Image Description (Alt text): An artist's illustration of the South West Gatehouse before it was destroyed.
Audio track transcript:
"Has he been droning on about his tower? The man was only here for a year…
Anyway, I’m Captain Hughes, and you’re in the Gatehouse guardroom, where off-duty soldiers warmed themselves by a fireplace.
Look at these walls – that’s a stone sandwich. Two layers of dressed blocks – we call those ashlar – then a core of rubble, flint, and chalk. These lime mortars are the strongest you’ll find – high clay content – from the Purbeck peninsular.
This is the toughest point of the defence. Outside, by the doorway, you’ll see a vertical slot that held one of two portcullises. Holes in the walls opposite held drawbars, supporting massive oak doors. Above, were machicolations – floor openings – and murder-holes – used for dropping, say, boiling water on enemies. Then above that? Wooden fighting platforms for archers.
Almost a shame that now, March of 1646, I’m here to blow the place up on order of Parliament. I’ll charge £200 to take it down, with the help of military and local quarry men. They call us sappers. A skilled job. You need to know how castles are engineered, where they’re weakest.
You can take walls down with fire. Or gunpowder. Or pick away key stones. Or lastly, dig tunnels underneath, prop with timber, fill with brushwood, set fire to the lot, and watch it collapse.
We’ll mostly dig. Though we’ve found 15 barrels of gunpowder, so we’ll use that on the Keep. It’ll be fun watching masonry bounce down the hill. I’m worried about this gatehouse though, with that local mortar. I’ll be embarrassed if it stays standing…
Don’t think I can’t hear your tutting. I know locals say we’ll plunder the place. Well, let me introduce you to one of our honest, god-fearing men – then you make up your own mind…"