The wormways or wormwalks are a multitude of tunnels beneath Castle Black. They connect all the buildings of Castle Black through subterranean walkways, which are primarily used in winter, when the surface lies under tens of feet of snow and ice. Being subterranean, the wormways are dark and cold and have to be lighted by candles which are housed in wall niches at the sides of the walkway.
The wormways not only consist of tunnels but also of several subterranean rooms and spaces, used for different purposes like storage and, maybe most importantly, food preservation. The wormways also house the library of Castle Black.
Seemingly a vast network, the Stewards of the Nights Watch are probably most knowledgeable about the wormwalks, since they constantly have to move between the storage rooms and the facilities that need to be supplied with whatever was asked for.
Food supplies and storage
There are multiple storage rooms for food alone, each with a solid oakwood door locked by a plate sized iron padlock.
In the granaries are barrels and sacks of oat, wheat an barley, as well as already grounded floor.
The root cellars holds strings of onions and garlic, as well as bags of carrots, parsnips, radishes and turnips.
One storeroom alone is for the cheese, filled with wheels of cheese so large only two men can move them.
Another room holds all the food made preservable by salt, like salt pork, salt beef, salt mutton or salt cod, while yet another room holds all the spices like cloves, cinnamon, parsley and blocks of salt.
There is of course also a room for all the fruit, another one for nuts, a room for dry smoked meat and fish and one each for pickled food and oils.
The largest room however is one well below the Wall were it is coldest, which holds all the freshly slaughtered and skinned meat, be it hunted or raised in the barn: Elk, deer, beef, swine, sheep or goats. Carcass after carcass is hanging in this room, that Jon describes being as long as Castle Blacks great hall, which can house all the brothers at once after all.
(I can't help but feel hungry after writing this age... Damn you, George, with your detailed descriptions of food!)
Bowen Marsh, the Lord Steward, assumes that with all these rooms filled, he might feed the Watch for three or four years of winter, which is not a lot if you consider in what sad state the Watch is. The wormways must be a huge network if it used to be able to store enough food for the Watch at its height. And I can't shake the thought that the wormways might stretch the entire way beneath the Wall and might even have an exit/entrance on the other side.
Anyway, the Wall is not only a defensive structure, but also the biggest freezer in existence!
Library
The wormways not only contain the entire (food) storage space, but also the vast and ancient library of Castle Black.
It is said to hold thousands of books, but nobody can say how many there are in total, because most of the library is falling apart. In the few instances we get a view of the library, it is described as dark, cold and dusty with an infestation of mice and possibly rats.
However that may be, it holds s from way before the Conquest and possibly from since the time things were written down, since the Night's Watch predates the arrival of the Andals by centuries if not millennia.
It is probably also the biggest collection of books and scripts apart from maybe the Citadel in Oldtown, but again, nobody can tell, because none of the books are catalogized anywhere and only Aemon and Sam seem to know their way around at least a little. So much forgotten and unknown knowledge, it's just sad!
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