Turnberry Castle

On a rocky coastal headland in South Ayrshire stand the sparse remains of Turnberry Castle, a stronghold thought to have been completed around 1200. No firm record survives of who raised it, but it began as a seat of the Lords of Galloway before passing to the Earls of Carrick early in the thirteenth century. The castle’s fame rests on its ties to Robert the Bruce. His mother, Marjorie, Countess of Carrick, held Turnberry in her own right; legend has it she kept the knight Robert de Brus close until he agreed to marry her in 1271. Their son, the future king, spent his boyhood here, though whether he was actually born within the walls remains uncertain. In 1286 barons supporting the Bruce cause are said to have met secretly at the castle, and in the spring of 1307 Bruce returned to wrest it from an English garrison. He succeeded, only to order the fortress slighted in 1310 so that it could never shelter his enemies again. Little now endures beyond the lower vaults and cellars, with traces of a drawbridge and an old portcullis still discernible. A lighthouse, raised on the site in 1873, keeps watch where the old walls once stood.