Dolphin Arch And Coach Ring, Mortar Battery, Courtyard Including Castle Walls, Culzean Castle Estate

The Dolphin Arch and Coach Ring, along with the mortar battery and courtyard walls, form an important entrance to the Culzean Castle Estate, created in the later 18th century and circa 1833, with contributions from various architects including Robert Adam. The courtyard lies between the Castle and the stable court to the east, serving as an outer entrance and carriage turning area.

The castle walls, constructed between 1770 and 1836, incorporate earlier fragments and are curved with crenellations, slab coping, and dummy gun loops, built in ashlar. The north wall includes a mortar battery, dating to the later 18th century and 1829, with concave curves to the west and east. It features a flagstone platform, a low parapet, and a sundial with a carved stone head of a bearded classical deity surmounting an octagonal table with a brass dial. Two antique bronze mortars are also present, with a further crenellated retaining wall extending along the cliff edge below. The west wall, also from the later 18th century, features paired crenellated quadrants terminating in mock sentry boxes flanking an east entrance to the Castle. The southwest wall is a crenellated segmental quadrant with dummy arrow slits, incorporating an opening flanked by piers resembling dummy square towers with pilastered corners and machicolated parapets; it includes painted timber gates. The southeast wall is a crenellated segmental quadrant with dummy arrow slits, attached to an archway on the east. A screen wall in a castellated style dates to around 1815, with central piers flanking the entrance to the stable court, appearing as diminutive cylindrical pepperpot towers with dummy arrow slits, machicolated and crenelated parapets, and conical caps topped with ball finials. Further flanking towers are diminutive and square, also with dummy arrow slits and crenellated and machicolated parapets.

The Dolphin Arch, constructed around 1830, is a triumphal arch in a castellated classical style, topped by sculpture. It features pilastered piers, machicolated cornices, roundels in the spandrels, a volute keystone, and a crenellated parapet. Sculpted coats of arms adorn both elevations, and a sculpture of a boy riding on a dolphin sits atop the parapet.

The Coach Ring, also dating to circa 1830, is an octagonal, triple-stepped stone dais located on a circular, grassed island surrounded by a gravelled carriageway in the centre of the courtyard. An antique bronze mortar is mounted on timber.