Tailer's Family - journeying!
Project: Kent - Rochester
No. 3 - 5:- Exploring Rochester - Rochester Castle
City of Great Expectations - Charles Dickens..
Parts of the Castle:-
Towering above you is the great keep of Rochester Castle.
At thirty-four and a half metres (113.2ft.) from ground level to the battlements and twenty-one metres (68.9ft.) square, it walls are made of Kentish flagstone with a core of rubble. In the centre of the keep is a cross-wall dividing the building into two. This wall gave the keep extra strength, and provided a support for the roof and the floors. We have seen a row of square joist holes in the cross-wall about the level of the ground level platform. Similar rows of holes further up the cross-wall tells us that the keep originally had four floors: a basement below and two floors above.
The Keep Entrance.
Here you can see the evidence, which allows us to reconstruct the keep's original approach and entrance. The main door is safely located on as high first floor. Under the modern stairs you can see stone steps leading up to this doorway with its decorated arch. A deep pit here would have been spanned with a drawbridge. At the corner of the keep, where the stairs turn sharply tio the right, the mediaeval visitor would have been confronted with a narrow watchtower. An arch, which would have formed the roof of the passageway, still sticks out from the wall. You can also see another arch, now filled in, which would have provided access to the main keep. Guide-boards.
'Magnificent ruin!...What a study for an antiquarian!'
The impressive Norman castle at Rochester had a humbling effect upon Dickens, reminding him perhaps of his own mortality. In Household Words he wrote: 'I surveyed the massive ruin from the Bridge, and thought what a brief little practical joke I seemed to be, in comparison with the solidarity, stature, strength and length of life.' In Dickens' time the castle looked very different. Houses and workshops filled much of the moat by the cathedral, the keep and towers were festooned with ivy and the waters of the River Medway lapped the base of the walls. - Guidemap
To see Large:-
farm4.static.flickr.com/3644/3451628937_d0304bace7_b.jpg
Taken on
July 18, 2007 at 11:53 BST
Project: Kent - Rochester
No. 3 - 5:- Exploring Rochester - Rochester Castle
City of Great Expectations - Charles Dickens..
Parts of the Castle:-
Towering above you is the great keep of Rochester Castle.
At thirty-four and a half metres (113.2ft.) from ground level to the battlements and twenty-one metres (68.9ft.) square, it walls are made of Kentish flagstone with a core of rubble. In the centre of the keep is a cross-wall dividing the building into two. This wall gave the keep extra strength, and provided a support for the roof and the floors. We have seen a row of square joist holes in the cross-wall about the level of the ground level platform. Similar rows of holes further up the cross-wall tells us that the keep originally had four floors: a basement below and two floors above.
The Keep Entrance.
Here you can see the evidence, which allows us to reconstruct the keep's original approach and entrance. The main door is safely located on as high first floor. Under the modern stairs you can see stone steps leading up to this doorway with its decorated arch. A deep pit here would have been spanned with a drawbridge. At the corner of the keep, where the stairs turn sharply tio the right, the mediaeval visitor would have been confronted with a narrow watchtower. An arch, which would have formed the roof of the passageway, still sticks out from the wall. You can also see another arch, now filled in, which would have provided access to the main keep. Guide-boards.
'Magnificent ruin!...What a study for an antiquarian!'
The impressive Norman castle at Rochester had a humbling effect upon Dickens, reminding him perhaps of his own mortality. In Household Words he wrote: 'I surveyed the massive ruin from the Bridge, and thought what a brief little practical joke I seemed to be, in comparison with the solidarity, stature, strength and length of life.' In Dickens' time the castle looked very different. Houses and workshops filled much of the moat by the cathedral, the keep and towers were festooned with ivy and the waters of the River Medway lapped the base of the walls. - Guidemap
To see Large:-
farm4.static.flickr.com/3644/3451628937_d0304bace7_b.jpg
Taken on
July 18, 2007 at 11:53 BST