Kenmure Castle: A Historic Fortified House in Scotland
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- British, Kingdom of Scotland
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page12 sections
History
Kenmure Castle is a fortified house in the United Kingdom, about 1 mile (1.6 km) south of New Galloway in south-west Scotland. Occupied from the Middle Ages, it became the seat of the Gordon family of Lochinvar, whose members were later raised to the peerage as Viscounts of Kenmure. The present structure incorporates parts of a seventeenth-century castle and was extensively remodelled during the nineteenth century.
Medieval origins
The castle stands on a partly natural mound that may have been adapted for defence during the early Middle Ages. Kenmure has been suggested as one of the possible birthplaces of John Balliol in 1249. His mother, Dervorguilla, was the daughter of Alan, the last independent Lord of Galloway. The Lords of Galloway ruled a semi-independent territory in south-west Scotland until the thirteenth century, and the mound may have formed part of an earlier stronghold connected with that political world.
The property later belonged to the Douglas and Maxwell families. In 1297 it became Gordon property after the family arrived from Berwickshire. Around 1450, a branch of the Gordons settled in the region and built another castle on an island in Lochinvar, about 6 miles (9.7 km) north of Kenmure.
Royal visits and sixteenth-century conflict
James IV of Scotland visited Kenmure in March 1508 after making a pilgrimage to Whithorn. During his stay, he played tables, a form of backgammon, and gave money to the laird’s servants. Sir John Gordon of Lochinvar owned the early castle that received Mary, Queen of Scots, on 13 and 14 August 1563, while she travelled from Clary to St Mary’s Isle.
Kenmure was drawn into the conflict surrounding Mary’s rule. In June 1568, opponents of Mary, Queen of Scots, marched through south-west Scotland after defeating her supporters at the Battle of Langside. They damaged or destroyed the early castle. While Regent Moray, who governed for the absent monarch, was at Kenmure, he met the English envoy Henry Middlemore. John Gordon of Lochinvar later wrote to Mary that he would not accept Moray’s terms or join his faction.
Seventeenth-century status and Jacobite defeat
An inventory of the castle’s furnishings was made on 3 December 1604 after the death of John Gordon of Lochinvar. Sir Robert Gordon of Lochinvar became a baronet in 1626, a hereditary rank below the peerage. In 1633, his son Sir John Gordon was created Viscount of Kenmure by Charles I, then king of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
The sixth Viscount of Kenmure took part in the Jacobite Rising of 1715, an attempt to restore the Stuart dynasty to the British throne. He was subsequently beheaded at the Tower of London and his estates were forfeited. Tradition holds that his body was returned to Kenmure for burial. By 1790, the castle was being described as a ruin.
Nineteenth-century revival and modern decline
The viscountcy was restored to Captain John Gordon in 1824. He died in 1840, and the title became dormant after the death of his nephew Adam, the eighth or eleventh Viscount, in 1847. The south range of the castle was rebuilt around 1840. William McCandlish worked on alterations during that decade, while Hugh Maclure was involved during the 1860s. In 1879, the Sheffield-based architect Matthew Ellison Hadfield remodelled the west range, and Christian Elliot added further extensions in 1908.
The estate was sold in 1923. The castle was first leased and later purchased by Brigadier-General Maurice Lilburn MacEwen, formerly of the 16th The Queen’s Lancers. During the Second World War, MacEwen commanded the Stewartry Home Guard. He died at Kenmure Castle in 1943 and was buried in Kells Churchyard.
From about the late 1940s until 1957, the building operated as a hotel under Stanley Dobson and his business partner Hugh Ormond Sparks. Around 1958, its interior fixtures and fittings were stripped out and the roof was removed, leaving the building as a roofless ruin. The castle was bought by Graeme Gordon in 1962. Although a common belief attributes its destruction to fire, the castle was not destroyed by fire.
The remains were listed as a historic building in 1971, and the ruin was scheduled as a monument in 1998. A scheduled monument is a legally protected archaeological or historic site whose preservation is considered nationally important. Kenmure is also associated with the story of a headless piper said to haunt the castle.
Remains
Castle layout and defensive enclosure
Kenmure Castle is arranged on a partly natural mound as a fortified residence, combining defensive features with domestic accommodation. The seventeenth-century castle occupied the west and south sides of a courtyard. High walls formed the north and east sides, while an entrance gate in the north wall was flanked by towers at the two northern corners.
West and south ranges
The surviving house incorporates parts of the seventeenth-century building and possibly earlier work. The south range was rebuilt around 1840, and the west range was remodelled in 1879. Further extensions were added in 1908. These successive changes transformed the earlier courtyard castle into a substantially modernised nineteenth-century country house. The roof was removed around 1958, and the surviving structure is now a roofless ruin with its interior fixtures and fittings stripped out.
Courtyard defenses
The nineteenth-century remodelling altered the medieval and early modern arrangement by removing the courtyard wall and the north-east tower. Gunpowder was used in this work. The entrance gate and the towers at the northern corners belonged to the defensive organization of the seventeenth-century castle, while the later changes reshaped the relationship between the ranges and the courtyard.
Objects and associated remains
Seventeenth-century sundial
A sundial bearing the date 1623 came from Kenmure Castle and is now in Dumfries Museum. Its date connects it with the period when the castle was organized around its courtyard and occupied by the Gordon family.
Loch Ken pike
In 1774, the gamekeeper John Murray is said to have caught a pike in Loch Ken below the castle measuring about 7 feet (2.1 m) and weighing 72 pounds (32.7 kg). The skeleton of its head was displayed for many years in the castle’s billiard room, where it was studied and measured by Charles Tate Regan, an ichthyologist of the Natural History Museum.
