The castle stood at the northern end of the town on a rocky eminence just suited for the purposes of an early fortress, but of the stately towers and curtain walls which have successively been reared above the scarps, practically nothing besides foundations remains. The base of the great round tower, prominent in all the prints of the castle in the time of its greatest glory, fragments of the lower parts of other towers and some dungeons or magazines are practically the only features of the historic site that the imagination finds to feed [Illustration: NEW HALL, PONTEFRACT This fine old Tudor mansion is now in ruins. It stands just to the north of Pontefract, and was occupied by the Parliamentary troops during the sieges of 1644 and 1645.] upon. A long flight of steps leads into the underground chambers, on whose walls are carved the names of various prisoners taken during the siege of 1648. Below the castle, on the east side, is the old church of All Saints with its ruined nave, eloquent of the destruction wrought by the Parliamentary cannon in the successive sieges, and to the north stands New Hall, the stately Tudor mansion of Lord George Talbot, now reduced to the melancholy wreck depicted in these pages. The girdle of fortifications constructed by the besiegers round the castle included New Hall, in case it might have been reached by a sally of the Royalists, whose cannon-balls, we know, carried as far, from the discovery of one embedded in the masonry. Coats of arms of the Talbots can still be seen on carved stones on the front walls over the entrance. The date, 1591, is believed to be later than the time of the erection of the house, which, in the form of its parapets and other details, suggests the style of Henry VIII.’s reign. It is exceedingly probable that Lord George Talbot, who was granted the Priory of St. John the Evangelist at Pontefract by the Crown soon after the Dissolution, built this stately mansion, to a considerable extent, with the materials of the demolished monastery, for many of the stones bear Norman and later carving, and even the wooden beams have palpably been used in an earlier building. Nearly all the outer structures of the courtyard on the east side have disappeared; in 1828 the north tower fell, and year by year the decay of the walls advances. Although we can describe in a very few words the historic survivals of Pontefract, to deal even cursorily with the story of the vanished castle and modernized town is a great undertaking, so numerous are the great personages and famous events of English history connected with its owners, its prisoners, and its sieges.