Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 2.djvu/77

 TOWER OF REPENTANCE 61 FOURTH PERIOD that of using the stones from the old chapel in building Hoddam House. 1 The tower appears to us however to contain internal evidence of its purpose and history. It is, in short, a watch or signal tower, erected on the most commanding position for seeing and being seen. FIG. 528. Tower of Repentance. View from the South-West. This supposition accounts for the remarkable site chosen for it. The same reason may have led to the chapel, which no doubt at one time occupied the site, being placed there. The tower occupies the highest and most commanding point on the hill- top for a signal-tower. This happens to be in the churchyard, and so the tower thus chances to be in that anomalous position. The small dimen- sions and the internal arrangements indicate that it was not built as a dwell- ing-house, and the open parapet walk (an unusual feature in the seven- teenth century), together with the stone roof and the beacon chimney or turret, are evidently provided for the purpose of watching and signalling. The style of the doorway to the parapet, the form of the cornice of the beacon, and the corbel table of the parapet, all point to a date well on in the seventeenth century. The tower was probably erected after the Castle of Hoddam was built or restored, as an outpost to give warning of approaching danger. 1 In the travels of Bishop Pococke, about to be published for the first time by the Scottish Historical Society, our attention has been kindly drawn by the Editor, Mr. D. William Kemp, to the following remarks on this tower by the Bishop : " From this place I went up to a tower on a hill called Repentance. It was built by a Maxwel who had committed great ravages against Queen Mary, but afterwards became a papist and built this for a beacon, and put up in Saxon characters over the door Repentance."