Stables and other offices occupied another
side of the square. The former were low vaults, with narrow slits instead
of windows, resembling, as Edward's groom observed, 'rather a prison for
murderers, and larceners, and such like as are tried at 'sizes, than a
place for any Christian cattle.' Above these dungeon-looking stables were
granaries, called girnels, and other offices, to which there was access
by outside stairs of heavy masonry. Two battlemented walls, one of which
faced the avenue, and the other divided the court from the garden,
completed the inclosure.
Nor was the court without its ornaments. In one corner was a tun-bellied
pigeon-house, of great size and rotundity, resembling in figure and
proportion the curious edifice called Arthur's Oven, which would have
turned the brains of all the antiquaries in England, had not the worthy
proprietor pulled it down for the sake of mending a neighbouring
dam-dyke. This dove-cot, or columbarium, as the owner called it, was no
small resource to a Scottish laird of that period, whose scanty rents
were eked out by the contributions levied upon the farms by these light
foragers, and the conscriptions exacted from the latter for the benefit
of the table.
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