<g>The principal entrance</g> was by a flight of steps on one side, distinct from the main building, and ascending to a platform before the doorway leading to the second chamber. The entrance to the dungeon, or lower apartment, was under “a very remarkable sort of pointed arch, formed of flat sides, which seems, from the appearance of the wall around it, and from its peculiar style, to have been inserted many ages after the tower was built, and in the time of <g>Edward</g> III.; a suspicion that appears to be most strongly confirmed, by the circumstance, that about the twenty-second year of Edward the Third, Richard Talbot, its then lord, obtained the royal license[192] for having in his castle a prison for male-factors, having also the cognizance of pleas of the crown, &c., within his lordship of Irchinfield. The bottom of the keep-tower would undoubtedly, as usual, be the place where such a prison would be established; and on that occasion it should seem that this new and strong door-frame was first constructed, whilst the very annexation of the lordship of Irchinfield, or Urchenfield, to the possession of this keep-tower, both of which his lordship appears to have been possessed of before this license was granted, shows the exceedingly high antiquity of this castle, since Urchenfield was, indeed, the very place where St. Dubricius founded his college of Religious, about A.D. 512, to live, like the original Eastern recluses, by the work of their own hands.”[193] The body of the keep is an exact square of twenty-nine feet.
<g>In</g> describing the additions made to this fortress in the Norman times, and during the successive reigns to the time of Henry the Sixth, we shall follow Mr. King, and begin with the strongly-fortified <g>entrance</g>, which, commencing between two semicircular towers of equal dimensions, near the east angle, was continued under a dark vaulted passage, to an extent of fifty feet. “Immediately before the entrance, and within the space enclosed by the fosse, was a very deep pit, hewn out of the solid rock, formerly crossed by a drawbridge, which is now gone, but which evidently appears to have exactly fitted, and to have closed, when drawn up, the whole front of the gateway between the towers. About eleven feet within the passage was a massive gate, the strong iron hinges of which still remain: this gate and the drawbridge were defended on each side by loopholes, and overhead by rows of machicolations in the vaulting. Six feet and a half beyond this was a portcullis, and about seven feet further a second portcullis; the space between these was again protected by loopholes and machicolations. About two feet more inward was another strong gate, and five feet and a half beyond this, on the right, a small door leading to a long narrow gallery, only three feet wide, formed in the thickness of the wall, and which was the means of access to the loopholes in the eastern tower, as well as to some others that commanded the brow of the steep precipice towards the north-east.” These works appear to have been thought sufficient for general defence; but a resource was ingeniously contrived for greater security, in case they had all been forced: “for a little further on are many stone projections in the wall on each side, like pilasters, manifestly designed for inserting great beams of timber within them, like bars, from one side of the passage, which was about nine feet ten inches wide, to the other, so as to form a strong barricade, with earth or stones between the rows of timber, which would in a short time, and with rapidity, form a strong massy wall.” Beyond these the passage opened into the great inner court of the Castle.