Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 1.djvu/160

 FIRST PERIOD 140 TARBERT CASTLE has evidently been the basse-cour of the castle. Bruce found it necessary to add this to the original structure in order to make the castle conform to the plan then universally adopted. At the same time he would appear (from the documentary evidence to be hereafter referred to) to have built a hall and a dwelling-house within the walls of the ancient fortress, thus converting the whole into a genuine castle of the thirteenth-century type. Fio. 111. Tarbert Castle. Keep from North-East. The keep already referred to is of late fifteenth-century or early sixteenth- century work, and stands near the centre of the south-east wall of the lower courtyard. It measures 41 feet by 26 feet 3 inches over, and is four stories in height. Up till nearly the middle of this century its four walls were entire, with stairs leading to the various floors, continued round the north, west, and south walls, in the thickness of the walls (as at Hallbar, Coxton, etc.), but about that time nearly all the south-west and south- east walls' fell. The keep (Figs. 109, HO, 111) is now the only portion of Tarbert Castle which bulks largely in the landscape, and it is doubt- less owing to this that it has had conferred on it the honour of being regarded as the castle built by the great Bruce. The entrance (Fig. 108) at the north corner leads directly into the vaulted ground-floor, which is the only part now entire. It measures inside 26 feet by 12 feet 6 inches, and was, when clear of ruins, about 9 feet high. At the south-east end is an arched recess in the wall, 4 feet 9 inches wide by 6 feet deep, having a broad splayed shot-hole for guns. This and a narrow splayed loop in the opposite wall supply all the light on this floor. From the passage leading to the vault, the stair already mentioned