posted 06-12-99 03:31 AM           

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I have no knowledge of Castle Leap but try http://homepages.iol.ie/~batespd/leap.html and email the school for more info, I'm sure they would like to know someone is interested in their castle.
However with regard to oubliettes specifical designed oubliettes are very rare. I can think of two clear, unambigious, examples in England and Wales one at Warwick http://www.warwick-castle.co.uk/ and one at Kidwelly http://www.castlewales.com/kidwelly.html , in Wales. What marks these is the close provision for gaolers, which in turn suggests that the prisoners in these cells were not forgotten but under close observation.
On the overhand many cellars of castle towers were enter via trapdoors and ladders. Stairs can weaken walls and are expensive to build so this is a sensible thing to do. Later romantics often identify these cellars as oubliettes with no evidence of their use as such. A fine example of this is at Pembroke Castle http://www.castlewales.com/pembroke.html where a cellar just below the William Marshall's http://www.castlewales.com/marshall.html solar is identified as a 'dungeon' wereas, it appears to me, that the lord of castle as large as Pembroke would be unlikely to want smelly and noisy prisioners that close to his private rooms but it would be a secure place to keep valubles under close supervision.
This having been said it was certainly possible that cellars in castles were used as prision cells and that, on occassions, prisoners were put in such cellars and left to starve to death (a process that can take several months if their is an adequate water supply, I can imagine a prisoner licking the dampness from the walls to try to quench their thirst if they were truely 'forgotten').
Good luck with your project.

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Neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them,
Psychiatrists charge the rent, art therapists do the interior design
and nurses clean out the garderobes!