Carsluith Castle

Carsluith Castle stands in the Galloway lowlands, a tower house begun in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century after James Lindsay of Fairgirth, Chamberlain of Galloway, acquired the lands in 1460. The original block is modest, roughly ten metres by eight, with a vaulted basement divided into cellars and pierced by gunloops. When Lindsay’s grandson Sir Herbert fell at the Battle of Flodden in 1513, the estate passed through his daughter to the Brown family, who in the 1560s raised the north-east stair tower that gives the ruin its present L-plan, adding crow-stepped gables and rounded turrets at three of its corners. The Browns held firmly to the old faith, feuding with their Protestant McCulloch neighbours through the Reformation. Their most notable member, Gilbert Brown, served as the last abbot of nearby Sweetheart Abbey; arrested in 1605 for sheltering Jesuit priests, he was banished to France, where he became rector of the Scots College in Paris and died in 1612. The family emigrated to India in 1748, and the tower has stood empty ever since. It is now protected as a scheduled monument in the care of Historic Environment Scotland, and its roofless walls are open to visitors.