I was in Port Royal Virginia recently and met an old man that lived in a large pre-civil war home. His family had lived there for generations and the house bore the scars of the Civil War. It used to have a small turret shaped room with windows on top, but it was rumored that the Confederates used it to spy on Union gunboats along the Rappahannock. The gunboats attacked and blew it off the top of the house. So the stairs in the attic ended at the roof line.
Later in the war a Union gunboat fired canister at the house and the shot still remaines embedded in the walls to this day. One of the shots tore through the door mantle and lodged into the wall.

It was great seeing a building that still had the scars.