The city bridge crosses the Wye by six arches, round headed, and all apparently old. One is stiffened with three plain square ribs, and another shows traces of a similar addition. The bridge has bold piers, and advantage has been taken of this to widen it by turning a subsidiary arch, about 5 feet wide, on each face, so that the old work is partially concealed. It does not appear where the fortified gateway was placed; probably upon the last narrow arch on the city side. This does not, indeed, show any trace of having been perforated for a drawbridge, and tradition places the gate at the outer end. Next to and a little below the bridge, near the river bank, and a little south of the centre of the city, stands the cathedral, and below and next to it the castle. Besides the cathedral and its appendage of St. John’s, there stood within the walls four churches—St. Nicholas’s, All Saints’, St. Peter’s, and St. Owen’s. There was also St. Martin’s, beyond the Wye, destroyed during the civil wars. The disposition of the streets is irregular, and in no way cruciform or indicative of any Roman arrangement. Thus situated and defended, Hereford was a very strong place, as it had need to be, for it was exposed to the fierce and repeated attacks of the Welsh, who especially resented, as was natural, the conquest of their most fertile provinces by the invaders. The castle, as has been said, occupied the south-eastern quarter of the city. It lay in the parish of St. John. Leland describes it as one of the fairest, largest, and strongest castles in England. It was composed of two wards placed side by side along the bank of the Wye, not actually on the stream, which, when the defences were of earth, might have undermined them; but about 7 yards distant from and on the edge of a steep sloping bank, about 8 feet above the water. In general plan the eastern ward was an oblong, the sides being nearly straight, and the east end narrower than the west. The eastern end runs at right angles to the river, and measures along the old line of its wall 100 yards. The south or river front measured 175 yards, as did the north front. The west front, connecting the two, measured 196 yards. This inclosure formed the eastern or lower ward, and contained about 26,000 square yards. The upper or western ward was applied to the end of the eastern, and like it rested on the river. In form it was rounded, or rather irregularly polygonal, and composed of a large conical mound, wholly artificial, with a circular circumscribing ditch. Within the ditch it measured, on the east and south sides, each 100 yards, and, on the three remaining sides, 60 yards each. It was, therefore, in girth about 380 yards, and in area about 14,000 yards. Thus the area of the whole castle, ditches included, might be about 8¼ acres. The eastern ward is stated to have contained about 5½ acres.