either side of it a small window looking into the hall, so that the lord--or more probably, considering the immutability of human nature, the lady--could overlook that apartment after retiring from it. The solar was embellished in later times with panelling and a fine wood chimney-piece, and thus rendered a very pleasant room. Beneath the solar was, as usual, a cellar or store place on the ground floor, and beneath that another cellar underground. Outside and beyond the solar stands the massive south tower or keep of three storeys, with one room on each floor. They have fireplaces, but the windows are small, and were never glazed, but merely closed with shutters. [Illustration: 20. Stokesay Castle. Section of Great Hall. In the end wall are two small windows opening from the solar.] [Illustration: 21. Stokesay Castle (General View). The hall and adjoining rooms are to the right; the south tower is in the centre; the Elizabethan gatehouse to the left.] [Illustration: 22. Stokesay Castle. Window and Doorway of the Hall.] It must be borne in mind that hitherto windows had not been glazed. They were usually of small size for purposes of security, and no doubt their smallness was an advantage so far as the inlet of cold air was concerned. But they rendered the rooms gloomy to the last degree, and the unlucky people of the time must often have had the choice of two evils, icy draughts, or the darkness which followed the closing of the shutters. No wonder the fireplaces were made large, yet even with a blazing fire in the middle of the hall, none of its heat being lost up the chimney, the plight of the household must have resembled that of travellers round a camp fire who complain of being roasted on one side and frozen on the other. In the hall at Stokesay, however, the windows are large, and the lights are of such ample width as to offer but little protection against attack. They are two lights wide and two lights high, the upper ones being pointed and cusped, and surmounted by a circular eye (Fig. 22). This eye and the upper lights were glazed, but the lower ones were merely closed with shutters. This amount of glazing is a decided advance in comfort, and so is the size of the windows, which must have rendered the hall quite a cheerful place, in striking contrast to the gloom of the tower, where the small windows provide a patch of light which only renders the general darkness more pronounced (Fig. 23). [Illustration: 23. Stokesay Castle. Window in South Tower--Showing shutter and stone seats.]