tion, and is used to give breadth to the top of the wall. It is common to all periods, being found upon Norman walls as well as upon those of late Perpendicular date, as Coity and Newport.
Some of the smaller Edwardian castles in Wales are very curious; that of Morlais, near Merthyr, has a circular keep of two stories, of which the lower is internally a polygon of twelve sides, with a vault springing from a central pier. The up-filling of the vault is a light calcareous tufa. This castle contains within its enclosure a singular pit, twenty-five feet square, and excavated upwards of seventy feet deep in the mountain limestone rock. It was probably intended as a well, though a clumsy one. The ruins of a somewhat similar castle remain at Dinas, near Crickhowel. The upper story of the tower of Morlais, as of Castle Côch, contains a number of large fire-places; something of the same sort is seen at Coningsborough, with the addition of an oven.
The Edwardian castles are frequently quite original[1]; they occur also as additions encircling a Norman keep, as at Dover, Portchester, Bamborough, Corfe, Goodrich, Lancaster, Carlisle, and Rochester. Edward I. completed the tower-ditch of London. The existing walls of towers are commonly Edwardian, though on an older foundation, as York, Canterbury, Chester, Chepstow, and their various bars and gates.
The Norman and Edwardian, the solid and concentric, may be regarded as the two great types of English castles, of which other military buildings are only modifications. After the death of Edward III., the Decorated gave place to the Perpendicular style; and though a few fine castles, and very many embattled gateways[2], continued to be erected, far less
- ↑ Among the castles either originally constructed, or thoroughly re-edified in this style, are Cilgarran, 1222; Flint and Rhuddlan, 1275; Hawarden and Denhigh about the same time; Caernarvon, 1283; Conway, modified in plan by its position, 1284; Beaumaris, 1295; Caerphilly, Harlech, Morlais, the same reign; Queenborough, 1361; Cowling and Raby, 1378; Bolton castle, and the west gate of Canterbury, in the same reign; most Dudley and Warwick are a little earlier.
- ↑ The gateway of St. Augustine's, and the west gate of Canterbury, the one Early Decorated, and the other Perpendicular, afford a fine example of the contrast between monastic and military architecture. The west gate is one of the finest city gateways in England, hut its drawbridge is destroyed, as is its connexion with the city wall on each side.
The gateways of Leicester castle and Alnwick abbey are both Perpendicular; Newport, Monmouthshire, and St. Donat's, Glamorganshire, still later; Caistor, Henry V. and VI.; part of Coity and Rye House, Henry VI.; Fowey towers, of Edward IV.; Raglan, the great gate of Carisbrook, Nettle Hall, Essex, Henry VII.; Buckenham, Essex, and Tatershall, are both very late Perpendicular; Thornbury 1511, and Tichfield house the same reign.
