T. E. Lawrence’s Undergraduate Dissertation – Page 64

The appearance and arrangement of these keeps are too well known to need illustration. Of course their great principle is passive defence, and to secure it they were built more solid- -ly than almost any building before or since. At Newcastle the lower fourteen feet, in a keep 90 feet square, is solid throughout, and elsewhere, though they do not run to this ex- treme, yet the outer walls, and the dividing wall may be any- thing from 15 to 20 feet thick. The corners are usually strengthened in addition with pilasters, very shallow..but- -tresses in intention. The entrance is always on the first floor : in the early keeps it was often reached by a wooden ladder : in later ones by a fore-building, with at times a draw-bridge in it. To prevent all possibility of surprise, the door-way was made very narrow. The parapet is usually plain, there were no hoards and very few loopholes, and the portcullis is nearly unknown. It is obvious that a tower such as this would be impregnable, if mining was impracticable. On the other hand its garrison could only be a scanty one, and once in the keep they could be imprisoned most hopelessly, by a very small force. "A keep could be defended by one man" - per- haps - but it could certainly be besieged by two, standing one each side of the doorway to prevent egress. There were never any covering works, from which a flanking fire could be main- tained, and a sally in any force would be dangerous, owing to the impossibility of retreat in haste.