Mr. Edward King, in the third volume of his Munimenta Antiqua, treats much at large of the fortresses erected in remote times throughout Cornwall; and he particularly dwells on this at Launceston, assigning to it the most remote antiquity on account of its not bearing any resemblance to castles built by the Romans, Saxons, Danes, or Normans, and from its agreement with various of the Phœnician, Syrian, and Median castles, and especially with those in Asia Minor.
Mr. King says, the keep (unlike all Norman keeps) instead of being of great diameter and spacious, is very small, although there was evidently space enough on the top of the rock to have made it as large as Norman magnificence could demand, had it been erected, as some have hastily conjectured, by that people. It is only eighteen feet and a half
in diameter within, and it is quite round. On the contrary, Trematon, in the same county, which may with good reason be concluded to have been built by Robert Earl of Morton, is a true Norman structure; and there cannot be a greater contrast than there is between it and Launceston. Like Tunbridge castle, it is placed, not on a high natural rock, but on an artificial mound, and is no les than sixty feet in diameter on the inside. See Dr. Borlase’s Antiquities, 2d. ed. p. 354.
The wall of the keep at Launceston is exceedingly strong, being at least ten feet thick; and within its thickness is a staircase, ascending up from one side of the passage of the doorway, without any winding, excepting that of the mere curvature of the wall itself.
The present height is thirty-two feet, the upper part being somewhat broken down; and it contained, as its only apartments, a sort of dungeon on the ground, which had no light at all, and two rooms over it, one above the other. The lowermost of these, or the room immediately above the dungeon, was nearly as dismal and dark as the dungeon itself, and appears obviously, therefore, to have been intended merely to be used as a place for store, or a sort of treasury; but in the uppermost apartment there appear to have been two large windows (now broken down) commanding a most extensive view, one to the east and another to the west; and also a fire-hearth, with a passage for the smoke carried up through the thickness of the wall towards the north, all which plainly indicate this room to have been intended as a sort of state apartment for the actual residence of the chieftain.
Such is this tower; and its close surrounding works are no less extraordinary, for we find it encompassed by a second munition still stronger than itself.
About six feet, or a little more, from its outside, is an encircling wall twelve feet thick, and nearly equal in height with the floor of the uppermost apartment of all.
Beyond this second wall is again a second surrounding
area in like manner with the first, only six feet wide, and which was further inclosed by a third encircling wall, forming a sort of parapet.
Beyond all these was an external wall with a deep ditch.