Kilmaronock Castle (4)
This is the east wall of the keep. The bite out of the east side is the hole we looked in though in the previous photo. Notice how part of the line the 'bite' failed along, follows up the line of one of the narrow stair windows. Walls nearly always fail along the lines of windows!
The first feature to notice here is the talus or batter at the foot of the walls. Medieval fortresses used batters a lot, to thicken the walls where beseiging armies might try to dig into them and to deflect boulders dropped from off, laterally into the attackers. In this case however, the widening of the base of the castle's walls probably served no other purpose that to spread castle's weight and prevent subsidence - particularly as we are only a few feet above the Endrick Water here and therefore the water table.
The doorway occupied the upper half of the oblong hole, as can be seen from the sandstone dressings. The rebate around it appears to my amateur eye to have been intended to receive a draw-bridge style door. The pundits always say of tower-houses with upper floor doors that they were "reached by a removable wooden ladder." While I accept that whatever the means of access was, it was made of timber, I suspect that 'ladder' is an over-simplification! Particularly in the case of a second floor doorway. I think that there was a more solid and semi-permanent wooden structure, in this instance involving a removable bridge (drawbridge), probably fixed wooden steps and, if my interpretation of the rebate in the north-east corner of the wall, is correct, perhaps another gate half way down. Conjecture is a wonderful thing!
There is a drain outlet to the right of the door, at what must be floor level. Over the door is an armorial shield with a diagonal stripe, or 'bend dexter'. These were the arms of the Dennistouns, the family that built the tower.
As I started before, the floor below the Hall was occupied at this end by the kitchen. This had a slop drain that emerged through this wall, but it appears to have been in the section of walling missing below the door. The pieces of sandstone towards the bottom of the hole on the right are probably part of it. The slit window to the left would have lit the stair leading from the the Hall level, beside the entrance door, down to the kitchen and the shot-hole below it may have lit the stair down to the prison or just possible have been an air vent for the prison - the drawing doesn't show it.
Kilmaronock Castle (4)
This is the east wall of the keep. The bite out of the east side is the hole we looked in though in the previous photo. Notice how part of the line the 'bite' failed along, follows up the line of one of the narrow stair windows. Walls nearly always fail along the lines of windows!
The first feature to notice here is the talus or batter at the foot of the walls. Medieval fortresses used batters a lot, to thicken the walls where beseiging armies might try to dig into them and to deflect boulders dropped from off, laterally into the attackers. In this case however, the widening of the base of the castle's walls probably served no other purpose that to spread castle's weight and prevent subsidence - particularly as we are only a few feet above the Endrick Water here and therefore the water table.
The doorway occupied the upper half of the oblong hole, as can be seen from the sandstone dressings. The rebate around it appears to my amateur eye to have been intended to receive a draw-bridge style door. The pundits always say of tower-houses with upper floor doors that they were "reached by a removable wooden ladder." While I accept that whatever the means of access was, it was made of timber, I suspect that 'ladder' is an over-simplification! Particularly in the case of a second floor doorway. I think that there was a more solid and semi-permanent wooden structure, in this instance involving a removable bridge (drawbridge), probably fixed wooden steps and, if my interpretation of the rebate in the north-east corner of the wall, is correct, perhaps another gate half way down. Conjecture is a wonderful thing!
There is a drain outlet to the right of the door, at what must be floor level. Over the door is an armorial shield with a diagonal stripe, or 'bend dexter'. These were the arms of the Dennistouns, the family that built the tower.
As I started before, the floor below the Hall was occupied at this end by the kitchen. This had a slop drain that emerged through this wall, but it appears to have been in the section of walling missing below the door. The pieces of sandstone towards the bottom of the hole on the right are probably part of it. The slit window to the left would have lit the stair leading from the the Hall level, beside the entrance door, down to the kitchen and the shot-hole below it may have lit the stair down to the prison or just possible have been an air vent for the prison - the drawing doesn't show it.