Editing Kenilworth Castle (section)

===Entrance and outer bailey wall===
To the south-east of the main castle lie the Brays, a corruption of the French word ''braie'', meaning an external fortification with [[palisade]]s.<ref>Morris 2010, p.5.</ref><ref group=lower-alpha>An alternative view is that the name "brays" derives instead from a corruption of the word "bays", a medieval word describing a sequence of ponds similar to the lake structure at Kenilworth; see {{harvnb|Thompson|1965|p=158}}</ref> Only earthworks and fragments of masonry remain of what was an extensive 13th-century [[barbican]] structure including a stone wall and an external [[gatehouse]] guarding the main approach to the castle.<ref name="Pettifer, p.258.">Pettifer, p.258.</ref> The area now forms part of the car park for the castle.

Beyond the Brays are the ruins of the Gallery Tower, a second gatehouse remodelled in the 15th century. The Gallery Tower originally guarded the {{convert|152|m|ft|abbr=off|adj=on}} long, narrow walled-causeway that still runs from the Brays to the main castle.<ref>Thompson 1965, p.158.</ref> This causeway was called the Tiltyard, as it was used for tilting, or [[jousting]], in medieval times. The Tiltyard causeway acted both as a dam and as part of the [[barbican]] defences.<ref name="Pettifer, p.258."/> To the east of the Tiltyard is a lower area of marshy ground, originally flooded and called the Lower Pool, and to the west an area once called the [[Mere (lake)|Great Mere]]. The Great Mere has been drained and cultivated as a [[meadow]], but it was originally a large lake covering around {{convert|100|acre|ha|-1}}, dammed by the Tiltyard causeway.<ref>Hull 2009, p.49.</ref>

The [[outer bailey]] of Kenilworth Castle is usually entered through Mortimer's Tower, today a modest ruin but originally a Norman stone gatehouse, extended in the late 13th and 16th centuries.<ref name="Pettifer, p.258."/> The outer bailey wall, long and relatively low, was built mainly by [[King John I of England|King John]]; it has numerous buttresses but only a few towers, being designed to be defended primarily by the water system of the Great Mere and Lower Pool.<ref name="Pettifer, p.258."/> The north side of the outer bailey wall was almost entirely destroyed during the slighting.<ref name="Pettifer, p.258."/> Moving clockwise around the outer bailey from Mortimer's Tower, the defences include a west-facing watergate, which would originally have led onto the Great Mere; the King's gate, a late 17th-century agricultural addition; the Swan Tower, a late 13th-century tower with 16th-century additions, then named after the swans that lived on the Great Mere; the early 13th-century Lunn's Tower; and the 14th-century Water Tower, so named because it overlooked the Lower Pool.<ref>"Pettifer, p.258; Morris 2010, p.24, 29."</ref>