Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 1.djvu/479

 EDINBURGH CASTLE 459 THIRD PERIOD the drawing for convenience. It belongs to the same building, and indicates when it was erected, but its real position is on the north eleva- /J& -== FIG. 399. Edinburgh Castle. Entrance to Queen Mary's Room. FIG. 400. Edinburgh Castle. Doorway to Staircase Turret. tion, shown on the left-hand side of Fig. 398, and is referred to further on. The whole of the east elevation of the courtyard (shown in Fig. 398) is built with fragments from old buildings, and is entirely a thing of shreds and patches. The upper part of the tower above the roof is modern. The two corbelled projections opposite the eastern windows of this division are noteworthy. It is said that they supported balconies, to which access could be got from the windows, but it seems probable that they were originally intended to support oriel windows, such as that in the private apartments at Linlithgow, which was of a similar character (see Linlithgow). The oriels however not having been completed, the projecting bases were utilised as balconies, the holes for the iron rail- ings of which are visible in the window rybats. A somewhat similar balcony exists at Crichton Castle. The corbels of the original parapet on the exterior of the east front show, as already mentioned, that the building was formerly a story lower