Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 2.djvu/264

 FOURTH PERIOD 248 - INCHOCH CASTLE level. Probably the new apartment was used as a dining-room, as there is a private service stair between it and the kitchen. The private room in the northern tower has very massive walls, a deeply bayed window containing stone seats, and an ambry in the wall. The exterior (Fig. 702) is very plain and simple. The corbelled angle turrets, however, present this peculiarity, that the corbels do not die away regularly into the wall in the ordinary manner, but, after three courses, there is a sudden break, and some much smaller corbels, with a different radius, are introduced to finish off the design. The eaves of the north-west turret are finished with a corbelled course, as if to carry a parapet. Possibly this tower, with its massive strength and battlemented top, has been intended for a kind of citadel and watch-tower, like those of Burgie, etc. In drawings of this castle made by Mr. Nattes at the end of last century the south-east tower is shown as being then complete. It was finished with a parapet resting on an ornamental corbel table, and the staircase turret was carried up above the parapet and finished with a stone roof. Inchoch stands on a rising ground in the flat plain which extends along the south side of the Moray Firth. It is about equidistant from Nairn and Brodie Stations, and is well seen from the railway. BALLONE CASTLE, ROSS-SHIRE. This picturesque ruin stands on the edge of the precipitous coast of the German Ocean, at the extreme eastern point of land jutting out between the Dornoch and Moray Firths, and culminating in Tarbetriess. Its history is little known, but it is supposed to have been built by the Earls of Ross. It was more recently occupied by the Earls of Cromarty, and the Mackenzies of Ardloch-Assynt, but has been uninhabited for two hundred years. It is here given as one of the most successful and effective examples of the plan with two diagonally opposite towers (Fig. 703). The mode in which the corbelled stair turrets are carried up, together with the fine corbelling of the angle turrets of the main building, give a very pleasing and varied effect to the design. The angle turrets of the main building are remarkable. The corbelling is of a very unusual character, while the mode in which some of them are finished on top, without any turret rising above the eaves of the main roof (Fig. 704), is an admirable example of the mode in which the turrets were pushed out by the increasing gable, as above commented on. The plan (Fig. 705) is similar to Kilcoy (another Ross-shire castle of the Mackenzies) and many other buildings of the same form, but in this