Caerphilly Castle, South Walesdetails

For ten miles from Newport we wend our way over a dusty, ill-kept byroad with sharp turns and steep grades, and before we come to the village we see from some distance the broken towers and battlements of Caerphilly Castle. We pass through the gateway in the straggling walls and the scene of desolation and massive ruin that lies before us is hardly paralleled in impressiveness among British castles,unless it by by Corfe in Dorset. A great round tower, perhaps fifty feet in diameter, with walls ten feet thick, split as by a thunder stroke, greets our eyes. Half of it is still standing, though leaning many feet from the vertical, and the other half lies in mighty fragments of masonry at its base.” (p. 108)