Motte of Urr

The Motte of Urr stands near the village of Haugh of Urr, the earthwork remains of a motte-and-bailey (an earthen castle mound with a walled courtyard) castle raised in the twelfth century. It was most likely built around 1165 by Walter de Berkeley, after William I of Scotland granted him the lands of Urr, and it became the administrative seat, or caput, of the barony that took the settlement’s name. The great mound was first crowned with a timber palisade, and later in the same century it was raised higher, possibly rebuilt after being slighted during the Galloway uprising of 1174. Over the following generations the barony passed through prominent hands: the Balliol family held it in the thirteenth century, followed by Ingram de Umfraville, and then Henry Percy, who received it in 1296 once Umfraville had been forfeited by Edward I of England. The castle appears to have been abandoned after the campaigns of Robert and Edward Bruce swept through Galloway in 1307-08, and the barony was afterwards divided between the Scottish crown and Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray. The archaeologist Brian Hope-Taylor excavated the site in brief seasons in 1951 and 1953.