Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 2.djvu/136

 FOURTH PERIOD 120 GLAMIS CASTLE The house, as it at present exists, consists of three blocks, joined diagonally to each other, with a round tower at each extremity. Along 1 this diagonal line, which is truly the front line of the castle, it measures 204 feet (Fig. 578). A range of offices, including kitchen and servants' departments, is placed on the east side, arranged round a courtyard, and at the north-west angle of this courtyard, on the level of the great hall, is the chapel, the room beneath which is a private sitting-room. These buildings are all comparatively modern, and of a very common appearance externally, and, with the exception of the chapel, are omitted from the plan. Entering by the doorway in the central tower, a few steps lead down to the basement floor, containing the old kitchen, with a large fireplace, at the south-west comer of the south wing, which belongs to the seventeenth century. On the basement floor, in the thickness of the east wall of the keep, there is a well with a built aper- ture (Fig. 578) leading up to the first and second floors. A turnpike stair from the ground floor to the first floor starts opposite the well, and was doubtless the original stair of communication before Glamis was altered and extended. The first floor is vaulted, and contains the lower or common hall, 51 feet by 18 feet, lighted with five windows, but having no fireplace, with a private room adjoining in the wing, and several mural chambers in the thickness of the walls. In the west wing, which is a modern building, and entering from the lower hall, is the dining- room and its connections, and in the other wing various family rooms. The second floor contains the great hall (Fig. 578), of which a fine view is given in Billings' Baronial Antiquities of Scotland. It measures 54 feet by 21 feet 6 inches. This is a noble apartment, and no wonder Earl Patrick in his Book of Record speaks of it as " my great hall, which is a room that I ever loved." It is lighted by two great windows, deeply recessed in the walls, which are 8 feet in thickness, and has a large fireplace in the centre of the south wall. In a mural chamber in the thickness of the central wall is the well-room, with the circular aperture for water-supply from the well above referred to, and the private room is beyond this, in the original south wing. The comparatively modern south-east and north-west wings, which now go no higher than this floor, contain the ordinary family rooms of a large mansion. In the upper floors of the central block are bedrooms, there being some nine or ten rooms on each floor (Fig. 581). The great staircase goes as high as the floor over the hall, above which level the tower is occupied with a room, provided with a quaintly corbelled oriel. This staircase is KAN OF UPfER FLOOR FIG. 581. Glamis Castle. Plan of Bedroom Floor.