Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 1.djvu/372

 THIRD PERIOD 352 BORTHWICK CASTLE The stone gutters on the top of the walls are wide, and afford ample space for the operations of a numerous garrison. Some traces are still visible of the painting with which the vault of the great hall was decorated, but they are fast disappearing. AVONDALE CASTLE, LANARKSHIRE. This building, now reduced to one round tower and fragments of the walls, occupies a lofty isolated mound, with steep rocky slopes on all sides, and nearly surrounded by the Powmillan Burn, a tributary of the Avon. The castle overlooks the town of Strathavon in Lanarkshire, about seven miles south of Hamilton. The town is evidently a place of some antiquity, and its ancient houses, its steep and narrow streets joined with bridges over the burn, the whole surmounted with the ruins of the castle, all combine to form a prospect more than usually picturesque. Avondale Castle seems to have been built by Andrew Stewart, an illegitimate grandson of the second Duke of Albany, who obtained the barony in 1456, and became Lord Avondale in 1457. FIG. 304. Avondale Castle. Plan. The building has apparently been designed on the plan (Fig. 304) of a parallelogram, with two towers at diagonally opposite corners. One of these towers still remains at the north-west angle overlooking the town (Fig. 305). It is circular on plan, and contains large port-holes for guns, with the broad external splay usual in the end of the fifteenth century. A fragment of the cornice, which can still be traced on the small surviving portion of the south wall of the main building (sketch, Fig. 304), is also characteristic of the fifteenth century. A considerable part of the north wall exists, but it has been greatly altered, and now contains few original features. The castle was occupied till 1717 by the Duchess of Hamilton, whose memory is still lovingly cherished by the people of Strathavon. After her Grace's death the