Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 2.djvu/447

 NEWARK CASTLE 431 FOURTH PERIOD stone (Fig. 869), and forms a support for the floor above. At the side of the hall door in the south-east corner of the room there is a small low closet about 2 or 3 feet above the floor provided with a small spy-window or shot-hole just over the entrance doorway. The upper floor (see Plan of Second Floor) is reached by a separate stair adjoining the landing of the main stair. It is at present an open apartment from end to end of the building, and is 83 feet 9 inches long. This space may have formed a great withdrawing-room or gallery, but was probably used for this pur- pose only on high occasions. It could be easily subdivided, there being checks in the stone-work of the projecting angles for moveable partitions, so as to screen the two wings off from the centre. Each of these has a fireplace, and would thus form a separate and complete apartment. The large central space has two fireplaces, and might also be subdivided into two apartments, the central turret stair giving access to one and the stair over the entrance door to the other. Entering off this floor are several fine turret closets. The barony of Newark came into the possession of the Maxwells about the beginning of the fifteenth century, and the whole building was erected by this family. The keep dates from near the end of the century, probably about the year 1484. The buildings of the third period were erected by Patrick Maxwell, whose monogram occurs frequently cut in the stone-work (Fig. 868). We have seen that the doorway bears the date 1597, while the north-west dormer has 1599- The drawings of the details (Fig. 868), together with the general views, show the encroachment of Renaissance details upon the old Scottish design. We have still the angle turrets and crow-stepped gables, stair turrets with low corbelling, the cable mouldings, etc., of the old style, but the details of the doors and windows and the fireplace of the hall are in the new style, now beginning to be generally employed. About ten years after the keep was built, James iv., in 1495, visited Newark on his way to put down disturbances in the Western Islands. The Maxwells were distantly related to Royalty. Newark is one of the finest specimens of the seventeenth-century architecture of Scotland, and being on the outskirts of a very consider- able town it would surely be possible to find some use to which it could be applied other than an inconvenient residence for a few poor families on the one side, and a receptacle for dirt on the other. From its plan it is well adapted for many modern purposes required by such a community as Port-Glasgow, and from its beauty it ought to be an object of just pride.