Writing ca. 1674 of a visit he made to the castle 60 years earlier, Edward Sandford recalled: "The hall I have seen 100 feet long; and the great portraiture of King Brute lying in the end of the roof of this hall, and of all his succeeding successors kings of England, portraicted to the waist, their visage, hats, feathers, garbs, and habits, in the roof of this hall; now translated to Naword [Naworth] Castle, where they are placed in the roof of the hall, and at the end thereof' (quoted in Taylor <em>Old Manorial Halls</em> 268--9).