, on
the left, Water Gate, on the right, Spey Gate. Immediately fronting you,
as you came to the end of South Street, was the gateway of Gowrie House,
the garden wall continuing towards your right. On your left were the
houses in Water Gate, occupied by rich citizens and lairds. Many will
understand the position if they fancy themselves walking down one of the
streets which run from the High Street, at Oxford, towards the river.
You then find Merton College facing you, the street being continued to
the left in such old houses as Beam Hall. The gate of Gowrie House
fronted you, as does the gate-tower of Merton, and led into a quadrangle,
the front court, called The Close. Behind Gowrie House was the garden,
and behind that ran the river Tay, as the Isis flows behind Merton and
Corpus. Entering the quadrangle of Gowrie House you found, on your right
and facing you, a pile of buildings like an inverted L. The basement was
occupied by domestic offices: at the angle of the [inverted L] was the
main entrance. On your right, and much nearer to you than the main
entrance, a door opened on a narrow spiral staircase, so dark that it was
called the Black Turnpike.

[Picture: Interior of Gowrie House]

As to the interior, entering the main doorway you found yourself in the
hall. A door led thence into a smaller dining-room on the left. The
hall itself had a door and external stair giving on the garden behind.
The chief staircase, which you entered from the hall, led to the Great
Gallery, built and decorated by the late Earl. This extended above the
dining-room and the hall, and, to the right, was separated by a partition
and a door from the large upstairs room on the same flat called 'The
Gallery Chamber.' At the extremity of this chamber, on the left hand as
you advanced, was a door leading into a 'round,' or turret, or little
circular-shaped 'study,' of which one window seems to have looked to the
gateway, the other to the street. People below in the street could see a
man looking out of the turret window. A door in the gallery chamber gave
on the narrow staircase called 'The Black Turnpike,' by which the upper
floor might be reached by any one from the quadrangle, without entering
the main door, and going up the broad chief staircase. Thus, to quote a
poet who wrote while Gowrie House was extant (in 1638):

The Palace kythes, may nam'd be Perth's White Hall
With orchards like these of