Carscreugh Castle

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Carscreugh Castle

Wigtownshire

Carscreugh Castle - geograph.org.uk - 619349.jpg
Carscreugh Castle
Location
Grid reference: NX22325990
Location: 54°54’7"N, 4°46’21"W
History
Information
Condition: Ruined

'Carscreugh Castle stands in utter ruin, alone in a field north of Glenluce, in Wigtownshire.

The land here was once owned by Glenluce Abbey. When the first castle was built is not known but it appears to have been of some importance in the mid-16th century. The castle passed to the Vaus family who sold it to the Rosses of Balneil in the 17th Century.

The existing castle was built in 1668 for James Dalrymple, Lord Stair, who married Margaret, the daughter of James Ross in 1665. Lord Stair who occupied it until his death in 1695 when it was allowed to fall into ruin.

What remains is a scheduled ancient monument and a listed building.[1]

Structure

The castle was built of rubble masonry. In its prime consisted of a central block four storeys and an attic in height with square flanking towers at the north-west and south-west angles and a rounded stair tower in the southern re-entrant angle. The two southern towers still stand to the wall-head and the west and south walls of the north tower stand 15 feet high but the east and north walls are gone, and of the central block only a fragment of the west wall remains, about 3 feet 6" high and now the boundary wall of a cottage garden.

Two east-west running mounds may be the remains of a cross-walls. [2]

References

  • RCAHMS 1912, visited 1911
  • A S Morton 1936