Uploader's Comments

The main entrance to the Castle vaults. Constructed in the reign of James IV to create the levelled courtyard of Crown Square above, these vaulted chambers, built partly on two levels, have been variously used as mediaeval prisons, ammunition stores, barracks and a military prison. Between 1757 and 1811 (from the Seven Years' War to the Napoleonic Wars) they held prisoners-of-war of various nationalities, mainly American and French, some of whom left their mark in the form of wall and door graffiti which can still be seen. Robert Louis Stevenson's novel 'St Ive's' gives a fictionalised account of the mass escape by 49 of these prisoners who cut through the walls and lowered themselves on ropes down the southern side of the Castle Rock in 1811.