Craigie Castle

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The keep of Craigie Castle

Craigie Castle ( Scottish Gaelic : Caisteil Chreagaidh ) is a ruined castle about 6.5 km southeast of Kilmarnock and about 1.6 km southeast of the village of Craigie in the Scottish administrative division of South Ayrshire . The castle, built at the end of the 12th or beginning of the 13th century, is one of the oldest buildings in the administrative unit. The ruin is about 2 km west-southwest of Craigie Church. Craigie Castle is a Scheduled Monument .

history

Craigie Castle was originally built for the Lindsay (or Lindesay ) clan . It then fell around 1371 by marriage to John Wallace of Riccarton and whose last heir was a daughter. The Ayrshire Wallace line then lived in Craigie Castle until they moved to Newton Castle in 1588. Craigie Castle then fell into ruin. Mrs. Frances Dunlop of Dunlop , a direct descendant of William Wallace, believed that the latter was born in his grandfather's house, Craigie Castle. William Wallace only left his place of birth because his family was huge and space was limited at Craigie Castle.

description

Craigie Castle from the Craigie Mains Farm
The south wall of the donjon, where you can see the high quality of the masonry.
Part of the courtyard wall

Today's crenellated Gothic ruins date mainly from the 15th century, some parts also from the 12th or 13th century. Possibly the main part of the building was a hall house from the 12th or 13th century, which contained some even older parts of the building. They could have been built by Walter Hose's predecessors , who were in power before the Anglo-Normans.

The buildings were surrounded by moats and natural lakes; they enclosed an area of ​​about 1.6 hectares. It contained a high-quality knight's hall with a ribbed ceiling, which consisted of three bays over a basement with a smooth ceiling. But architectural scientists have found traces of an earlier knight's hall with crenellated parapets , which just towered up with the main facade. In the middle of one of the walls was an arched entrance and opposite a medieval fireplace, which was added in the 15th century via another arched opening.

The castle contains one of the finest examples of a knight's hall with a vaulted ceiling in Scotland that can rival any Scottish abbey or church in craftsmanship. The only comparable buildings from this period are Tulliallan or Bothwell Castle and Auchindoun . Craigie Castle has been found to be the most impressive building of its kind in Ayrshire.

The condition of the buildings made it difficult to see their original floor plan, but what remains indicate that it was a rectangle the size appropriate for a building like an early hall house. Craigie Castle must originally have been a hall house from the end of the 12th or beginning of the 13th century, which had a wide, crenellated parapet and a gable roof . In the 15th century, it seems, these battlements were built over and a new knight's hall set up within the walls of its predecessor.

The ruins are on a hill that rises from a plateau, probably between two former swamp areas or marshes. The trenches were originally dug between these two wetlands. A moat cuts through the ridge 117 meters northeast of the castle and thus forms a bailey . The castle was probably effectively isolated from the mainland and the water formed an essential barrier for any possible besiegers at a time when gunpowder was not yet known. Two crumbling gables, parts of walls and remains of the battlements have been preserved to this day. Until the 19th century there were still various vaulted cellars, some of which were, however, filled with rubble and served as quarters for foxes and bats. The entrance to the castle was on the southwest side and was reached via a drawbridge , of which the abutments are still preserved. The passage had a circular watchtower or a bastion for defense. Inside the perimeter wall there was a courtyard surrounded by buildings, and from this courtyard you could get into the knight's hall, but this entrance was locked for a long time.

A floor plan of the castle.

In 1895 Smith wrote that “145 paces from the northeast of the castle, a deep ditch 162 paces in northwest-southeast direction had been dug to connect the two marshes. There is another moat near the south wall of the castle and outside of it you can see a section of a building. On the west side there are traces of a third ditch ”.

In 1863 Paterson had noted that the tower had been repaired in the late 17th century and that part of the roof had collapsed, after which the castle had been completely abandoned. He praised the high level of military science used in the construction of the castle, where besiegers were exposed to wild crossfire, even after negotiating the trenches and attacked from almost all sides.

A "Kragy Castle" is noted on Timothy Pont's map around 1600. It is shown on an elevated location with a prominent driveway, wooded area and surrounding palisade.

While the B730 is now a minor road, it was the main route from Irvine to Dumfries via Sanquhar and a nearby link to the Ayr to Kilmarnock road. Craigie Castle was thus on one of the few standard traffic routes in the area in the 18th century and before. The numerous rigs on Roy's map from 1752 show that the entire area was used intensively for agriculture at that time.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rev. John Marius Wilson: The Imperial Gazetteer of Scotland . 1854. Volume I (AAN-GORDON). Pp. 307-308. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  2. ^ Robert Close: Ayrshire and Arran: An Illustrated Architectural Guide . Roy Inc Arch Scot., 1992. ISBN 1873190-06-9 . P. 232.
  3. ^ Francis H. Groome: Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland . Caxton, London 1903. p. 295.
  4. ↑ Scheduled Monument - Entry . In: Historic Scotland .
  5. ^ Website of the Clan Wallace. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  6. ^ Dane Love: Ayrshire: Discovering a County . Fort Publishing, Ayr 2003. ISBN 0-9544461-1-9 . P. 211.
  7. ^ Thorbjørn Campbell: Ayrshire. A Historical Guide. Birlinn, Edinburgh 2003. ISBN 1-84158-267-0 . P. 125.
  8. ^ Robert Close: Ayrshire and Arran: An Illustrated Architectural Guide . Roy Inc Arch Scot., 1992. ISBN 1873190-06-9 . P. 53.
  9. ^ Thorbjørn Campbell: Ayrshire. A Historical Guide. Birlinn, Edinburgh 2003. ISBN 1-84158-267-0 . P. 159.
  10. ^ T. MacGibbon, D. Ross: The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries . 5v, Edinburgh 1887-1892. P. 296.
  11. ^ David Cuningham Cuthbertson: Autumn in Kyle and the Charm of Cunninghame . Jenkins, London 1945. pp. 146-147.
  12. ↑ Craigie Castle . Tour Scotland. Retrieved May 15, 2017.
  13. ^ R. Archibald Adamson: Rambles Round Kilmarnock . T. Stevenson, Kilmarnock 1875. p. 63.
  14. ^ John Macintosh: Ayrshire Nights' Entertainments . Dunlop and Drennan, Kilmarnock 1894. p. 77.
  15. ↑ Entry on Craigie Castle  in Canmore, the database of Historic Environment Scotland (English)
  16. ^ T. MacGibbon, D. Ross: The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries . 5v, Edinburgh 1887-1892. P. 300.
  17. ^ John Smith: Prehistoric Man in Ayrshire . Elliot Stock, London 1895. pp. 129-130.
  18. ↑ James Paterson (editor): The Ballads and Songs of Ayrshire. TG Stevenson, Edinburgh 1847. pp. 263-264.
  19. ^ Coila Provincia (Kyle Province) . National Library of Scotland. Retrieved May 15, 2017.
  20. ^ Roy Military Survey of Scotland, 1747-55 . National Library of Scotland. Retrieved May 15, 2017.

Web links

Commons : Craigie Castle  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 55 ° 33 ′ 10.4 "  N , 4 ° 31 ′ 28.6"  W.