The description of the castle given by the writer of the Gesta has many points of interest.[447] He describes the castle as standing on a very high mound (_editissimo aggere_) hedged in by an insurmountable wall, which was defended by "Cæsarian" towers built with the very hardest mortar. This must refer to Roman towers which may have existed on the Roman part of the wall. Whether there was a stone wall on the other two sides, facing the city, may be doubted, as the expenditure entered to Henry II. in the _Pipe Rolls_ suggests that he was the first to put stone walls on the banks, and the two ancient towers which still exist appear to be of his time.[448] The chronicler goes on to say that after Stephen had taken the _promurale_ and broken down the bridge, there were several days and nights of fighting before he could win the castle, which was eventually forced to surrender by the drying-up of the wells. The mining operations which he describes were no doubt undertaken with the view of shaking down the Roman wall at the angle where it joins the artificial bank of Baldwin de Molis. Possibly the chamber in the rock with the mysterious passages leading from it, which is still to be seen in the garden of Miss Owthwaite, at the point where the ditch ends, is the work of Stephen's miners.[449] The description of his soldiers scrambling up the _agger_ on their hands and knees (_quadrupede incessu_) will be well understood by those who have seen the castle bank as it still rises from that ditch.
The present ward of Exeter Castle, which is rudely square in plan, covers an area of 2 acres, which is as large as the whole area of many of the smaller Norman castles. The castle was allowed to fall into decay as early as 1549,[450] and since then it has been devastated by the building of a Sessions House and a gaol. No plan has been preserved of the former buildings in this court, though the site of the chapel is known.
There is no statement in Domesday Book as to the value of Exeter.
EYE, Suffolk (Fig. 17).--This castle was built by William Malet, one of the companions of the Conqueror, who is described as having been half Norman and half English.[451] Eye, as its name implies, seems to have been an island in a marsh in Norman times, and therefore a naturally defensible situation. The references in the _Pipe Rolls_ to the _palicium_ and the _bretasches_ of Eye Castle show that the outer defences of the castle at any rate were of wood in the days of Henry II.[452] That there were works in masonry at some subsequent period is shown by a solitary vestige of a wing wall of flints which runs up the motte. A modern tower now occupies the summit. The bailey of the castle, the outline of which can still be traced, though the area is covered with buildings and gardens, was oval in shape, and covered 2 acres.