Powderham Castle, the only one of all these fortresses which has been continuously inhabited since its foundation, stands--from a military point of view--on a poor site, on low ground close to the estuary of the Exe. Its chief charm is in its setting, in its beautiful park and fine timber, especially its magnificent oak-trees. Built in 1325 in the form of a long parallelogram, with six towers, four of which remain intact, while two have been restored, it has been altered and added to by many hands, and is now a vast, irregular pile of buildings. Its present owner is the lineal descendant of its original founder, the Sir Philip Courtenay who, in 1367, was knighted by the Black Prince on the field of Navarete. Successfully held for the King in December, 1645, against Fairfax himself, it was taken by Colonel Hammond in the following January after some sharp fighting, in which the Parliamentary troops, as happened on not a few occasions during the war, seized and fortified the village church. 22. Architecture--(_c_) Domestic. Scattered up and down over Devonshire are many fine old manor-houses, some of them, in parts at least, very ancient, some with picturesque and striking features, many set in very beautiful surroundings, and others of interest for the sake of their historic associations. Such houses are so numerous that only a few of them can here be even lightly touched upon. [Illustration: An Old Devon Farmhouse Chimney Corner] Not one of the famous houses of Devonshire is entirely, or even in great part, as old as the thirteenth century, although there are several that contain features of that period. Such, for example, is Bowringsleigh, near Kingsbridge, a fine old building, which although mainly Tudor, and containing details of later eras--beautiful Jacobean oak screens and highly-decorated plaster ceilings of the time of William and Mary--has some striking thirteenth century work in it. At Little Hempstone, near Totnes, is a very interesting and well-preserved pre-Reformation parsonage or priest's residence of the fourteenth century; and Ayshford Court, near Burlescombe, a fine old house now used like the Little Hempstone parsonage as a farm, contains a fourteenth century chapel. Of the same period are the great hall, now dismantled, and the old kitchen and other buildings connected with the mansion of Dartington, which although as a whole a noble example of Elizabethan architecture, was originally erected in the reign of Richard II.