The presence or absence of fireplaces and chimneys is not a test of date. Colchester is certainly an early keep,[1129] but it is well provided with fireplaces which appear to be original. These fireplaces have not proper chimneys, but only holes in the wall a little above the fireplace. But this rudimentary form of chimney is found as late as Henry II.'s keep at Orford, and there is said to be documentary mention of a proper chimney as early as 816 in the monastery of St Gall.[1130] The entire absence of fireplaces is no proof of early date, for in Henry II.'s keep at the Peak in Derbyshire, the walls of which are almost perfect (except for their ashlar coats) there are no fireplaces at all, nor are there any in the 13th-century keep of Pembroke. It is possible that in these cases a free standing fireplace in the middle of the room, with a chimney carried up to the roof, was used. Such a fireplace is described by the poet, Chrestien of Troyes, but no example is known to exist.[1131] But apart from details, if we look at the general plan of these four early stone castles, we shall see that it is exactly similar. It is the keep-and-bailey plan, the plan which prevailed from the 10th to the 13th century, and was not even superseded by the introduction of the keepless castle in the latter century.[1132] The motte-and-bailey type was of course only another version of the keep-and-bailey. In this primitive type of castle the all-important thing was the keep or donjon.[1133] Besides the donjon there was little else but a rampart and ditch. "Until the middle of the 12th century, and in the simpler examples of the epochs which followed, the donjon may be said to constitute in itself the whole castle."[1134] Piper states that up to the time of the Crusades German castles do not seem to have been furnished with mural towers.[1135] Köhler, whose work treats of French and English castles as well as German, says that mural towers did not become general till the second half of the 12th century.[1136] Nevertheless, as it is highly probable that the baileys of castles were defended at first with only wooden ramparts on earthen banks, even when the donjon was of stone, it is not unlikely that mural towers of wood may have existed at an earlier period than these writers suppose. It is, however, in favour of the general absence of mural towers that the word _turris_, even in 12th-century records, invariably means the _keep_, as though no other towers existed.[1137] That the baileys of some of the most important castles in England had only these wooden and earthen defences, even as late as the 13th century, can be amply proved from the _Close Rolls_.[1138] Colchester Castle had only a timber wall on the banks of its bailey as late as 1215, and in 1219 this _palicium_ was blown down and an order issued for its reconstruction.[1139]