Castle Levan

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Castle Levan, view from the east

Castle Levan , also called Leven Castle and more rarely Levan Castle , is a tower house in the Scottish town of Gourock in Inverclyde , about 23 miles northwest of Glasgow . It was built by the Morton family and expanded to its present size in the 16th century. Later abandoned and no longer maintained, the complex fell into ruin before it was rebuilt in the 1980s. It is since 10 June 1971 as Listed Building category B under monument protection .

history

In 1447 Levan was first mentioned in writing with Jacobi de Mortoun […] de Levane . It is therefore very likely that there was already a building at the current location at that time, which the Morton family had replaced with a stone tower house between 1450 and 1480. As recently as 1972, a carved monogram with the letters JM or TM was visible at one point in the masonry of the castle , which can be interpreted as an indication of a possible builder. Adam Morton († 1525/1526) sold the property to William Sempill (also spelled Semple), 2nd Lord Sempill, before 1539 . Shortly after the acquisition, his family had the existing Tower House expanded to create an L-type facility. Whether this still happened under William Sempill himself, his widow Margaret Montgomery, who received the castle as an annuity, or under their son Robert , has not yet been clarified.

Castle Levan as a ruin in the 1880s

Robert Sempill, 7th Lord Sempill , sold the castle to John Stewart of Blackhall in 1649, whose family also owned the neighboring Ardgowan Castle . At that time Levan Castle was in a shabby condition and had to be repaired by the new owner in order to be habitable again. How long the complex subsequently served as a residence is not known, but at the latest when the owners built a comfortable mansion called Castle Levan Manor just a few meters north of the Tower House in the early 19th century , the castle was left to its own devices and fell into disrepair to a ruin. In 1829 it no longer had a roof. Parts of the upper floors and part of the east side collapsed. From 1811 part of the land belonging to Levan was leased to Adam Crooks. He and his family made sure that Castle Levan was preserved as a romantic castle ruin, which corresponded to the Victorian taste of the time.

In 1925 the Shaw Stewarts sold the property to the Currie family. When it was planned to open the land around Castle Levan for residential development in 1970, preparatory archaeological investigations were carried out on the castle area under the direction of Peter C. Denholm . They should provide information about which area of ​​the castle was previously fenced and where the outbuildings had been. During the excavations , remains of the wall of the former, 13.7 meter long enclosure ( English barmkin ) and the foundations of a possible, earlier gate building were found. The enclosing wall was 1.37 meters thick at the base and possibly supported a battlement . The kitchen garbage pit on the east side of the facility was also examined. The excavators found fragments of late and post-medieval ceramics , some of which were imported (mid-15th to 16th centuries) and around 5,000 bones and mussel shells, including oysters . The finds can now be seen in the Paisley Museum .

After David Pearson and his wife Sheila had bought the ruins, they had it restored and rebuilt from 1980 under the supervision of the Edinburgh architect Ian Begg . After the end of the extensive work in 1987, the two of them used the Tower House as their residence until 1995. Then they sold it to Trevor Hayward, who lived there with his family until early 2003. Jan and Lydia Edleman bought it from him. They offered some rooms in the castle as guest rooms . After a change of ownership and extensive renovation , Kim Munro and Maria Hocklin reopened Castle Levan in 2016 as a Bed & Breakfast. The nearby manor house was operated as a hotel for a long time and is therefore still known today as the “Castle Levan Hotel”, although it has now been converted into luxury condominiums.

description

location

Levan Castle is about 2.5 kilometers southwest of the center of Gourock on the edge of a gorge. The site is approximately 200 meters from the banks of the Firth of Clydes and is approximately 24.4 meters above sea level. On the land that used to belong to the castle, modern residential buildings were built in the 1970s, so that the complex is now in the middle of the quite new Levan district.

architecture

Castle Levan is a three-story tower house built from local red sandstone . The masonry is very well preserved for its age, which indicates that the building must have been plastered on the outside earlier . Otherwise the stone would be in a much worse state of preservation because of the salty sea air. Due to its ground plan, the castle belongs to the L-plan castles (type L1). The current floor plan is the result of a rectangular residential tower from the 15th century, at whose southeast corner a second, smaller tower was added between 1520 and 1550. Both parts are about 30  feet (9.1 meters) high and have three stories. At the base, the outer walls are up to five feet (around 1.5 meters) thick. Excavations in the 1970s showed that another two-storey extension had been added to the 10.6 × 7.9 meter, older north building as early as the 15th century (approx. 1470 to 1485) on the southwest corner. Possibly it served as a kitchen and servants' quarters. It was demolished at the same time as the construction of today's south tower.

Both wings of today's Tower House have an uncovered battlement behind a parapet that forms the upper end of the third floor. It rests on a double row of corbels , the machicolations imitate. These closely resemble the corbels of the nearby Ardgowan Castle. The parapets and consoles were only added to the older tower when the newer part measuring around 8 × 6.3 meters was added in order to make both wings uniform. For the same reason, the builders equipped the new extension with the same key notches as the old building already had, although mouth notches were already common at that time. The original high entrance on the south side of the old tower has now been converted into a window. Below that, today's main entrance was broken out on the ground floor. A separate entrance to the south tower on its west side is now walled up. A modern winter garden from the 1980s is in front of the north wing on the west side.

inside rooms

Castle Levan floor plans in the 19th century, ground floor and first floor

The interiors in both parts of the Tower House are designed and equipped similarly. On the ground floor there are rooms with barrel vaults . In the past they served as a cellar and warehouse, but today they are used as bedrooms for the bed and breakfast. On the first floor there is the large hall , which today serves as a lounge and breakfast room , as well as a large kitchen that is still in use as such. The hall has two large fireplaces and deep window niches with built-in seating. Its pine ceiling is originally from a 17th century mill in Johnstone . On the second (reconstructed) upper floor there is now a large bedroom with a beamed ceiling , which is roughly the size of the hall below. It also has two chimneys and two additional toilets on the north side , which indicates that this area was once divided into two parts. The floors are connected by two spiral staircases and a staircase in the wall thickness.

literature

  • Martin Coventry: The castles of Scotland. A comprehensive reference and gazetteer to more than 2000 castles. 2nd Edition. Edinburgh, Goblinshead 1997, ISBN 1-899874-10-0 , p. 110.
  • Peter C. Denholm: Excavations at Levan Castle, Gourock, 1966 & 1970–72. In: Glasgow Archaeological Journal. Vol. 16, 1989/1990, ISSN  0305-8980 , pp. 55-80, doi: 10.3366 / gas.1989.16.16.55 .
  • Maurice Lindsay: The castles of Scotland. Constable & Company, London 1986, ISBN 0-09-464600-7 , pp. 130-131.
  • David MacGibbon, Thomas Ross: The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland. Volume 1. David Douglas, Edinburgh 1887, pp. 295-296 ( digitized version ).
  • Gordon W. Mason: The Castles of Glasgow and the Clyde. Goblinshead, Musselburgh 2000, ISBN 1-899874-18-6 , pp. 78-79.

Web links

Commons : Castle Levan  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Listed Building - Entry . In: Historic Scotland .
  2. ^ A b c Peter C. Denholm: Excavations at Levan Castle, Gourock, 1966 & 1970–72. 1990, p. 55.
  3. ^ A b c Peter C. Denholm: Excavations at Levan Castle, Gourock, 1966 & 1970–72. 1990, p. 62.
  4. ↑ Information according to Peter C. Denholm: Excavations at Levan Castle, Gourock, 1966 & 1970–72. 1990, p. 55. In many (also more recent) publications, however, the outdated information can still be found that Levan Castle was sold to the Lords Sempill in 1547.
  5. ^ Peter C. Denholm: Excavations at Levan Castle, Gourock, 1966 & 1970–72. 1990, p. 56.
  6. ^ Martin Coventry: The castles of Scotland. A comprehensive reference and gazetteer to more than 2000 castles. 1997, p. 110.
  7. ↑ a b c d Peter C. Denholm: Excavations at Levan Castle, Gourock, 1966 & 1970–72. 1990, p. 57.
  8. ^ Peter C. Denholm, Anne Halifax Crawford: Levan Castle. In: Scottish Regional Group, Council for British Archeology (Ed.): Discovery and Excavation in Scotland 1974. National Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh 1974, ISSN  0419-411X , p. 56 ( PDF ; 3.5 MB).
  9. ^ Entry on Castle Levan  in Canmore, Historic Environment Scotland's database, accessed on April 5, 2018.
  10. ^ A b Peter C. Denholm: Excavations at Levan Castle, Gourock, 1966 & 1970–72. 1990, p. 61.
  11. ^ Peter C. Denholm: Excavations at Levan Castle, Gourock, 1966 & 1970–72. 1990, p. 65.
    Eric Talbot, Peter C. Denholm: Levan Castle. In: Scottish Regional Group, Council for British Archeology (Ed.): Discovery and Excavation in Scotland 1970. National Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh 1970, ISSN  0419-411X , p. 42 ( PDF ; 2.5 MB).
    Peter C. Denholm, Anne Halifax Crawford: Levan Castle. In: Scottish Regional Group, Council for British Archeology (Ed.): Discovery and Excavation in Scotland 1974. National Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh 1974, ISSN  0419-411X , p. 56 ( PDF ; 3.5 MB).
  12. ↑ Castle description on scottish-places.info , accessed on April 5, 2018.
  13. ↑ a b Castle Levan information on McEwan Fraser Legal's realtor website , accessed April 5, 2018.
  14. ↑ a b c Information about Castle Levan on stravaiging.com , accessed April 5, 2018.
  15. ^ Castle for an heir. In: The Herald . Edition of August 14, 2002 ( online ).
  16. ^ Ian Willoughby: Czech-Slovak couple enjoying dream life as owners of castle in Scotland. Report by Radio Praha on April 17, 2004.
  17. ^ Stuart Reid: Castles and Tower Houses of the Scottish Clans 1450-1650 (= Fortress. Volume 46). Osprey Publishing, Oxford 2006, ISBN 1-84176-962-2 , p. 16.
  18. ↑ Information about the castle at scottish-places.org , accessed on April 5, 2018.
  19. ^ Gordon W. Mason: The Castles of Glasgow and the Clyde. 2000, p. 78.
  20. ^ Peter C. Denholm: Excavations at Levan Castle, Gourock, 1966 & 1970–72. 1990, p. 60.
  21. ↑ Joachim Zeune : The perfecting of residential tower architecture in post-medieval castle building in Scotland. In: Castles and Palaces . Journal for Castle Research and Monument Preservation. Vol. 30, No. 1, 1989, ISSN  0007-6201 , pp. 3-18, here p. 4.

Coordinates: 55 ° 56 '49.2 "  N , 4 ° 51' 31.3"  W.