivy-mantled, solemn, silent, it stands like a sentient thing, and broods with blind eyes upon ages forgotten; when these grey stones still echoed neigh of horse and bay of hound, rattle of steel, blare of trump, and bustle of great retinues.'