Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 1.djvu/390

THIRD PERIOD 370 ROSSLYN CASTLE a gatehouse with round turrets facing the bridge, of which the corbelling and some courses of masonry still remain (Fig. 318). On the east side of the gateway the ruins of a square tower may still be traced, while broken walls indicate the existence of buildings on the west. The keep, which is situated at the opposite or southern end of the courtyard, and on the highest part of the ground, is the oldest part of the castle. Its west wall stands entire up to the corbelling of the parapet, and part of its south wall remains to the same height. Of its interior arrangements little can now be learned. It was arched on the ground floor, and was five stories in height ; the principal entrance was at the level of the first or hall floor on the side furthest away from the bridge, where one of the jambs of the doorway may still be observed. The entrance to the ground floor cannot now be determined, owing to the mass of ruins occupying the space, and for the same reason the width of the keep is unknown. Its length, however, can be clearly ascertained to be 50 feet 3 inches. The south-west corner of the keep is rounded, and the corbels of the side and end walls stop at the round which, with a plain face, was evidently continued higher than those walls as a staircase turret to the roof. According to Father Hay, the historian of the family of St. Clair, this keep was erected about the end of the fourteenth century by Henry St. Clair, Earl of Orkney. Continuing northwards, in a line with the keep, was what Father Hay calls the chapel, of which the west wall only now remains. It is of a singular description, being composed of eight buttresses or " rounds/' as they are called, wedge shaped on plan, with rounded outer faces (Figs. 317 and 320). These are placed 2 feet apart at the wall r and project 5 feet 4 inches. The existing remains give no indications of how the rounds were finished at the top, but Father Hay, whose life covered nearly the whole of the seventeenth century, thus de- scribes them : " He (William St. Clair) builded the church walls of Rosslyn, having rounds, with fair chambers and galleries thereon." From this description it seems probable, either that arches were thrown from " round " to " round," and a gallery continued along the top, or that a parapet ran round the wall-heads of the buttresses as well as the top of the wall, in which case the former The FIG. 320. Rosslyn Castle. 1 Rounds " of the Wall of Enceinte.