Description
The castle is built on a natural rocky outcrop, on a low ridge overlooking the farmland of East Lothian. It comprises a kite-shaped courtyard, 40 metres (130 ft) by 27 metres (89 ft), flanked by buildings on the south and east sides. The most substantial remains are the Ruthven Lodging, the gatehouse, and the de Vaux keep to the south, while only the basement of the east range survives. Fragments of the north and west curtain walls outline the courtyard, which was formerly divided in two by further 16th century buildings. The castle was originally approached from the south, via a bridge and 3.4-metre (11 ft) drawbridge, across a 15-metre (49 ft) wide ditch. In the 16th century, steps were built to access the Ruthven lodging from the west.
Read more about this topic: Dirleton Castle
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)