The last French prisoners left Portchester at the end of May 1814, but American prisoners were here until January 1816. After the Peace all the wooden buildings were taken down and sold by auction (a row of cottages in Fareham, built out of the material, still enjoys the name of ‘Bug Row’). Relics of this period of the Castle’s history are very scanty. The old Guard House at the Land Gate, now the Castle Custodian’s dwelling, remains much as it was, and a line of white stones on the opposite side of the approach marks the boundary of the old prison hospital, which is also commemorated in the name Hospital Lane. The great tower still retains the five stories which were arranged for the prisoners, and on the transverse beams are still the hooks to which the hammocks were suspended. Some crude coloured decoration on the beams of the lowest story may have been the work of the French theatrical artists, but I doubt it. Names of French and other prisoners are cut on many of the walls and wooden beams, notably at the very top of the great tower, which is reached by a dark, steep newel stair of Norman work, now almost closed to the public on account of the dangerous condition of many of the steps. This was the stair used by Dufresne, and the number of names cut in the topmost wall would seem to show that the lofty coign, whence might be seen a widespread panorama, stretching on three sides far away to the Channel, and to these poor fellows possible liberty, was a favourite resort. I noted some twenty decipherable names, the earliest date being 1745 and the latest 1803. Only one death appears in the Church Register—that of ‘Peter Goston, a French prisoner’, under date of December 18, 1812. There seems to have been no separate burial ground for the rank and file of the prisoners, but it is said that they were shovelled away into the tide-swept mud-flats outside the South Gate, and that, for economy, a single coffin with a sliding bottom did duty for many corpses. But human remains in groups have been unearthed all around the Castle, and, as it is known that at certain periods the mortality among the prisoners was very high, it is believed that these are to be dated from the prisoner-of-war epoch of the Castle’s history. No descendants of the prisoners are to be traced in or about Portchester; but Mrs. Durrand, who is a familiar figure to all visitors to the Castle, believes that her late husband’s grandfather was a French prisoner of war here. It may be noted that Arthur Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington, was at one time an officer of the garrison at Portchester. NOTE ON THE PORTCHESTER THEATRICALS