Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 1.djvu/411

 KILBIRNIE CASTLE 391 THIRD PERIOD to the top of the arch. It is lighted by three ordinary windows (that in the south wall having by mistake been omitted in plan, but it is shown on the sketch, Fig. 338) and by a window high up in the north wall. In this wall there is a small garde-robe over the passage just described as leading to the dungeon, and a ruined fireplace in the west wall. TMC PLACE OF KILBIRNIE: 7IVR5HIKE FIG. 337. Kilbirnie Castle. Flans and Section. The addition to the castle is a fine specimen of our seventeenth-century architecture ; it is oblong on plan, measuring 74 feet 4 inches by 25 feet 3 inches, with a quaint circular staircase adjoining the old keep (Fig. 338), between which and the modern building there is a communication at the stair landing on the first floor. The old hall may thus have been retained as the dining-room, while the large room in the new building was the drawing-room of the extended castle. At the two corners of the south front (Fig. 339) there are large turrets supported on deep corbelling, ornamented with the dog-tooth ornament, the revival of which is characteristic of this late period. The number of the members and the nearness of the corbelling to the ground are also signs of a late date. These turrets are large enough to form little retiring-rooms.