The room on the first floor might have been the hall of state or the audience chamber. Approach to it is gained by a newel staircase, the steps being stone, in the south-east turret, which begins a few feet above the level of the ground, and ends at the fourth storey, the ground-floor large room having had an entrance, now blocked up, from its south-east corner into this staircase. The hand rail, continuous and ingeniously moulded in stone, flush with the wall, is noticeable. A similar one, but slightly projecting, is in the staircase of the Alnwick Tower in the Bishop’s Palace, Lincoln; another in the staircase to the crypt in Grantham Church; and another, of much later date, in Kirby Hall. The large room on this storey has three windows with excellent Perpendicular tracery, and the two western ones have the recess ribbed and vaulted; there is no window opening through to the north, as a chamber has been constructed in the thickness of the wall. The fireplace, which is in the east wall, has a well-moulded depressed arch, with amusing grotesques in the spandrils on either side and at the side of the circles, reminding one of the hard-working creations of Dicky Doyle on the cover of _Punch_. The pilasters and battlemented top are much the same as in the lower fireplace, but its chief ornament is a row of heraldic shields and badges in circles across its front. First comes the familiar purse, then Tattershall, St. George and the Dragon, Cromwell and Tattershall impaling Deincourt, Cromwell and Tattershall quarterly, on a shield couché, with two savage men as supporters, on an esquire’s helmet a cap of maintenance inflamed. Next comes a representation under an embattled arch of a lion being rent asunder by a man, a feat which was related of Hugh de Nevile, who served in the Crusades under King Richard I. It does not seem quite clear why this achievement of a Nevile should appear here, though, as we have seen, Maud Stanhope married a Nevile as her second husband. Then comes a lion rampant for D’Albini, and the treasurer’s purse. The spaces between the roundels above are occupied with shields of Bernak, Driby, Cromwell (one defaced), Cromwell, Tattershall, and Deincourt below, with the treasurer’s purse. About the end of the eighteenth century this fireplace was bricked up and opened at the back, to be used for the room in the eastern wall, where dwelt a pensioner, whose duty it was to be in readiness to light a cresset beacon-fire on the south-east tower in case of invasion.