Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 2.djvu/272

 FOURTH PERIOD 256 KILCOY CASTLE a greyhound at one end, and a hare or rabbit at the other. The pediment of one of the dormer windows is lying on the floor beside the fireplace. On the lintel of the fireplace of the private room are carved the letters M. L. The south wall of the hall has the peculiarity of being thinned off, and the upper part supported on two tiers of continuous corbels. Two newel stairs lead to the upper floors ; one starting from the hall, near the landing of the principal staircase, conducts to the more public rooms, the other, beginning in the lobby between the hall and the private room, leads to the family apartments on the floors above. It is corbelled out in the angle of the hall, as shown in the sketch (Fig. 707). The building was four stories in height, and must have contained considerable accommodation on the upper floors. The top story was ornamented with dormer windows (Fig. 708), one or two of which are still preserved. They are in the revived Gothic style of the period, to which allusion has been made in the Introduction to the Fourth Period. Fig. 710 shows one of these on an enlarged scale. The south- east tower is corbelled out above the first floor from the round to the square, so as to contain apartments, and in doing this a portion of the circular wall is allowed to project beyond the square face of the upper portion (Fig. 709), as occurs also in a similar position at Drochil Castle, Peeblesshire. In other respects the elevations are simple, but the castle is tall and massive, and has a commanding effect from a distance. The ruins have been banded together in several places with iron bars, some of which are seen over the fireplace in Fig. 707. Dormer. MUNESS CASTLE, SHETLAND. This castle is situated on the remote island of Unst, in Shetland. It is the most northern specimen of our Scottish Domestic Architecture, and Laurance Bruce, its builder, might well have said, in the words of Longfellow : " So far I live to the Northward, No man lives North of me." As a striking illustration of its high latitude, we may mention that in the month of June, during the midnight hours, we had sufficient natural light to enable us to make our plans and sketches.