entry. The
tower within consists of three stages, the last being embattled and
now roofed, while the first is reached by a picturesque outside
stairway of stone, which served both it and the ramparts. Close by,
against the wall, is a timber building upon a stone basement, called
the guard-room, dating from the fifteenth century.

The best portions of the old wall run northward from the West Gate over
the western shore road. This is Norman work added to in the fourteenth
century. Here is the Blue Anchor Postern, or as it is more properly
called, simply the Postern, little more than a round archway within the
great arcading and the wall itself. Just to the south of this gate is
the twelfth-century building known as King John's Palace. We follow the
grand old wall till it ends upon the site of the Bigglesgate, where we
turn eastward a little into the town and come to the Castle, of which,
unhappily, almost nothing remains. It consisted of a great Keep in the
midst of an enclosure, entered by two gates, the Castle Gate upon the
north-east where now is Castle Lane, and the Postern over the site of
which we have entered the Castle Green. The decay of this fortress
dates, at least, from the sixteenth century, and apparently before the
Civil War it had been pulled down.

The walls still enclose the Bailey of the Castle upon the west. There,
in some sort, still stands the Castle Water Gate, a mere fragment,
within which is a great vaulted chamber some fifty feet long and
twenty-five feet high, with only one small window. From this
fragmentary gate the wall sweeps away to the salient, for the most
part Norman; but beyond the salient its character changes, two towers
appear--the Catchcold Tower of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth
century, and the fine Arundel Tower, now only a curtain of fourteenth-
century work in the Decorated style.

It is in these western walls of the town that we shall get our best
idea of what mediaeval Southampton was, and if we add to our impression
by an examination of the two remaining gates, one upon the north and
the other at the south-east angle, we may perhaps understand how
formidable it must have appeared standing up out of the sea armed at
all points.

Mediaeval Southampton had eight gates, of these, as I have said, but
four remain, the most notable of which is undoubtedly the Bargate, upon
the north. This is a fine work of various periods in two stages, the
lower consisting of a vault