Bedrule Castle
| Bedrule Castle | |
|
Roxburghshire | |
|---|---|
 The site of Bedrule Castle | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | NT59801805 |
| Location: | 55°27’17"N, 2°38’14"W |
| Village: | Bedrule |
| History | |
| Built Poss. late 13th century | |
| Information | |
| Condition: | Bare ruins |
Bedrule Castle, now lying in ruin, is a mediæval castle just to the north of Bedrule in Roxburghshire. It stands on a bluff jutting westwards on the east side of the Rule Water.
Studies suggest that the castle was a castle of enceinte of a later 13th century pattern, but he site has been divided by a boundary dyke and all trace of building west of the dyke has been destroyed. If this is a late thirteenth century fortress, it would have been built by the de Comyns, one of the warring families of the Scottish wars of succession.[1]
Only low turf-covered walls remain and east of the 'head dyke' wall, ploughing has destroyed all trace. The remains show an enclosure divided unequally in two by a cross-wall, flanked by a north-west gatehouse and round towers to the south-east, west and south-west.
King Edward I of England is known to have visited Bedrule in 1298. After Sir John Comyn's death, the place was granted by King Robert I in 1315-21 to Sir James of Douglas, whose family held it for a hundred years or so until it passed to the Turnbull family, who held Bedrule into early modern times, and who were notorious border reivers before the Union of the Crowns in 1603 brought an end to the lawlessness of the borders.
Nearby is Fast Castle, of which just a twelfth century motte survives, and two miles to the south is Fulton Tower, a sixteenth century bastle house of the reiver days.
References
- Bedrule Castle – The Scottish Castles Association