Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 2.djvu/60

FOURTH PERIOD UDNY CASTLE ments are quite different. The entrance door is on the ground floor (not placed, as usual, one or two stories above the ground), and the walls of the basement are pierced with shot-holes of a slightly ornamental form. The entrance door leads to a small lobby, giving access to a kitchen on one hand, and to the newel stair (8 feet in diameter) which runs from top to bottom of the building. The ground floor also contains a cellar, which has a small private stair leading down to it from the hall. These are all arrangements characteristic of a late date, and recalling similar features at Crathes and Cragievar. FIG. 511. Udny Castle. Plans. The early keeps (such as Drum), it will be remembered, are usually approached by a stair down from the first floor only, and generally contain a single vaulted store-place. The windows of Udny are also of very unusual size. We do however find some reminiscences of the earlier plans in the wall chambers on the upper floors, and in the vault- ing of the hall. The hall (27 feet by 21 feet, and 20 feet to the top of the vault) occupies the whole of the first floor. The second floor is also a single large apartment ; but there are two newel stairs leading up to it, so that it was probably divided into two apartments with separate accesses. It should be noted that the ornamental battlement shown on the south elevation exists on that side only, the walls being carried up on the opposite side and at the gables, so as to form apartments. This is certainly an indication of a very late date. Tradition says that this keep was the work of three successive lairds^ and that it ruined them all. The first parts may thus be nearly a