This little staircase on the north side of The Norman Tower in Bury St Edmunds has puzzled me for a while. It obviously couldn’t be part of the original 12th century tower.
I recently found a Google ebook called “The Surveyor, Engineer and Architect 1841″ in it is a report by an architect on the current state of the Norman Tower in 1842. He describes the little door in the north wall, and explains that original street level was 5’6” below the level of the door, and that there must have been some kind of staircase leading up to it.
The ground around the tower has since been excavated back to that lower level and presumably this staircase was put in at that time.
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