Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 1.djvu/457

 DIRLETON CASTLE 437 THIRD PERIOD attacked. On the east side there is a great range of buildings, with an enormously thick outer wall (Fig. 382). Part of the basement floor is hollowed out of the solid rock, and the great and irregular thickness of the east wall may have been caused by some inequality in the foundations. The basement is lofty and vaulted (section, Fig. 383), and contains the bakery, with ovens and draw-well and large vaulted cellars. Above the FIG. 381. Dirleton Castle. Section. bakery is the kitchen, which is very lofty (Fig. 383), and is vaulted, with a ventilation opening formed in the roof. It has two great fireplaces, and a service room leading to the hall. The hall has been 72 feet long by 25 feet wide, and had probably an open timber roof. The screens, with minstrels' gallery, would be at the south end, and the dais, with fireplace, at the north end. At the screens there is a stair leading down to a hatch in the vault of the bakery, by which the viands could be sent up, and there is a small pantry next the hall, where they could be kept. There is also a handsome stone seat in the screens, with a carved canopy. At the north end are the apartments of the lord, having a stair com- municating with the hall and the cellars on one side, and on the other side a private outer door and a stair down to the prison or guard-room (shown on Fig. 383, and also on Fig. 89, p. 114), beneath which, for the more dangerous culprits, there is a dungeon entered from a hatch in the floor. In the lord's room there is an ambry, which has had some good carving round it, but it has been sadly destroyed. The private room has also a window overlooking the cellar, from which orders and instructions might be given. The same kind of window communicating with the cellar