The Peak Castle is an interesting example of the early manner of house building. It is a kind of midland pele-tower, resembling those small fortified dwellings, or watch-towers, or outlying forts, which abound in Northumberland along the Scottish border. Indeed, it is a specimen on a small scale of what all its contemporaries were like. It consisted of a keep and a courtyard, defended from attack by a strong wall on one side and natural precipices on the others. Most of the castles of that time consisted of little more. The keep was the dwelling-house, the courtyard was the fortified enclosure, giving breathing space and serving as a place of refuge in troublous times for the cattle and dependants of the lord. Great keeps like those at Rochester, in Kent, or Hedingham, in Essex, or Kenilworth, in Warwickshire, or (to judge from its foundations) Duffield, the Derbyshire house of the Ferrers, were tolerably well found, and provided what might then be considered luxurious abodes. This Castle of the Peak, in its original state, contained the minimum of what was tolerable. It consisted of only three storeys, one of which was partly underground, and it had no fireplace; but in those days, more often than not, the fire was placed in the middle of the floor, and the smoke found its way out through the windows, supplemented, where possible, by a kind of ventilating turret in the roof. It could not have been the residence of a large family, and may have been little more than a watch-tower. But the probability is that it was the home of its owner, and the amount of comfort which the stay-at-home women of the family must have experienced may be conceived by anyone who will seat himself in one of the window recesses on a chilly day in summer, and gaze through the rain across the valley on to the blurred mass of Lose hill. [Illustration: The Castle of the Peak.]