Rosslyn Castle September 2015, part 2: De Profundis
I didn't get a decent picture of the door to the 'basement' of the castle, annoyingly.
It's just visible on the right of this picture. Looks fairly innocent, doesn't it? Not much to look at, though it has bolts, which already starts to suggest something. Then the first flight of steps makes a 180 degree turn and keeps going and going. And going.
The first time I looked it was night and nothing would have induced me to go past that first flight. Even in broad daylight, with company, it was creepier - scarier - than I'd care to admit. At every single doorway I was more than half convinced that the torch on my phone would illuminate something appalling (my imagination was providing images of emaciated figures looking up with bloodied mouths from the freshly gnawed corpses of their victims. Cos yay, my imagination :().
My camera (or rather, my ability with a camera) completely failed to capture it properly but here goes.
I wonder how it felt to grow up in a house where this (three floors of it) was what you had for a cellar.
Would you ever get used it it? Would it become humdrum? Would you, for example, ever go to bed without making good and sure that every door between you and it was well and truly locked?
This is one of the castle kitchens. There are three, one on each surviving floor. The ovens are big enough for several people to stand in.
Who knows what this was. Bedroom? Cell?
And finally the valley floor. It's debatable whether the bars were to keep the inhabitants in or unwelcome visitors out.
They would have done a reasonably good job either way ...
From the depths I have cried out to you, O Lord.
And those are all the usable photos I have of the castle 'ruins'.
The chapel deserves its own post. That shall come in a few days.
xoxoxo
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