The Castles of Scotland page 2

An important internal feature, which first appears with the palatial building in the second half of the fifteenth century, is the "gallery," a long, relatively narrow, single apartment, that was handsomely decorated on its wooden ceiling and in time was hung with family portraits. At Dunnottar Castle is the Long Gallery on the upper floor of a wing of the three-sided palace, that in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries took the place of the earlier residential buildings on that mighty rock bastion in the grey North Sea.

Nevertheless, despite this transformation of the old castle type, the tower as residence, with barmkin and offices, was still kept by the lesser lairds.