The Hawarden Visitors Hand-Book | Page 4

the Lordship of the Manor, together, by a family arrangement, with the estates, then devolved upon the present owner.
{Catherine Gladstone. Photographed by G. Watmough Webster, Chester: p12.jpg}

The Old Castle.
The Ruins of Hawarden Castle occupy a lofty eminence, guarded on the S. by a steep ravine, and on the other sides by artificial banks and ditches, partly favoured by the formation of the ground. The space so occupied measures about 150 yards in diameter. Upon the summit stands the Keep, towering some 50 feet above the main ward, and some 200 feet above the bottom of the ravine.
"The place presents," says Mr. G. T. Clark, "in a remarkable degree the features of a well-known class of earthworks found both in England and in Normandy. This kind of fortification by mound, bank and ditch was in use in the ninth, tenth, and even in the eleventh centuries, before masonry was general. {13} The mound was crowned with a strong circular house of timber, such as in the Bayeaux tapestry the soldiers are attempting to set on fire. The Court below and the banks beyond the ditches were fenced with palisades and defences of that character."
It was usual after the Conquest to replace these old fortifications with the thick and massive masonry characteristic of Norman Architecture. Hawarden, however, bears no marks of the Norman style though the Keep is unusually substantial. It appears, according to the best authorities, {14} to be the work of one period, and that, probably, the close of the reign of Henry III. or the early part of that of Edward I. Hence Roger Fitzvalence, the first possessor after the Conquest, and the Montalts, who held it by Seneschalship to Hugh Lupus, must have been content to allow the old defences to remain, as any masonry constructed by them could scarcely have been so entirely removed as to show no trace of the style prevalent at the time.
The Keep is circular, 61 feet in diameter, and originally about 40 feet high. The wall is 15 feet thick at the base, and 13 feet at the level of the rampart walk--dimensions of unusual solidity even at the Norman period, and rare indeed in England under Henry III. or the Edwards. The battlements have been replaced by a modern wall, but the junction with the old work may be readily detected. In the Keep were two floors--the lower, no doubt, a store room without fire-place or seat--the upper a state room lighted from three recesses and entered from the portcullis chamber.
Next to this last is the Chapel, or rather Sacrarium, with a cinquefoil- headed doorway, and a small recess for a piscina, with a projecting bracket and fluted foot. Against the West wall is a stone bench, and above it a rude squint through which the elevation of the Host could be seen from the adjoining window recess. Of the two windows, one is square, the other lancet-headed. The altar is modern. There is a mural gallery in the thickness of the wall running round nearly the whole circle of the Keep, and with remarkably strong vaulting.
Descending from the Keep and inclosing the space below, were two walls or curtains, as they are technically called. That on the N. side, 7 feet thick and 25 feet high, is still tolerably perfect, and within it lay the way between the Keep and the main ward. Of the South curtain only a fragment remains attached to the Keep.
The entrance to the court-yard--now the so-called bowling-green--was on the N. side. On the South side, on the first floor (the basement being probably a cellar), was the Hall, 30 feet high from its timber floor to the wall plate. Two lofty windows remain and traces of a third, and between them are the plain chamfered corbel whence sprung the open roof. Below the hall is seen a small ambry or cupboard in the wall.
Outside the curtain on the East side, where the visitor ascends to the Courtyard, are remains of a kitchen and other offices with apartments over, resting upon the scarp of the ditch.
From the N.E. angle of the curtain projects a spur work protected by two curtains, one of which, 4 feet thick and 24 feet high, only remains, with a shouldered postern door opening on the scarp of the ditch at its junction with the main curtain. This spur work was the entrance to the Castle, and contains a deep pit, now called the Dungeon, and a Barbican or Sally-port beyond. The pit is 12 feet deep and measures 27 feet x 10 feet across. It may possibly have served the double purpose of defence and of water supply--there being no other apparent source. In the footbridge across the pit may have been a trap-door, or other means for suddenly breaking communication