'
There was a moat on three sides, a square tower at each corner, and a
fifth containing the gateway presumably on the eastward face. In one
of the corner towers was the buttery, pantry, 'pastery,' larder, and
kitchen; in the south-easterly one was the chapel; and in the
two-storied building and the other tower of the south side were the
chief apartments, where my lord Percy dined, entertained, and ordered
his great household with a vast care and minuteness of detail. We would
probably have never known how elaborate were the arrangements for the
conduct and duties of every one, from my lord's eldest son down to his
lowest servant, had not the Household Book of the fifth Earl of
Northumberland been, by great good fortune, preserved intact. By
reading this extraordinary compilation it is possible to build up a
complete picture of the daily life at Wressle Castle in the year 1512
and later.
From this account we know that the bare stone walls of the apartments
were hung with tapestries, and that these, together with the beds and
bedding, all the kitchen pots and pans, cloths, and odds and ends, the
altar hangings, surplices, and apparatus of the chapel--in fact, every
one's bed, tools, and clothing--were removed in seventeen carts each
time my lord went from one of his castles to another.
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