[Illustration: The Devil's or Dyet Tower on the South-East side of
Pickering Castle. This is often called the Rosamund Tower, but the records
call it the Dyet Tower.]

Soon after this comes the cost of the new hall in the castle. "Clearing,
digging and levelling the place within the castle where the bakehouse was
burnt to build there a hall with a chamber 14s 1-1/2d, building the stone
wall of the hall and chamber, getting and carrying 400 cartloads of stone,
digging and carrying soil for mortar, buying 27 quarters of lime--£5 19s
11d; contract for joiners' work, wages for those employed to saw planks
and joists, 152 planks for doors and windows, 80 large spikes, 600 spike
nails, 1000 broad headed nails and 20,000 tacks, 22 hinges for the doors,
28 hinges for the windows and 2600 laths with carriage for the same--£9 0s
1-1/2d; roofing the buildings with thin flags by piece-work, collecting
moss for the same [to stop up the crannies] plastering the floor of the
upper room and several walls within the chamber, making a chimney piece of
plaster of Paris (plastro parisiensi), together with the wages of the
chaplain who was present at the building--£5 1s 10-1/2d." A few years
later came some more repairs to the castle: "a carpenter 4 days mending
the wind battered roof of the old hall with old shingles 1s, 300 nails for
that purpose 9d; a man 10 days roofing with tin the small kitchen, the
garderobe at the corner of the kitchen, the cellar, outside the new hall,
within the tower and porter's lodge--2s 6d." Hay and straw for the roofs
was brought "from the Marsh to Pickering"; two men were employed to clean
out the castle well which had been so blocked up as to become quite dry
that year and another charge 1s for a new rope and for repairing the
bucket of the well.

In 1326 there is a reference to the King's patent writ, dated 7th
December, by which the Castle was committed by Edward II. "to his beloved