Overview

Suggested Development

Construction and Conservation

Siege of 1570 and Later Kitchens

Entrance Tower

The Guard Room→

Destruction and Picturesque Ruin

The Guard Room

Looking at the photo of the Guard room on the right, there were two entrances into the guard room, one from the entrance tower to the left and a second from the right. The second entrance may have been the original entrance into the early enclosure castle (as seen in the photo below left). A large draw-bridge may have existed at this point, reached by entrance stairs that may still remain buried.

This room most likely functioned as a guard chamber into the secure upper parts of the castle. A great quantity of rubble was excavated from within this room. This contained parts of the collapsed vaulted ceiling of the chamber, and many carved architectural fragments from the collapsed keep above. These included almost the entirety of a fifteenth century fireplace, parts of the fallen battlements and other sculptured stones. From the 400 or so carved stones recovered from throughout the castle an enormous amount of information can be pieced together about parts of the building that have been missing for 350 years.

Just above the earth floor of the chamber an earlier destruction layer was revealed. This contained some 1,200 pieces of window glass and a few pieces of lead window case. It would appear that, at the end of the life of the castle, windows were stripped throughout the building, brought to this room and dismantled for their lead and larger panes of glass. All that was left was the broken scrap glass, a few very small complete quarries and the odd piece of lead that escaped the smelting pot. While the majority of the fragments were undecorated, a few were coloured. The remains of a fire were found beneath the level, with deposits of coal near bye and a single globule of molten lead to prove the smelting had occurred here.