The Spiral Staircase Myth

The myth of the spiral staircase was invented in 1902 by an art critic called Theodore Andrea Cook. The idea is that spirals were used as a way to get from one floor to another, and it's quite a posh way of doing so. It becomes lodged in people's minds when they read books like Sydney Toy's Colchester Castle guidebook or watch Robin Hood film. But we don't have any citations of the myth whatsoever prior to 1902. And I think also the time that Toy is writing his book - Errol Flynn has run up and down the spiral staircase running down the castle with Basil Rathbone in 1938. So you can go to Colchester and see two interpretations which are