Fairburn Tower (7)
It is easy to imagine why they decided in the 17th century, to build the stair-tower onto the older part of the castle. As mentioned in the previous photograph, the original spiral staircase was particularly small and narrow. The other problem was that, like a lot of these towers, the main entrance was at first floor level, not at ground level. While a doorway reached by a removalble timber stair might have been more secure, it was also inconvenient. The new stair-tower solved both these problems. A new front-door was built, seen here, and the much more commodius stair (all collapsed now) wound up past the old front door at 1st floor level, all the way to the top of the tower where it ended in a small gabled watch-chamber with its own fireplace and chimney.
Two things of interest in this photo - (1) the numerous cracks spreading through the stonework as the stair-tower shifts away from the rest of the building, and (2) how much more the external sandstone has weathered over the last 400 years, than the internal sandstone seen through the doorway.
Fairburn Tower (7)
It is easy to imagine why they decided in the 17th century, to build the stair-tower onto the older part of the castle. As mentioned in the previous photograph, the original spiral staircase was particularly small and narrow. The other problem was that, like a lot of these towers, the main entrance was at first floor level, not at ground level. While a doorway reached by a removalble timber stair might have been more secure, it was also inconvenient. The new stair-tower solved both these problems. A new front-door was built, seen here, and the much more commodius stair (all collapsed now) wound up past the old front door at 1st floor level, all the way to the top of the tower where it ended in a small gabled watch-chamber with its own fireplace and chimney.
Two things of interest in this photo - (1) the numerous cracks spreading through the stonework as the stair-tower shifts away from the rest of the building, and (2) how much more the external sandstone has weathered over the last 400 years, than the internal sandstone seen through the doorway.