Bat in the Tea Shop

After several castle-less weeks, Janet and I made up for it yesterday. On thursday we had one of those moments where, having let a couple weeks slide by without talking, we both decided at the same time it was time to plan a castle trip--I called Janet just as she was planning to call me as soon as she got home. She delegated me to plan a trip (a dangerous move, but it worked out fine!). Since I was out in internet cafe land I didn't have my member's handbook with me, so I decided to simply use the webpage...and it was fortunate I did since I stumbled on to the fact that Rowallan castle is only open 10 days a year (plus three additional Saturdays) and Friday was to be day #10. So, of several possible routes, the decision had been made. I scouted out the presence of a few other Historic Scotland sites in the same direction and reported to Janet with my progress. And for once, everything went to plan!!

We were both a bit sleep deprived. I had a fiction-related allnighter just two nights previous and then only managed four hours of sleep the night before our Friday expedition. Janet too was tired, but excitement carried us through and off we set Southeast for Ayrshire.

Rowallan Old Castle (apparently as opposed to Rowallan New Castle which we did not see) is well worth a visit if you can manage it. The property appears to be maintained by Historic Scotland but owned by a landlord who holds the larger estate the castle is situated on, and the landlord does not seem best pleased with people coming around to see the castle. It seems he's agreed only to the minimum number of open days to still have HS maintain the castle, and provides no parking at all and is, reportedly, consistently cranky about the whole thing (this from some gossip from someone at one of the other castles later in the day). We did have our own brief encounter with someone who certainly fit his description, but escaped unscathed.

But as I said, Rowallan Castle is certainly worth a visit. It is apparently possible to arrange a viewing at other times, though given the above, I don't know how difficult that might prove to be. The castle was built and remodeled and added to over the 13th-18th centuries on a site that has archaeological evidence back to the bronze age (they showed us a nice pot decorated with nicely done typically-bronze age zig-zags and dots that was found on site). It is built on a hill, though not the highest hill in the region. The majority of the surviving castle is 16th-17th century. A bit more than a third--oddly the oldest and the youngest parts of the castle, though both on the same side--is ruined, the side that when facing the entrance is off to your right (east). Front right was the original towerhouse which would have been three or four stories high. You can still see parts of the second floor and bits of a fireplace, but mostly only the "ground" floor remains. Because of the way the hill is situated the ground floor of the towerhouse is nearly as high up as the second floor of the building across the way (which in turn has one of those basements that is completely underground on the courtyard side but has gunloop windows on the far side.

The surviving section of the castle are really more of a fortified manor house than a strategic castle, and there are really interesting indication of how the style of living shifted through the aras when it was lived in by a family and household. The really amazing thing about this castle are the relatively rare survivals in the better preserved section of the castle. There is still woodwork--not just doors but banisters and built-in cupboards and the like. There is is plaster and even paint in a number of places. There is an exceedingly rare kind of temporary wall--I've completely forgotten the name of it, but it basically consists of "bricks" made of straw and mud slotted into a thin wooden framework and then plastered over. Once plastered it wouldn't have looked any different from the plastered stone walls, but it would go up easy and go down just as easy. These two walls were put up to divide a larger room into two bedrooms. It has deteriorated just enough in one of the bedrooms that you can see the bricks and the wooden framework of most of it, plaster clinging only to a small section. Very suceptable to the damp, these walls don't often survive in Scottish castles, and our tour guide said she didn't know of another one in Scotland and has asked every tour group to go through if they've ever seen one--so far one man had seen one in England, and that's it. They're not quite sure when that particular wall was put up. Probably 17th or 18th century, so not medieval, but still very cool.

One of the things that very much sparked my interest was the "Woman's House." This section of the main building has it's own entrance and is the last part of the south side of the castle to be built, extending a little along the west as well. From that entrance there isn't access to the "ground" floor--that space was accessible through the main set of rooms though we didn't get to go in there. Instead you get faced with a stairway leading up and down. The upstairs room is one of the most light and airy in the whole place and in many ways it looks like it could exist in a tasteful modern house. Hard to tell exactly what is restored and what is original--I think the wood paneling is original, the plaster work was restored and the windows replaced entirely, but that's just my guess. There is a small room off to the side ("dressing room" according to our guide). But while this part was built for one of the owners' (laird?) wives, I really have to wonder if it was really her bedroom (as the presence of a dressing room would certainly indicate) or if it was a salon/sitting room type space or something. Because while it used to be common practice to have separate bedrooms for noble husbands and wives, having to go outside and cross the courtyard to get to the domain of the other is a bit much!

Well, there were some other cool things at Rowallan--the buckles on the stonework come to mind!--but we'll move on with the day. We headed into Kilmarnock for lunch and settled on the visitor center at the Dean Castle Park. In the tea shop/cafeteria we were dive-bombed by a bat!! The poor thing had somehow ended up inside in the middle of the day and was not at all happy about it. He kept swooping all over the place. Occasionally he would briefly land on a wall before streaking off again, but he seemed unable to either settle anywhere nor find his way outside. He was very cute though.

Off we went to peek briefly in Dean Castle. Unfortunately most is closed to tours only (Rowallan too was tours only) and we were a bit too nackered to face another 45 minute tour. It looked like a very cool castle though, of similar eras (mostly Renaissance I'd guess) built on a somewhat larger scale. I was impressed with the covered walkways running along the inside of the upper level around the courtyard. And they have a proper well rather than a hole in the ground like so many have been reduced to.

Then it was off to Dundonald Castle, "cradle of the Stewarts." This was far more ruined than the other two. 15th century. And it's history (inevitably I suppose, being so close) was twined with that of Rowallan. Elizabeth Mure came from the family at Rowallan. She was the first wife of Robert, then High Steward of Scotland and later King Robert II. She bore him quite a few children (ten?) including John who became King Robert III (the name John wasn't going over well, what with John Balliol's severe unpopularity so he changed his name to Robert). She died before Robert II became king, however, so she was never Queen. The Mures continued to make much of their royal connections, though, as is reflected on the imagery on the front of Rowallan Castle.