Field Visit

Date 12 May 1925

Event ID 1099023

Category Recording

Type Field Visit

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1099023

RCAHMS County Inventory: Fife, Kinross and Clackmannan

Ravenscraig Castle.

This castle, which was begun in 1460, occupies a very bold and exposed site. The rocky promontory on which it stands juts out into Kirkcaldy Bay, rising sheer on the western side to a maximum height of some 80 feet above the sands, and falling to the eastern shore in a series of steep terraces. At the seaward end ascent has originally been possible, though difficult, and accordingly at certain places the upper part of the rock has been scarped to a perpendicular face, to prevent access. The site is considerably lower than the ground to landward, from which it has been separated on the eastern side by a gully. From the point where this natural defence ends, a ditch, which is cut through the emerging rock as it nears the western flank, has been carried right across. It has been spanned by a permanent bridge, supported on a segment of rock left for the purpose in front of the entrance. At sometime or other a low outbuilding, possibly a stable, was built in front of the castle, partly on this platform of rock.

The lay-out of the castle has been adapted to its site, the principal buildings being placed along the landward base of the promontory and the domestic offices etc. disposed along its eastern side and outer end. On the western side was a wall completing the enclosure of the courtyard. The front forms an oblong block flanked by semi-circular terminal towers. Owing to irregularities of the surface, the towers are founded at different levels. The western one is the higher, but the two were probably intended to be roughly similar, for it is obvious that the castle has not been completed to the original design. This tower is set back from the cliff edge and has been built as a unit, although there is nothing to suggest that it is either earlier or later than the other, and the original work on it seems to have stopped at the wall-head, leaving everything above that to be completed in the 16th or 17th century. The main block and the eastern tower have been begun together and carried up one storey above the general level of the site, where a temporary roof was inserted in the tower pending its completion. After a considerable interval, operations were resumed, and the front wall of the main block was raised in a slightly thinner wall to the height originally intended, merely, how-ever, to serve as a screen, for the other walls of the main block do not seem to have been raised. Some time in the 17th century, the eastern tower was completed with a parapet and walk at a lower height than the wall-head of the front wall of the main block.

On the east side the buildings dip low and are accommodated to the varying levels of the site, an adaptation which involved so much under-building that at a later date, when that side came to be continued, the buildings were placed farther inwards on the rock.

The stone employed has been partly quarried on the site and partly obtained from the neighbouring cliffs, the western tower being a hard greyish freestone, which has withstood the weather much better than the lighter-coloured material used for the rest of the building. The masonry of the main buildings is ashlar in 13-inch courses, mainly cubical, and little difference can be seen between the original and the later masonry. The walls of the towers are unusually thick, while those of the courtyard are thin and of rubble. On the front of the main block and also on the towers are two splayed intake-courses, all at different levels. The principal entrance, which has a semi-circular head, heavily chamfered like the jambs, is in the centre. There has been no drawbridge and no portcullis. On either side of the entrance are narrow lights, keyhole-shaped, and there are similar lights in the towers and in the lower part of the west wall of the courtyard. The original masonry of the front stops four courses above the head of the entrance; the upper part of the front contains embrasures for small guns; the wall-head has had no parapet but terminates in a cavettoed cornice borne on corbels. From where this wall-head abuts on the west tower, the tower wall is set very slightly inward, change the reason for which is not clear. The wall-head of the west tower is tabled for protection from the weather, the superstructures rising on the inner face of the walls. The windows of this tower to west and south are fairly large and are chamfered on jambs and lintels; there are, of course, no windows to the east, as this side would have been covered by the main block, had it been completed.

At the entrance to the castle are two doors, the outer of which has a bar-hole. These open into a barrel-vaulted transe or arched passage, on the east side of which, just within, is porter's room, a vaulted chamber with fireplace and cupboard. Directly ahead the courtyard is approached through an arched doorway with semicircular head and a single door. Within the courtyard on either side the doorway is the entrance to a vaulted storehouse. In its eastern corner is the entrance to the east tower, a vaulted passage, off which straight stair descends on the right to the lower part, comprising two storeys below the court-yard level. The higher of these is a single chamber, which has had a fireplace in the north gable, windows looking east, set in deep embrasures furnished with seats, and a garderobe at the south-east corner. The lower storey is a vaulted cellar containing the well, which has been cut through the rock and is now filled in. At the inner end of the vaulted passage, one doorway gives access to the second floor, and another to a turnpike rising to the third floor and parapet walk, both constructed in the 17th century.

The upper part of the frontal block, between the towers, has been entered from the same turnpike and is a mere platform, but, if the original intention had been realised, this would have been a suitable position for the Hall. The embrasures in which the gun-loops are set are widely splayed and have each a little aumbry on one side, while in the breasts provision is made for a gun-mounting, as on the fore-building of Dunnottar Castle, Kincardine.

The west tower is four storeys and an attic in height. The entrance lies within a little courtyard, formed apparently to screen the latrines, when these, about the 17th century, were placed at the north-west angle of the courtyard. The ground floor opens directly off the courtyard, and is a single chamber covered with a barrel-vault. To east and west are narrow lights, reduced in size some years ago, when the apartment was used as an ammunition store. The main entrance to the tower, which is on the first floor, is reached from a forestair, at one time roofed but now ruinous. It opens on the foot of a turnpike, situated in the south east corner, which gives direct access to all the upper floors. Each floor contains a single chamber lit from south and west, the windows having deep embrasures provided with seats. In the thick walls to north and east are mural chambers, and on each floor there are garderobes at the south-west corner. The fireplaces, which are large but unusually plain, are either in the north or in the east wall.

The fragments of detached buildings at the seaward end of the courtyard represent the kitchens and other offices.

HISTORICAL NOTE. - Ravenscraig or Ravensheugh Castle was built originally for Mary of Gueldres, the Queen of James II. The lands including the site were acquired by the Queen in March 1460, their original possessors receiving an equivalent in lands belonging to her elsewhere (1). The master of works for the building was David Boys and to him or his assistant, a chaplain named Robert Spanky, sums amounting to £600 are recorded to have been paid (2). Fourteen great timbers called "geistis" (joists) were supplied for the building from the woods on the banks of Allan Water (3). In 1461 the structure was sufficiently advanced to accommodate the Queen's Steward and other servants, who stayed there for 25 days (4). Queen Mary died on 1 December 1463, and seven years later (12 September 1470) King James III granted the castle with the neighbouring lands to William, Earl of Caithness and Lord St. Clair, in partial recompense for the castle of Kirkwall and the earldom of Orkney (5).

RCAHMS 1933, visited 12 May 1925.

(1) Reg. Mag. Sig., s.a., Nos. 746, 747. (2) Exchequer Rolls, vii, pp. 59, 77, &c. (3) Ibid., pp. 59, 63. (4) Ibid., pp. 78, 82. (5) Reg. Mag. Sig., s.a., No. 996.

Cf. also Cast. and Dom. Arch., i, p. 538.