Second Floor continued...
Also on the north side of the Great Hall is a flight of stairs into the window embrasure. A smaller set of stairs leads off on the left into a small chamber equipped with its own garderobe. The door to this room, which is only lit by a small slit window in the north wall, was designed to be barred from the outside suggesting that it was used as a prison.
On the west wall, opposite the principal entrance is a fire place, the lintel of which is dated 1599. The fireplace is a replacement of an earlier one, and was added in 1810-12. To the right of the fireplace an arched doorway leads to a garderobe.
At this level of the building the main internal stair divides. The south-east spiral continues up to the roof, with a short passage leading off to an unfinished and blocked stairway in the west wall. A straight staircase runs up through the thickness of the east wall and connects to a second spiral in the north-east angle. Both spiral stairs give access to a gallery encircling the Great Hall in the thickness of the wall. The openings from this gallery which now look down into the Great Hall would have originally given access onto the timber roof. [...back]