Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 1.djvu/190

 SECOND PERIOD 170 DUNDONALD CASTLE up to the first floor of the lower vault. The stair is lighted from a narrow slit carried through a buttress in the north wall (see plan of first floor and Fig. 136A). This buttress was probably only built as a screen for the closet shoots from the upper floors. There is another access to this floor at the south end of the east wall, by a pointed doorway about 15 feet above the level of the ground. This has been at some time a principal entrance doorway, but the arrangements at the doorway in the south wall immediately over the door to the ground floor seem rather to point to FIG. 136A. Dundonalcl Castle. View from North-West. it as the original entrance doorway. It is in close connection with the staircase, and is protected with a small guard-room. From the first floor a cork-screw stair in the south-east angle of the building leads to the upper vault. As already mentioned, there was a second floor in the lower vault, but it did not extend to the south end, probably only over the northern and central chambers of the ground floor, leaving the southern chamber at the main entrance the full height from the first floor level to the vault. In this southern chamber, or entrance hall, as it may be termed, are two singular recessed constructions in the side walls, and