Читать книгу Complete Works - Hamilton Alexander - Страница 19
ОглавлениеKERILAW CASTLE
IN "Cunninghame" (Topographized by Timothy Pont An. 1604- 1608, with Continuations and Illustration Notices by the late James Dobie of Crummock, F.S.A., Scot., edited by his son John Sheddon Dobie, Glasgow, 18761), we find a description of this ancient property.
" Kary-law Castle or Steninstoune Castell, a fair stronge building belonging to ye Earls of Glencairne quoho had ye said Castell barroney parisch and Lordschipe by the marriage of ye Douglass heretrix thereof it belonged in A° 1191 to ye Lockharts."
"The ivy-mantled ruins of Kerilaw Castle show it to have formed in its later days a quadrangular pile of building of about thirty yards square. Its situation on the eastern side of the Stevenston burn is not one of much natural strength, for though the ground around is prettily broken and undulating, the site itself is flat and easily approachable on three sides, while to the rear its walls arose from the edge of the low but rocky and precipitous brink of the stream. This side of the castle has almost entirely disappeared, and was, most probably, the oldest part of the building. The doorway in the northeast front is directly approached through a double line of noble old trees forming a shady avenue of about a quarter of a mile in length. The greater part of this wall, which is still standing, shows few of the defensive accompaniments common to the more ancient baronial buildings, but the lower apartments in it in the corresponding wing have been vaulted. The south-east front, which faces into the present gardens, appears to have been a more modern addition, its central doorway and window on the eastern side being of the Gothic style, and of much larger and airier proportions than those in the wall fronting the avenue; above, in the second story, is a tier of square-headed mullion-divided windows, and the other wall is finished by a battlement. The ancient hall of Kerilaw Castle was said to have been ornamented with the coats-of-arms of the Scottish nobility, taken from the Abbey of Kilwinning after its destruction at the Reformation. If so, retribution has followed on Kerilaw. The spoils of Kilwinning have entirely disappeared, and their existence there is known only by tradition. From Kilwinning, the approach to the present mansion, which stands on the opposite side of the burn, keeps the line of the old avenue, crossing the stream by the bridge thrown over its course immediately underneath the line of the back wall of the ruins."
"This bridge, which detracts somewhat from the sole original strength of the position, adds to the picturesque effect, and the banks of the clear, rapid little stream are here over-arched by wide-spread old forest trees."
