o_199m9vauin7s89a1ibd1tc12gd4g.pdf

30 THE KING'S YARD
ivy-covered walls, made a hideous blot upon its
meadow-like grounds.
Everyone ought to know that Portchester was
once the principal station of the Roman navy in
Britain, and an old author relates that the place was
of great importance very long before the Romans
landed. However that may be,
it is certain that the
ancient Britons had a fortress there, and Roman,
Saxon, Norman styles of building are all
yet
discernible in the castle's towers.
The castle is on a point of land upon the northern
shore of Portsmouth Harbour ; it stands in a square
of about nine acres of land, of which the fortress
proper occupies nearly an acre in the north-west
corner. The walls are from eight to twelve feet
thick, and about eighteen high, having in many
places a passage round them, covered by a parapet.
In all there are eighteen towers of various shapes and
dimensions, and moats surround the walls. The
main entrance to the castle on the west side is thirty
feet deep and fourteen wide, under a square tower,
and there are likewise two sally ports.
At this time there was no Frenchman in the castle,
and it was in fact doing duty as a kind of hulk, for
the floating hulks were all
crowded with convicts, who,
thanks to the Revolution, had escaped a passage to
the American plantations.
In such wooden buildings.