_Tattershall Castle_, on the Witham in Lincolnshire, is contemporary with Herstmonceaux, and constructed likewise of Flemish brick bonded with exquisite workmanship. The tower still standing contains four stories with a total altitude of 112 feet; large Gothic-headed windows occur filled with Perpendicular tracery, and these windows are repeated on a smaller scale in the four octagonal towers which clamp the angles of the building. Massive timber balks once supported the various floors, and a number of carved chimney-pieces are to be found. The walls are about 14 feet thick at the base, and many passages and apartments have been made in their thickness. The well in the base is covered by a massive arched crypt, upon which the Castle has been erected. But perhaps the most notable feature in this beautiful relic of the past is the grand and markedly-perfect system of machicolation combined with the bretasche, which is exemplified in the cornice surmounting the tops of the curtain walls. Upon massive stone corbels is built a substantial stone wall pierced with square apertures for an all-round fire with various arms; in the floor of the alur are the openings for dropping missiles upon assailants at the base of the walls; above this again are the merlons and embrasures giving upon the battlement walk. The Castle was erected by Ralph, Lord Cromwell, treasurer to King Henry V., whose vast wealth sought for an opening in which to display itself, and probably could not have done so more effectively than in the rearing of a magnificent pile of buildings of which but a small portion, the tower described, now remains. In its later years it suffered a partial dismantling during the Commonwealth period, followed by a rifling in the eighteenth century similar to that which overtook the sister castle of Herstmonceaux. After the middle of the fifteenth century castles were no longer built, and we have to look to the fortified manor-house such as was designed by the Lord Cromwell above mentioned at Wingfield, Derbyshire, or that at Exburgh in Norfolk; these when surrounded by moats were capable of being placed in a good state of defence, and many a thrilling tale is told of the sieges they underwent during the Civil War when the stout resistance they made was nearly or quite equal to the defence of the massive ramparts and cyclopean bastions of the earlier castle-builder. [Illustration: PENSHURST PLACE. KENT.]