Year: 1961
Type: article
Abstract: DUFFUS CASTLE, in Morayshire, is one of the finest examples in Scotland of an early Norman stronghold on the motte and bailey plan, in which a stone tower has subsequently been imposed upon the motte, and the palisades enclosing the bailey replaced by a stone curtain wall.Rait Castle, in the adjoining shire of Nairn, is an excellent example of a small medieval hall-house, showing architectural detail that closely links it with Duffus.Morton Castle in Nithsdale is another example of a hall-house, larger and more massive than Rait, and possessing the additional feature of a gatehouse, regularly defended.Here again there are constructional details strongly resembling similar features at Rait and Duffus.In previous accounts of these three buildings, 1 1 have assigned them to the latter part of the fourteenth century.This dating was more or less in accordance with the authoritative views expressed by Messrs MacGibbon and Ross, in their standard work on The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland, and (more recently) by the late Dr Mackay Mackenzie in his Rhind Lectures on The Medieval Castle in Scotland.Dr Mackenzie in particular held the view that such stone hall-houses -or 'palaces' in old Scottish parlance (palatium=hall in medieval Latin) -do not appear in Scotland before the fifteenth century.It should, however, be stated that at Kindrochit Castle in Braemar excavation has recovered the plan of a hall-house which can be dated, on good documentary evidence, at least as far back as the seventies of the fourteenth century. 2 Dr Mackenzie's views as to the dates of this group of early hall-houses were doubtless influenced by his strong conviction as to the scarcity of domestic structures in stone and lime in Scotland before the Wars of Independence.It is, however, difficult to believe that the kings and the noble patrons who, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, were erecting, or helping to erect, cathedrals, monasteries, and parish churches up and down the country, in architectural quality, if not indeed in size, fully abreast of current work in France and England, should not have been able also to provide themselves with castles or halls in stone and lime.In point of fact, evidence has been rapidly accumulating, in recent years, that the late dating proposed by Dr Mackenzie for a number of our early stone castles, and adopted in the volumes of the Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments produced while he was the Commission's secretary, must now be reconsidered.Thus few scholars today would probably accept his strange contention that the Rothesay Castle through whose walls the Norse besiegers hewed their way in 1230
Author: W Douglas Simpson
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4322735678