202

The "Well."

about 22 yards deep, and dry. It is called a well, but is more probably the shaft of a garderobe, examples of which description of construction exist in condition more or less perfect in connection with every large house in the town on any old site. The drainage was made to run into them, "siping" away through the cracks and crevices in the sandstone; and when they are examined with present knowledge and experience, there is little reason for wonder at the constant appearance of "plague" and "blackdeath" in places where these garderobes existed, for they must have been pestilential chambers of the most deadly character. In 1852 that in the Castle was cleaned out and guaged. It then measured 75 feet deep, and we have been told that water was reached at that depth. In 1870 we plumbed it, and proved it to have shrunk to less than 69 feet deep; in 1873 found that depth diminished to 68 feet, and in June, 1877, to 66 feet, so that rubbish at the bottom accumulates at the rate of about 4 inches a year. It is so nearly opposite a Norman Postern under Piper Tower, that we conjecture that there is some as yet unproved communication between the two, and possibly the private way into the Castle under that Tower communicated with a passage to which the contained no reference whatever to the subject; but subsequently we traced Boothroyd's quotations to have been made, not from the work he appeared to quote, but from a tract by the same author in Archæologia VI. 311-316 from which he took bodily both plate and description, each with very glaring inaccuracies, of which this is a specimen, and not the worst.

The Mound.

203

round-headed arch may lead, and which has never yet

been properly explored.

Those

Further to the south rises the Mound, the top of which is circular, and about 20 yards across. It is, about 40 feet above the Main Ward, as we have stated (p. 199), and as much more above the exterior base of the enceinte of which it forms a part. who originally shaped the mound gave it a natural slope all round, and placed their structure on its top; and, while making it a part of their line of defence, carried the general palisade to its summit from either side. But the Normaus, on taking possession, proceeded in a different way. They cut the outer sides of the soft rock which forms the core of the mound, into the figure of a three-quarter round mural Tower, and then faced it with a very strong wall, so that though really a solid Bastion, it had all the appearance of a magnificent Round Tower, nearly 70 feet in diameter. When this segmental Bastion had been carried to a height of 50 feet or 60 feet, that is to the level of the top of the mound, or rather more than as much as remains at present, the wall was continued round, and the cylinder completed. The mound was thus crowned by a regular shell Keep of 60 feet diameter, and probably 25 feet high, which was really-what its substructure had only the appearance of being-a tower of masonry. As the rock was of an irregular figure, this process was repeated, and a second smaller Bastion was formed to

204

Leland's Description.

the north, and even a third. The two largest form the finest part of the Castle, standing as they do high above the road from the station into the town, and upon the crest of a steep slope. They are faced with large blocks of sandstone, of excellent openjointed ashlar work, and have a remarkably bold set-off at the base.

66

Leland's account of the Castle as it stood about 1530 was probably an accurate description of the buildings as they then were, and as they continued until the dismantlement in 1648. "The Castelle of Pontfract," he says, of sum caullid Snorre Castelle, conteineth 8 tourres, of the which the dungeon, cast into 6 roundelles, 3 bigge and 3 smaul, is very fair, and hath a fair spring. Ther is in the dike by north the Conestable's Tourre." The eight towers would have been the Main Gate, Constable's Tower, King's Tower, Queen's Tower, Treasurer's Tower, Gascoigne's Tower, Piper's Tower, and the Donjon. What he calls the Constable's Tower "in the dike by north," was that, the section of which is now called Swillington's. The donjon, which was "cast into three large roundelles," had three smaller ones supported on corbels between the larger, and "had a fair spring," or elevation. The smaller roundels were entirely destroyed at the dismantlement, and only two of the three original trefoils can be easily made out, though a careful examination shows the remains of a third facing south.