The embattled walls which surround the town are coeval with the castle, and drawn in the form of a British harp, like those encompassing Caernarvon. The design and style of the castle however are wholly different, and most happily suited to its bold position. The ground plan is nearly in form a parallelogram. Two sides of the castle rise from a steep rock, washed by the tide water of a little creek that runs up along the town walls, and by the flood of the Conway river. The exterior presents to view eight noble circular towers, from the walls of which issue slender machiolated turrets, giving a singular lightness to the whole design, and connected by massive embattled curtains. A long wall formerly extended from the southern angle of the castle into the river, terminated by a little water tower, used to obstruct the passage of enemies, and facilitate the landing of their friends. The principal entrance, which is tolerably perfect, was by a drawbridge thrown across a deep fosse, concealed within a barbacan. The interior is divided into two distinct parts, an outer and an inner court, the entrance to the latter impassable by more than one person at a time, and that by the permission of those within. Around the outer courtyard were the apartments of the garrison, the chapel, great hall, &c.: the inner area was encompassed by the apartments of the royal founder and his household. The walls of a small chamber, still entire, with an open ornamented casement, bear the name of the Queen’s Oriel, and appear, from a poem of the age in which it was erected, to have been the ladies’ dressing-room. At the south-western extremity, beyond the royal apartments, a broad terrace is raised above the river upon a ledge of solid rock; from this, as from the oriel, a view of the adjacent country is enjoyed, intersected by cultivated hills, between which and the castle the Conway is seen to roll his flood, passing beneath the broad waterway afforded by a beautiful suspension bridge, which, from the appropriateness of style, seems an appendage of the ancient pile. A curious proof is here afforded of the excellence of masonry in the early ages. Although the castle appears identified with the rock from which it springs, a separation has taken place in one instance; neither has this occurred from the disintegration of the walls, which hang out beyond the base of the broken tower, it is the rock itself that has crumbled away.