Until recently there were some small inferior buildings at the south end of the court. These are now replaced by a barristers’ room. The kitchen stood here till 1715, when it was removed. Beneath the site of the kitchen is a very fine vault, perhaps 40 feet long by 15 feet wide, the west wall of which is the original outer wall of the castle. The vault is of excellent ashlar, slightly four-centred and evidently Perpendicular work. At the north end is a door, now walled up, steps beyond which led up to the hall. At the other end is also a door. This was evidently a cellar and a fine one. In the garden north of the hall, no doubt, stood the principal apartments of the old castle. Here was the Castle House of the seventeenth century. Norman rectangular keep there was certainly none. The gatehouse towards the Newark opens from the castle, its front being outwards. It is small, having a portal passage, a lodge, and a turnpike stair, and on the upper floor, now a ruin, a portcullis chamber, and two other rooms. Its arches are four-centred. It has the broad hollow moulding of the Perpendicular period, and a square portcullis groove behind the outer entrance. Within was a door, opening inwards. The central part of the portal was boarded over. The structure is good, very early Perpendicular, the work, no doubt, of an Earl of Lancaster. The upper or north gatehouse is framed of timber, and probably of Tudor date. It stands close north of the west end of the church, with which it was, until recently, connected by certain timber houses, used by the prebendaries. These have been pulled down. Parts of the church are Norman, and the north aisle seems of the date of the hall of the castle, and, therefore, a part of the work of Robert de Bellomont. There is a small door in the west wall of the aisle, that may very well have opened from the base court of the castle. In this court, in front of the hall, is a small knoll, in which were recently found two skeletons, headless, the head placed on the breast of each. This was, therefore, the place of execution in front of the hall of trial. Should the Courts of the county of Leicester ever be lodged in a more central or more convenient building, it is to be hoped that the castle hall will be divested of its unseemly additions, and restored to its original dimension and pattern, when, probably, some correct information would be discovered as to the vaults and foundations of the buildings of the eleventh century. Leicester Castle, mutilated as it is, is yet a very fine specimen of a Norman fortress on an earlier site. The latter represented by the mound, the former by the hall and chapel, form together a good example of the Norman practice of placing the castle proper on the level ground, and treating the mound as a part of the external defences.