Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 2.djvu/147

 KELLIE CASTLE 131 - FOURTH PERIOD main stair to the first floor, at which level it terminates. As is generally the case at this period, the principal stair to the first floor is a handsome square stair, with steps nearly 7 feet wide. The stair is continued to the upper floor, as a corkscrew, in a turret (already referred to) corbelled out in the re-entering angle. There is another entrance towards the north (see Plan), which opens into a passage running through the house, and giving access to the kitchen, with its large fireplace. At the end of this passage is a project- ing staircase tower, already referred to in connection with the north-east tower. This stair leads to the first and second floors, and is continued above that level in an angle turret. Another projecting staircase, with a similar arrangement at the top, exists a little to the west of this. The various wings and " ekes " to the north and west seem to have been made at different times, as additional accommodation was required ; and, as each portion was added, a staircase was provided in connection with it to give access to the upper floors. This was the plan invariably adopted before the introduction of corridors or passages leading to the various rooms on each floor. In the above points the plan of Kellie forcibly recalls that of Elcho. These staircase towers, with other projections, and the various angle turrets and tall chimneys, all contribute to make the north side of Kellie singularly quaint and pleasing group of buildings (Fig. 588). There are in all four stairs from the ground floor to the first floor, and le turret stair commences at this level where the main stair terminates, thus preserving the same number of stairs to the top. On the first floor is the hall, or modern drawing-room, 49^ feet long 21 feet wide. The rooms communicate through each other. Mr. Seton, in his Scottish Heraldry, page 105, says, in the drawing- mi ceiling " we find the paternal arms of Erskine in thejirst and fourth quarters of the coat of Alexander, third Earl of Kellie, impaled with that )f his first Countess, Mary Kirkpatrick (c. 1660)." " It is to this Earl," remarks Professor Lorimer, "that we owe the coach- roofed ceiling bearing his arms, with the date 1676 ; that in the great hall with similar heraldic devices and the same date ; and probably that in the adjoining room, and the still more beautiful one with a rich fruit pattern, and which formerly had a circular picture in the centre, in the bedroom adjoining the first mentioned. Though they fall into the time of the third Earl, they were executed in the last year of his life, when he was probably a very old man, and as some of the arms are those of the wives of the fourth Earl, they ought perhaps rather to be ascribed to him." The dining-room adjoining the hall is particularly interesting from the number of pictures of a decorative character, painted in oil, in the panels, all preserved by Professor Lorimer from the destruction which had almost overtaken them.