THIRD PERIOD 402 - THE DEAN CASTLE This keep seems to have been the earlier castle of the Boyds, and when they rose in power they probably erected the detached buildings in the courtyard. These would thus date from about 1468-9. Pio. 348. The Dean Castle. Plan of Ground Floor. The keep (Fig. 348) is a good specimen of its period. 1 It comprises the usual vaulted basement., divided into two cellars. The basement is entered by a round arched doorway in the east gable, and a similar round arched doorway leads from the outer to the inner cellar. Mr. Galloway calls the latter apartment "the kitchen," but there are no features to justify this view. There is a fireplace in the west gable, but it has none of the characteristics of a kitchen fireplace, which in those days was always of great size, and of unmistakable appearance. This fireplace is probably an insertion, made when the upper part of the building was, as we shall see, greatly altered at a later time. The garde-robes in the upper floors are over this point, and the flues would naturally descend in this direction. Mr. Galloway points out that there is an aperture in the outer face of the wall, opposite the fireplace on the ground floor. This may have been the aperture for cleaning the flues. One of these flues has perhaps been appropriated as a chimney when the fireplace in the basement was added. But besides this, as Mr. Galloway remarks, the staircase from the basement to the hall would have been found most inconvenient for the service from the kitchen. In 1 This castle has been recently well illustrated by Mr. Galloway in the publications of the Ayr and Wigtown Archaeological Society, vol. iii. p. 112.
