Cardiff Castle, Glamorga7i. 343 The stair-turret is much older than the rest. The stair, 7 feet in diameter, rudely restored upon an original newel, communicates with the basement as well as with the court, and by doors, now closed up, opened into the hall and bedrooms. It is from the posi- tion of these doors, and from the turret windows, that the height of the old hall has been inferred. The stair is lighted by square- headed windows, and above by a small quatrefoiled opening. It leads up to the roof. The three curtains or wall spaces connecting the four turrets are also pierced by two rows of single windows, six in all — the lower range square headed, the upper pointed. All are of two lights, with a transom. The turret and curtain windows are all alike, save that in the former the lower tier are pointed. The present entrance door is modern, made by cutting down a window, and probably all the windows have been renewed during the past half-century. A drawing of this front in 1776 shows, how- ever, windows generally resembling the present, excepting that the turret second from the north, like the stair-turret, has no large windows. Passing into the interior, the three turrets appear as bays from the main and upper floors, the middle one opening by a sort of passage, as though it had been once a mere dark closet, or perhaps a staircase : the other two open by pointed arches with plain, bold, round, and hollow mouldings. The wall is 5 feet thick, and the passage through it is divided by three ribs into two panels, which are continued through the soffit. The bays themselves, 8 feet wide, with walls only 18 inches thick, have five faces, of which the two inner ones are blank, and the three outer pierced by the windows already described. Each of the six angles, and the centres of the two blank sides are occupied by a slender pilaster shaft, rising from a tall octagonal base, and terminating in a delicate cap, decorated with a sort of trefoil. These shafts are arranged above with some ingenuity, so as to support the sixteen ribs of a groined octagonal roof, meeting at a central boss. In the two northern bays and those of the upper story, this boss is a mass of foliage, probably a very modern restoration ; but in the southern bay of the three, that next the stair-turret, it bears an original and elaborate armorial achievement. Within a wreath formed of a vine stem, truncated so as to represent the well-known ragged staff of Warwick, is a shield, set anglewise, of Newburgh and Beauchamp quarterly ; and in the centre, Despenser, on an escocheon of pretence. The helmet has large tasselled lambrequins, and upon it is placed the Beauchamp crest of the siren's head, ducally gorged. The whole is painted in colours, probably after the original pattern ] and it is obviously the achievement of Richard Earl of Warwick, and Isabel Despenser, who therefore built these turrets, as is also evident from their style. It is, however, probable, that the ribs and groining of the central bay were copied from the others, and added when its windows were opened, and its walls cased or reconstructed.
