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The top floor provided sleeping space or private chambers for the Lord of the castle. Again there
are a series of small rooms built into the thickness of the walls. It may be in one of these smaller chambers
that the Lord and his wife slept leaving the main area for the rest of the family and retainers. The spiral
staircase extended up from this floor to the roof that had corner towers from which lookouts could keep watch
on the surrounding countryside.
These towers were very strong but they did have two serious weaknesses: -
1. It was discovered that by digging underneath
the corner of the tower it was possible to cause the collapse of the walls. This was known as undermining
and this is covered in a later section.
2. There were blind-spots at the corners of the towers that could not be seen by archers from
the small windows. Attackers could use these blind-spots to their advantage. The answer to this
was the polygonal keep discused in the next section.
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These diagrams show the internal layout of Hedingham Castle. The black areas indicate solid walls. The
top image is the ground level floor. The main entrance to the castle was on the floor above this so the
ground floor was used for storage. Access to this floor was via the circular staricase shown in the bottom
left hand corner. The triangular sections show the locations of the windows. The windows
on the outside are only narrow slots but they widen through the thickness of the wall to allow as much light
in as possible. The walls are so thick
that small two small rooms and the circular staircase are built into them.
