Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 1.djvu/569

 MORTON CASTLE - 549 THIRD 1'ERIOD only part of the building having mouldings from which the date may be ascertained. The arch is pointed, and springs from two rounded pro- jections forming the jambs, against which the arch moulds die away. FIG. 467. Morton Castle. View from the South-West. The position and form of this window recall the similar window at the dais end of the hall of Bothwell Castle, and the mouldings belong to the fifteenth century. There are two windows adjoining,, which probably lighted a wall chamber. Of one of these only one side remains. The window in the upper floor,, in the centre of the north wall, is nearly gone ; only the side and part of the rybats remain, there being a great gap in the centre of the upper part of the wall. At the west end of the hall there was most Ijkely a fine private room over the entrance passage, as the arch stones indicate a large window in this position. There would also be several chambers in the various floors of the two gate-towers. These were no doubt the bed- rooms of the proprietor and his family and guests. This castle possesses several points of interest which connect it with some other remarkable castles, and by comparison enable the archi- tectural history of all these buildings, hitherto somewhat obscure, to be better understood. Tullyallan, for example, would stand quite alone without Morton to illustrate it, and Rait would be in a similar position. But the comparison of the various features of these castles with one another, and with the more ordinary forms of the castles of the period, enables us to assign to them a date, and to connect them with the general architecture of the country. The elongated form of the buildings of these three castles, with the towers at the angles, the small oblong windows of the ground floor in