stirling-1963-vol-1/05_159

Transcription

No. 130 -- ECCLESIASTICAL MONUMENTS -- No. 130
The tower contains three storeys and rises to a height
of 64 ft. at the parapet-walk. A stair-turret, ascending
from ground level at the NE. corner, rises approximately
a further 18 ft. to the summit of a cap-house (infra). The
tower is faced with ashlar both inside and outside. It is
strengthened by buttresses (Pl. 15 B), which rise, at the
corners and in the middle of each side-wall, from a
heavily splayed base-course; string-courses return all
round the walls in continuation of the sills of the first-
and second-floor windows. In the lower part each
buttress is broken by a weather-tabling and from the
first string-course, where it thins slightly, to the height
of the windows each is chamfered on the angles between
carved stops; above the second string-course only the
middle buttresses are carved and stopped in this way and
all finish in gabletted tops against the face of the parapet
wall. The base-course returns all round the building and
its projections, but its section is varied on the E. side
and on the stair-turret by the omission of one or other
of its members. On the E. side an upper string-member
is missing and the base is carried along the turret with
only two single splays to a point near the middle of the
E. face, where it is stopped at a plain projecting stone
in the masonry; thence it continues to the N. re-entrant
angle with the addition of the string. The base is stopped
in a butt against the projecting jambs of the main
entrance in the middle of the S. side, and in a vertical
return on each jamb of a subsidiary door on the E.
The entrance to the tower (Pl. 16 A) is advanced from
the general plane in a gabled projection, 10 ft. 3 in. wide
by 1 ft. 11 in. deep. The masonry has been extensively
renewed. The doorway is 4 ft. 2 in. in width and carries
an equilateral arch with a moulded label stopping on
masks. The outer order has a moulded archivolt which
springs from a shaft, with a water-holding base and a
bell-shaped capital in a nook on each side. The inner
order rises in unbroken continuity from the jambs, which
are worked with a splay, a rebate and a cavetto moulding;
the rear-arch is segmental; the sconcheons are chamfered
on the arrises. Mackison mentions a bar-hole to the
right of the door, ¹ but this is no longer visible. Just above
the opening a cornice runs round the projection and
defines the base of the steep-sided, triangular gablet;
this has moulded tabling on the rakes and a trilobed
finial at the apex. In the tympanum there is a niche with
an attached shaft on each jamb and a moulded trefoil-
arched head. A label moulding returns as a short string-
course at springing-level, and bifurcates above to form
a small gablet with a trilobed finial at the apex. The
middle buttress on this side rises from the apex of the
larger gablet and the whole is reminiscent of the S.
portico to the lower church in Glasgow Cathedral. ² The
smaller doorway in the E. side (Pl. 15 B) is now blocked
up and its rear-arch, in the outer face of the tower, has
been renewed, but otherwise it seems to be original. It
opened from the inside under a chamfered and shouldered
arch similar to others in the doors and the backs of the
windows of the staircase. What purpose it served in the
first place is doubtful, as there is no trace of tusking for
any original structure adjoining the outer face of the
tower at this point, the wall-face being complete as it
stands, with a base-course and buttresses. At some later
period, however, the doorway led into a narrow outshot,
the exposed foundations of which show that it measured
about 22 ft. 6 in. by 10 ft. 6 in. within walls which were
2 ft. 8 in. thick in front and between 4 ft. and 5 ft. at the
ends. This addition evidently abutted against the tower,
and high up on the face of the latter there are traces of a
horizontal raggle indicating the top of its penthouse roof.
The tower-rooms are lit by single and double pointed
windows finished with a moulded label, carved stops,
heavily chamfered rybats and splayed jambs; a single
lancet, however, on the E. side of the first floor, has no
hood-mould. The turret-stair is lighted by means of
long narrow slits, 3 in. in width, internally splayed, and in
others with a straight lintel. On the ground floor three
of the five lancets are blind, and the two that penetrate
the walling, on the N. and W. sides respectively, have
semicircular rear-arches. In each of the N., E. and S.
walls of the floor above there is a lancet, and in the W.
one there are two pointed and mullioned double-light
windows with foliated tracery in their heads. The rear-
arches of the former are completed with a pointed and
chamfered rib discontinuous at the springing. The latter
occupy the wider bays of two three-bay arcades filling
the whole of the spaces between the buttresses under an
intermediate string-course. Attached shafts separate the
bays, and the label mouldings are stopped on cherub
heads at the intersections. The rear-arch of each window
is shouldered and pointed, and chamfered only above
the cusping, and the embrasures of two of the windows
retain stone seats. The bell-chamber, which occupies
the second floor, is well lit from each cardinal point by
shafted and mullioned two-light windows, one on each
side of the middle buttress; each is furnished with stone
seats, and has pointed rear-arches with chamfered arrises
stopped at the springing-level. All the windows have been
greatly restored.
The parapet is crenellated but the upper courses of
masonry and the stepped merlons between the embrasures
have been renewed. The lower courses are original and
are borne on a row of corbels ornamented with human
masks. Except on the S., where they may have been
destroyed, gargoyles have drained the surface water
from the walk. On the E. side the S. gargoyle is carved
with a grotesque animal head and the N. one, which
must be an insertion, is wrought in the shape of a cannon;
two on the N. side have animal heads and both of those
on the W. side are halves of human figures. Above the
parapet-walk a cap-house terminates the stair-turret at
the NE. corner. The cap-house (Pl. 15 D) rises vertically
for 7 ft. to the underside of a cornice, and in a further
height of 11 ft. or so it tapers as a spire to the bottom of a
floriated finial at the apex. Up to a point about the level
of the parapet-walk the turret is octagonal but, above a
splayed intake here, it develops into a heptagonal figure,

1 Op. cit., 116.
2 Eccles. Arch., ii, fig. 585 on p. 179.

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