Liam makes for a room to the right of the stairwell. We enter into what might once have been a drawing room or living room: there’s a huge fireplace, filled in now with dirt and stones, and the room is bare of furniture and scarred by soot. Off this room we enter what seems to be a library, judging by the shelves, though all the books have been destroyed. It’s dark in here and Liam has to use his phone again to light our way through an open doorway into yet another room. It’s hard to tell what this one was used for as there’s no furniture and nothing on the walls, just more piles of rubble and a caved-in fireplace, and no signs of life other than streaks of white bird guano and rat droppings.

We find that the doorways going onwards are all blocked up and have to backtrack our way to the hallway. This time, we head in the other direction, heading first into what was once a study to the left of the front doors. For whatever reason, this part of the castle obviously didn’t burn at quite the same rate and pieces of furniture remain in place. In front of the window is a regal-looking desk, though the weather has chewed away at the leather top. A broken chair sits in a corner of the room and beside the fireplace there’s a metal bucket filled with tools including tongs, a shovel and a poker.

Liam heads through another door, and another, and I follow in his wake, tiptoeing delicately – careful with my step. Some rooms look barely touched at all. We come across a dining table with twelve chairs and it almost looks ready to receive guests, apart from the fact that the dresser is covered in fragments of broken china and glass, as if a giant has crushed his fist down on top of it all. By contrast, in one we find the roof completely caved in and there’s so much rubble we can’t get across to the far door. We’re forced back on ourselves once more, but in the dining room Liam pauses. He points at the wood panelling that covers the walls, which has buckled in places, and crosses towards one panel that has come loose. He pulls it open to reveal a passageway behind.

‘Must have been for the servants,’ he remarks.

I’m intrigued enough to follow him over to peer inside, but Liam is already headed into the passageway, fumbling his way along, shining his torch. It’s a narrow stone corridor with blown-out lightbulbs running down the middle of the ceiling. I can imagine servants scurrying down here, carrying trays of food.