Overview
Suggested Development
Construction and
Conservation
Siege of 1570 and Later
Kitchens→
Entrance Tower
The Guard Room
Destruction and Picturesque
Ruin
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The Siege of 1570
and the Later Kitchens
of Dunure Castle
The account of the siege of 1570 provides
some of the clues as to the appearance of the castle. A chapel
close to the gate 'at the drawbridge-end' is mentioned. Earl
Kennedy's men entered the chapel and attempted to mine the wall of
the 'dungeone' which adjoined it. 'Bot the Lairdis [Bargeny's]
menne, that was within, keist gritt stanes doune of the heiche
battelling of the dungeoune; ans sa brak the ruiff of the chapell'.
Excavations suggested that the site of the lost chapel may have
been near the
existing kitchen range. The kitchen floors were built of stone
salvaged from a demolished building and overlay destruction levels
contain many broken roof slates and fragments of painted
ecclesiastical window glass.
Following the destruction of the chapel a new kitchen range was
built. This notably domestic structure is in stark contrast to the
overtly military nature of the adjacent buildings to the north and
is an i ndication
that the defensive capability of Dunure was becoming redundant by
that time. Two kitchen rooms were entered from the open-roofed
'gallery' or work area. This room may have also formed a 'screen'
to conceal domestic activity from the adjacent principal approach
to the keep.
 Each
of the kitchens was furnished with an immense fireplace to the
south, aumbrys (wall cupboards), a slop-sink in the
west wall for the kitchen waste, and supplied with fresh water
from stone-lined channels running beneath the floors. The southern
kitchen also contained a bake-oven in the south west corner.
Stairs within the gallery gave access to accommodation in the
upper floors above the kitchens. Each of these upper chambers was
provided with a fireplace, a gardrobe or toilet (in this
case placed back-to-back and sharing a shute on the west wall) and
glazed windows to the east and west. A further level of
accommodation existed above.
Excavations within the kitchen range revealed that in the
eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century, the ruins of
this structure had been used as a rubbish dump and work area. The
south part of the gallery was roofed over for shelter. It was here
that a
large midden of shells - mainly mussel - was discovered, evidence
for the baiting of deep-sea fishing lines by the inhabitants of
cottages that stood beyond the south end of the kitchens. This
practise continued into living memory in Dunure. Many domestic
objects, pottery, clay pipes, bottles and fish bones (fish
suppers!) were also found in this area.
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