IKWIG 60th Anniversary
28 - 31 November 2005
By: Steve Crook
Sat 29th October 2005
We were allowed to go inside Moy Castle, those of us that wanted to. There is work in progress to preserve it all. Not to restore it, just to preserve it.
If you don't want to visit the inside, then read no further!
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OK, so now we should only have those people that don't mind knowing what's really inside Moy Castle. We have to respect those who would feel the magic might be spoilt if they knew, also those who only want to enter Moy with those they love and want to be chained to for life.
It is in fairly good condition given its age and years of neglect, and it's interesting to see that, although the interior that we see in the film was all made in the studio, it is based on the real interior of the castle.
You enter the door, note the thickness of those walls, into the main hall. Over to one side of that there is a well in the floor. That was their main source of water and it's taken from a spring, not the sea water from the Loch which is open to the sea. In the film, there is a well seen with a metal grid covering it. The room is barrel vaulted and this is one of the main strengths of the castle as the plan is square and the dining hall above is also barrel vaulted but in the other direction.
Up the small spiral staircase to the dining hall on the next floor. From here you can go down some narrow steps to the dungeon which, like in the film, is small and half full of water. But there is no rock for lovers to stand on and they didn't used to drown their enemies there, dead bodies in the water supply isn't a good idea, they would just torture them for a while. It was just off the dining hall so the screams of the prisoners could be heard as you enjoyed your repast!
The water in the main well and in the dungeon are at different levels but from the same source. There seems to be some clever 'S bend' arrangement that lets this happen but that hasn't been fully investigated yet.
There are a few other small rooms off the dining hall and off the staircase there's a small chapel, a place to lay out dead bodies and a few that are probably storerooms. It was suggested that the small room off the dining hall could be a kitchen, but that's unlikely. The food was probably prepared in the hall. There are holes at either end of the barrel vaulted roof that would act as chimneys for the main hall but there was no such ventilation in this smaller room.
The main spiral staircase also leads up to the next level which is still one level short of the battlements. That would have been sleeping and storage rooms. Nowadays that is all open to the elements so is covered with rambling weeds. You can see the battlements above but it was too dangerous to go up there. In any case, when I went up there, everyone else seemed to have wandered off so there was nobody to call "Hi!" to.
Of course there isn't really an inscription on the battlements. That was all done in the studio.
The spiral staircase in the studio must have been a bit wider & with more head room than the real one, there were a few stumbles and banged heads as we came back down but no serious injuries.
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Steve's report
