On the first floor the larger or eastern chamber was probably the Hall. The main entrance had no forebuilding or exterior covering, nor is there any trace of a stone staircase or of a drawbridge. It seems to have been reached by steps of wood. The chamber in the north-east angle, containing a fireplace, full large for its size, may have been the kitchen. This is the only fireplace now seen in the building, though there may have been others in the cross-wall. The two chambers about the south-west angle seem to have been garderobes, one opening from each of the main rooms. The three windows are unusually large, and being only 12 or 14 feet from the ground, must have much weakened the strength of the place. No doubt the framing or tracery filling up the apertures was heavy and strong, but still no tracery or mullion could have resisted a heavy stone from a catapult, nor indeed could the shell of wall containing the staircase. Probably the borderers, whose raids the tower was intended to resist, had no military engines at their command. As the roof is gone, with the walls that immediately supported it, it is impossible to say whether it was flat or pitched at an angle. There is seen, however, in the west wall, at its north end, a patch of ashlar cut to a low slope, evidently that of a former roof, and there is a like indication in what remains of the cross-wall, at its south end; also about the same level is a square hole, which evidently carried the water from the gutter on one side of the wall to that on the other. The level of these indications of a low-pitched roof is about that of the floor of the upper story, and many feet below even the present top of the wall. It looks as though here, as at Richmond, Ludlow, Porchester, Bridgenorth, Kenilworth, and in many other instances, the original roof had been over the first story, and the second story had been an afterthought, generally not more than a few years later. Possibly the whole wall above the string-course is an addition, but if so it is a very early one. Bowes tower may safely be pronounced to be very late Norman in style. The cross-walls are certainly original, but the vaulting was probably an addition, and, to judge from the skewbacks of two ribs in the south wall, of the Decorated period. The basements of Norman keeps were very rarely vaulted, and here, as at Brougham, Richmond, and Carlisle, the vaulting looks later than the walls.