Dundonald Castle

Dundonald Castle stands on a hill above the Ayrshire village of the same name, the third stronghold to occupy the site. Robert Stewart raised the present tower house around 1371, most likely to mark his accession as Robert II, first of the Stewart kings, and it served as a royal residence for him and his son Robert III. Two earlier castles preceded it: a twelfth-century work attributed to Walter the Steward, and a later thirteenth-century castle largely destroyed during the Wars of Independence. The surviving keep rose three storeys, with a great hall reserved for the king set above a lower hall used for public business and the baron court, and cellars beneath; later additions brought private chambers, a prison and a walled courtyard holding stables, bakehouse and smithy. As the Stewart line moved on, the castle passed to the Wallaces of Craigie and, from the seventeenth century, to the Cochranes, who took the title Earl of Dundonald. The thirteenth earl gave it to the state in 1953. Excavations have traced occupation on the hill back through an Iron Age fort to Neolithic activity. Local legend credits its building to one Donald Din, said to have raised it entirely of stone.