Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 2.djvu/32

FOURTH PERIOD 16 VARIETY OF PLANS and, contains an extensive suite of state apartments,, comprising the hall, or, as it might now more appropriately be called, the dining-room, a private room or library beyond it, and on the other side of the stair landing a long gallery or withdrawing-room. Galleries of this description were introduced at this period, being one of the features borrowed from England. There are fine examples at Crathes, where the roof is of panelled oak ; at Pinkie and Earl's Hall, where it is painted with the allegorical subjects common at the time; and at Culross Palace there is a similar roof. The variety of the plans of the castles and mansions of the Fourth Period shows that there was at that time great diversity of rank and wealth amongst the Scottish proprietors. While the powerful Baron could entertain royalty in his spacious halls and reception-rooms, the smaller proprietors still dwelt in simple oblong towers or peles exactly similar in accommodation to the keeps of their forefathers. But between these two extremes there were mansions of numerous intermediate stages, indicating the varied circumstances and requirements of many different grades of society. Life in Scotland had now become much more com- plex than in earlier times. There were now no longer only two ranks or conditions of life as there were formerly, viz., the feudal lord and his vassals and serfs. That state of society is represented in Scottish archi- tecture by the towers or keeps of the fourteenth century and the larger castles of the fifteenth century. That similar dwellings still continued to be erected in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries shows that to a large number of the inhabitants the primitive conditions of life remained almost unaltered. The domestic arrangements of the pele towers of the Fourth Period are usually of the most elementary description. The hall is the only public room, and it still serves, as in the olden time, the various purposes of sitting-room, kitchen, and sleeping-room. There is rarely any trace of a separate kitchen in these pele towers. Some of the larger keeps, however, had the distinction of possessing a kitchen apart from the hall. This marks a decided advance in manners. At first the kitchen simply formed a portion of the hall, screened off at the lower end, and furnished with a spacious fireplace. Such was the arrangement at Elphinstone, Newark on Yarrow, Comlongan, etc., where the proprietor, while enter- taining his guests at the upper end of the hall, could watch the progress of the cooking as it proceeded in the great fireplace of the kitchen at the lower end. In the Fourth Period a very large number of castles and houses were built either on the L or the Z plan, and contained every possible variety of accommodation. In these mansions of the intermediate class there is almost invariably a distinct kitchen generally on the ground floor. The remainder of that floor, which is nearly always vaulted, contains cellars, one of which has usually a private stair communicating with the hall.