THE CASTLE to the warders, and useful at a pinch for heating the supplies of oil and lead which could be poured down through the machicolations on the heads of a too assiduous foe. From turret to turret, and projecting somewhat over these machicolations, runs a loopholed gallery, and here, too, the vaulting and the rich brick mouldings are better than anything else of the kind in England, with the exception of the smaller but elaborately enriched wall surfaces of Barsham, near Walsingham in Norfolk. There are little rooms in the turrets, on each floor, and the galleries on the second and third are divided into rooms, so that in the whole building there were some forty-eight rooms. The large central rooms would be hung with tapestry, the lowest being used for an entrance-hall, meals being served in the fine banqueting hall adjoining, the second for a hall of audience or withdrawing room, and the third for the state bedroom. The fireplaces are, in the large rooms, of great width, and the restored mantelpieces, the barbarous removal of which lately caused such a stir, show a number of most interesting coats-of-arms of the families who have been connected with Tattershall down to the time of Henry VI. The treasurer's purse figures alternately with the shields, which bear the arms of the Cromwells, Tattershalls, and d'Eyncourts, of Marmion, Driby, Bernak, and Clifton; and on the second floor one panel represents the combat between Hugh de Neville and a lion. Neville and Clifton were the second and third husbands of Matilda Lady Willoughby, which points to the fact that these mantelpieces were not carved until after the Lord Treasurer's death, 1455, when Bishop Waynflete was in charge of the work. Sir Thomas Neville was killed at the battle of Wakefield, 1460, and Sir Gervasse Clifton at Tewkesbury in 1471.
There are three other brick buildings, which always strike me as being worthy to rank along with Tattershall. The first, but following longo intervallo, is the Bishop of Lincoln's palace at Buckden in Hunts., built by Bishop Hugh of Wells about 1225. Another is the beautiful old Tudor manor-house already alluded to at Barsham, near Walsingham, which Lord Hastings has just advertised for sale (November, 1913). This has more exquisite brick diaper work and mouldings on the outside of both house and gate-house than Tattershall Castle has even in the passages and vaulted rooms on the upper floor inside, and is a miracle of lovely brick building. But it is not nearly
