Passing through the arch in the wall abutting the
keep, we come into the grassy space of over two acres, that is enclosed
by the ramparts. It is not known by what stages the keep reached its
present form, though there is every reason to believe that Conan, the
fifth Earl of Richmond, left the tower externally as we see it to-day.
This puts the date of the completion of the keep between 1146 and 1171.
The floors are now a store for the uniforms and accoutrements of the
soldiers quartered at Richmond, so that there is little to be seen as
we climb a staircase in the walls 11 feet thick, and reach the
battlemented turrets. Looking downwards, we gaze right into the
chimneys of the nearest houses, and we see the old roofs of the town
packed closely together in the shelter of the mighty tower. A few tiny
people are moving about in the market-place, and there is a thin web of
drifting smoke between us and them. Everything is peaceful and remote;
even the sound of the river is lost in the wind that blows freely upon
us from the great moorland wastes stretching away to the western
horizon.
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