Cruggleton Castle

Cruggleton Castle stands on a high shale outcrop above the sea in Dumfries and Galloway, its earliest stone tower raised in the 13th century over the mound of an older motte (the earthen mound of a castle). Further walls and towers followed between the late 1200s and the early 15th century, giving the promontory a stronghold to guard this stretch of coast. Its succession of lords reads almost as a roll-call of Galloway power: the castle is thought to have belonged to the Lords of Galloway and then the Earls of Buchan, and in the 1290s John Comyn held rights here. David II later granted it to Gilbert Kennedy, and by 1424 it had passed to the Prior and Canons of Whithorn. After the Reformation it changed hands amid dispute, coming to the Vaus family and then to James Kennedy in 1606. English spies recorded in 1563 that it was held by only two men, and by 1684 it lay wholly ruinous. Today little survives above ground beyond a slender span of barrel vaulting, known locally as The Arch, which stands around three metres high with recently rebuilt stone. The outline of the earlier motte, roughly thirty metres across, can still be traced across the site.