There were loop-holes for musketry, and iron stanchions on the lower windows, probably to repel any roving band of gipsies, or resist a predatory visit from the Caterans of the neighbouring Highlands.

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 enclosure.
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 dovecot, 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.
Another corner of the court displayed a fountain, where a huge bear, carved in stone, predominated over a large stone basin, into which he disgorged the water.