Palace Range, Dean Castle, Dean Country Park, Dean Road, Kilmarnock

Palace Range, Dean Castle, Dean Country Park, Dean Road, Kilmarnock

This is a late 14th- to early 15th-century rectangular-plan tower house with an adjoining mid-15th-century rectangular-plan palace and courtyard range. The complex was restored and extended by Ingram & Brown in 1905, with timber galleries and a gatehouse added by James Richardson in 1937. The buildings are constructed in coursed sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings.

The courtyard is defined by high rubble walls on the north-east and south-east elevations, with stone corbels supporting later timber galleries and pitched slate roofs on timber uprights. A timber cantilevered staircase leads to a wall turret near the Palace Range. The angles are terminated by raised crowstep-gabled turrets, and a stone well sits in the re-entrant angle of the courtyard interior.

The Palace Range occupies the south corner of the courtyard and follows an essentially L-plan with a four-storey stair tower and a later single-storey crowstepped lean-to in the re-entrant angle. The north-east principal elevation features an entrance door to the ground floor of the stair tower, windows to the first and second floors, and a gablehead window with a projecting plaque. The adjoining lean-to has a ground-floor window and a wallhead dormer. To the right of the entrance, a hall contains paired windows and a long slit window on the ground floor, a bipartite window on the second floor, and a pair of square windows on the third floor. The tower to the left of the entrance has a ground-floor door with later timber stairs leading to the timber galleries, central windows to the first and second floors, and a canted section at the third and fourth storeys with a stair window. Machicolated battlements surmount the tower, with a watch-tower to the left. The south-east elevation presents a blind wall with projecting buttresses and a small fourth-storey window, finished with machicolated battlements and a piended stone slab roof. The south-west rear elevation contains a two-storey range to the left with five regularly placed bays featuring arrowslits and gun loops, machicolated battlements concealing five stone dormers. A tower to the right has an arched ground-floor door, a bipartite first-floor window with an arrowslit, and small rectangular windows to the third and fourth floors. The north-west elevation shows a courtyard wall adjoining a blind ground floor, a small first-floor window to the right, three windows in an almost triangular formation on the third storey and gable, and a corbelled end of parapet walk. A gablehead stack rests on projecting stone bearers. A rubble wall with flat copes and an arched doorway links the Palace to the Tower House.

The Palace Range interiors comprise a hall, private rooms, a kitchen, and vaulted cellars. The rooms feature moulded plasterwork and wainscotting from Balgonie Castle in Fife, installed circa 1930s. Stone and metal-framed windows with leaded panes light the range, beneath piended slate roofs with stone ridging. Stone flagging and gutters lead to rainwater spouts on the parapet walk.

The Tower House is a four-storey rectangular-plan structure with battlements, a crowstepped garret, and a cap house, also in coursed rubble with a battered plinth. The south-east principal elevation features a later first-floor entrance accessed by stone steps. The south-west elevation is blind with an arrow slit at ground floor and a central second-storey window. The north-west rear elevation is similarly blind, with a slit window to the first storey and a stack at the centre of the garret. The north-east elevation has a sloping base course, an original first-floor door with an arrowslit, and single windows to the second and third floors with asymmetric arrowslits. Battlements conceal a parapet walk and a guard's house accessed from it.

The Tower House interiors retain a conventional medieval layout despite 20th-century restoration. The basement is barrel-vaulted with a prison pit. The great hall rises through two storeys and features a large fireplace, minstrel gallery, and stone benches. The third-floor chamber contains two later medieval fireplaces and a recess with an aumbry and piscina. The garret and stone cap house were formerly used as a guard room.

The Gatehouse is a two-storey, irregular bayed rectangular structure with a central pend inset in the courtyard wall. It is constructed in coursed rubble with ashlar dressings, crow-steps, and beaked putts. The north-east principal elevation features a large architraved entrance arch flanked by semi-circular bastions with conical caps. Gun loops appear below the first-floor cill course, and a pair of vertically placed armorial shields sits above the arch. The south-east elevation has a bipartite ground-floor window and a centrally placed first-floor window. The south-west rear elevation contains an arched pend with flanking doors and a three-bay first floor. The north-west elevation has a pair of timber doors to the ground floor and a single first-floor window. Multi-paned timber casement windows within stone mullions open onto a piended grey slate roof with stone ridge tiles. Stone gablehead stacks with projecting neck copes complete the structure. The interior has not been recorded as of 2001, when the gatehouse was in use as a private caretaker's house.