SE stair tower projecting slightly on upper stage and rising to restored octagonal turret.
Lower stage has E side lancet and N side pointed moulded doorway with column shafts and hoodmould. Bell-stage has large pointed openings, originally longer but part-blocked, with hoodmoulds. Bell-tower is large two-stage octagonal tower with moulded plinth and moulded course before set-back bell-stage, ruinous and roofless in old photographs but now with corbelled flat parapet. Rubble stone part ruinous, the bell-tower substantially restored 1929 by W D Caroe. Large C14 bell tower with attached, possibly C15, fortified gate. Situated at entrance to The Cathedral Close from The Pebbles. Under these apartments were the porter's lodge on one side of the gateway, and on the other a prison with a dungeon in the centre, a dark subterraneous vault or cavern, with no other adit than a circular opening in the floor, covered with a strong grating of iron, by which the malefactors were let into it. In the opposite wing, consisting likewise of a tower, but of a very different form, and connected with the other by a range of buildings extending over the gateway, were the council chamber and other large appartments, supposed to have been appropriate to the mayor of the town, as they were only entered by a door and staircase on the town side. This building, divided into stories, formed the consistory court and the record office of the see. The Tower Gate, through which is the principal entrance into the close as leading from the town immediately, and connecting from all the main roads from the interior, consists of a large octagon tower 60 feet in height, with a noble door-way facing the east end of the church, and opening into the churchyard. This enclosure, allowing for the cemetery and suitable gardens to most of the houses, was richly built upon, and in its present state of decadency, as it bursts on the sight from the entrance above the valley, forms a most striking coup d'oeil. The entrance was by four handsome gateways or Porths, answering to the four cardinal points, such as Porth y twr, Tower Gate to the east, Porth Patrick, Patrick's Gate to the south, Porth gwyn, the White Gate to the west, Porth Bwnning, or Bunning's Gate to the north. This close was in circuit twelve hundred yards, had a walk round with a crenelled parapet. (King)īut the Close, the ecclesiastical palladium, including within its embattled wall the venerable cathedral, the episcopal palace, the still habitable houses of some of the dignitaries, together with the skeletons of several in ruins, exhibit such remains of grandeur as may justify us in forming the most magnificent notions of their former establishment.
The whole is impractically large and not well suited for defence. One fine gate in a long projection below a fortified belfry (Porth-y- twr). Close surrounded by embattled wall of fair height.
0 kommentar(er)
