1) An ‘alure’ was a walkway behind the parapets of a castle.
In 1260 the inquisition into the state of Scarborough Castle reported that ‘the battlements and allours’ had deteriorated. The term was used also in churches, and an early entry in the fabric rolls of Ripon records a sum paid in 1379-80 for repairing windows in the clerestory: vij panellis vitreis … in alura superiore emendandis. Similarly: 1394 in alura inter fontem et introitum chori, York. Occasionally the ‘aluring’ might refer to the parapets of a bridge, although examples of its use in any context are rare. The contract for Catterick Bridge in 1422 required it to have a tabelle of hewyn stane under the alluring and it may be no coincidence that the same word has been found in the masons’ contract for Catterick church ten years earlier.