Scottish castles

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Caerlaverock Castle, a moated triangular castle, first built in the thirteenth century

Scottish castles are buildings that combine fortifications and residence, built within the borders of modern Scotland. Castles arrived in Scotland with the introduction of feudalism in the twelfth century. Initially these were wooden motte-and-bailey constructions, but many were replaced by stone castles with a high curtain wall. During the Wars of Independence, Robert the Bruce pursued a policy of castle slighting. In the late Middle Ages new castles were built, some on a grander scale as "livery and maintenance" castles that could support a large garrison. Gunpowder weaponry led to the use of gun ports, platforms to mount guns and walls adapted to resist bombardment.

Many of the late Medieval castles built in the borders were in the form of tower houses, smaller pele towers or simpler bastle houses. From the fifteenth century there was a phase of Renaissance palace building, which restructured them as castle-type palaces, beginning at Linlithgow. Elements of medieval castles, royal palaces and tower houses were used in the construction of Scots baronial estate houses, which were built largely for comfort, but with a castle like appearance. These elements would be revived from the late eighteenth century and trend would be confirmed in popularity by the rebuilding of Balmoral Castle and its adoption as a retreat by Queen Victoria.

Contents

Origins [edit]

Dunstaffnage Castle, one of the oldest surviving "castles of enceinte", mostly dating from the thirteenth century

Castles, in the sense of a fortified residence of a lord or noble, arrived in Scotland as part of David I's (r. 1124–53) encouragement of Norman and French nobles to settle with feudal tenures, particularly in the south and east, and were a way of controlling the contested lowlands.[1][2][3] These were primarily wooden motte-and-bailey constructions, of a raised mount or motte, surmounted by a wooden tower and a larger adjacent enclosure or bailey, both usually surrounded by a fosse (a ditch) and palisade, and connected by a wooden bridge.[4] They varied in size from the very large such as the Bass of Inverurie, to more modest designs like Balmaclellan.[5] In England many of these constructions were converted into stone "keep-and-bailey" castles in the twelfth century, but in Scotland most of those that were in continued occupation became stone castles of "enceinte" from the thirteenth century, with a high embattled curtain wall.[4] The need for thick and high walls for defence forced the use of economic building methods, often continuing the tradition of dry-stone rubble building, which were then covered with a lime render, or harled for weatherproofing and a uniform appearance.[6] In addition to the baronial castles there were royal castles, often larger and providing defence, lodging for the itinerant Scottish court and a local administrative centre. By 1200 these included fortifications at Ayr and Berwick.[7]

In the wars of Scottish Independence, Robert I adopted a policy of castle destruction, rather than allow fortresses to be easily retaken and then held by the English, beginning with his own castles at Ayr and Dumfries,[8] and including Roxburgh and Edinburgh.[9] After the Wars of Independence, new castles began to be built, often on a grander scale as "livery and maintenance" castles, to house retained troops, like Tantallon, Lothian and Doune near Stirling, rebuilt for Robert Stewart, Duke of Albany in the fourteenth century.[4] Gunpowder weaponry fundamentally altered the nature of castle architecture, with existing castles being adapted to allow the use of the new weapons by the incorporation of "keyhole" gun ports, platforms to mount guns and walls being adapted to resist bombardment. Ravenscraig, Kirkcaldy, begun about 1460, is probably the first castle in the British Isles to be built as an artillery fort, incorporating "D-shape" bastions that would better resist cannon fire and on which artillery could be mounted.[10]

Tower houses [edit]

Main article: Tower houses
Clackmannan Tower, a tower house, originally built in the fourteenth century

The largest number of late medieval fortifications in Scotland built by nobles, about 800,[11] were of the tower house design.[12][13] Smaller versions of tower houses in southern Scotland were known as peel towers, or pele houses.[14] The defences of tower houses were primarily aimed to provide protection against smaller raiding parties and were not intended to put up significant opposition to an organised military assault, leading historian Stuart Reid to characterise them as "defensible rather than defensive".[15] They were typically a tall, square, stone-built, crenelated building; often also surrounded by a barmkyn or bawn, a walled courtyard designed to hold valuable animals securely, but not necessarily intended for serious defence.[15][16] They were built extensively on both sides of the border with England from the fourteenth century. James IV's forfeiture of the Lordship of the Isles in 1494 led to an additional burst of tower building across the region.[17][18]

A option for small landholders and farmers was the bastle house, a form of fortified house that combined the functions of a tower house and a barmkyn. They were usually two-story houses with the ground floor acting as a byre into which animals could be driven, while the living space on the upper floor could only be reached by a removable ladder. Most are within 30 miles (48 km) of the border and were built around the turn of the sixteenth century.[19]

Renaissance palaces [edit]

See also: Renaissance in Scotland
Linlithgow Palace, extensively rebuilt along Renaissance principles from the fifteenth century as a castle-style palace

The extensive building and rebuilding of royal palaces probably began under James III, accelerated under James IV, reaching its peak under James V. These works have been seen as directly reflecting the influence of Renaissance styles. Linlithgow was first constructed under James I, under the direction of master of work John de Waltoun and was referred to as a palace, apparently the first use of this term in the country, from 1429. This was extended under James III and began to correspond to a fashionable quadrangular, corner-towered Italian signorial palace of a palatium ad moden castri (a castle-style palace), combining classical symmetry with neo-chivalric imagery. There is evidence of Italian masons working for James IV, in whose reign Linlithgow was completed and other palaces were rebuilt with Italianate proportions.[20] James V encountered the French version of Renaissance building while visiting for his marriage to Madeleine of Valois in 1536 and his second marriage to Mary of Guise may have resulted in longer term connections and influences.[21] Work from his reign largely disregarded the insular style adopted in England under Henry VIII and adopted forms that were recognisably European, beginning with the extensive work at Linlithgow.[22] This was followed by re-buildings at Holyrood, Falkland, Stirling and Edinburgh,[23] described as "some of the finest examples of Renaissance architecture in Britain".[24]

Much of this work was planned and financed by James Hamilton of Finnart (c. 1495–1540), in addition to his work at Blackness Castle, Rothesay Castle, the house at Crawfordjohn, the "New Inn" in the St Andrews Cathedral Priory and the lodging at Balmerino Abbey for the ailing Queen Madeleine.[25] Rather than slavishly copying continental forms, most Scottish architecture incorporated elements of these styles into traditional local patterns,[23] adapting them to Scottish idioms and materials (particularly stone and harl).[26] Similar themes can be seen in the private houses of aristocrats, as in Mar's Wark, Stirling (c. 1570) and Crichton Castle, built for the Earl of Bothwell in 1580s.[27]

Scots baronial [edit]

Sixteenth and seventeenth centuries [edit]

Main article: Scots baronial
The sixteenth century Claypotts Castle, showing many of the features of the Scots Baronial style.

The unique style of great private houses in Scotland, later known as Scots baronial, has been located in origin to the period of the 1560s. It kept many of the features of the high walled Medieval castles that had been largely made obsolete by gunpowder weapons and may have been influenced by the French masons brought to Scotland to work on royal palaces. It drew on the tower houses and peel towers,[28] with their parapets, corbels, and bartizans.[29] The new estate houses built from the late sixteenth century by nobles and lairds were primarily built for comfort, not for defence, although they were often called castles. They retained many of these external features which had become associated with nobility, but with a larger ground plan. This was classically a "Z-plan" of a rectangular block with towers, as at Colliston Castle (1583) and Claypotts Castle (1569–88).[28]

Particularly influential was the work of William Wallace, the king's master mason from 1617 until his death in 1631. He worked on the rebuilding of the collapsed North Range of Linlithgow from 1618, Winton House for George Seton, 3rd Earl of Winton and began work on Heriot's Hospital, Edinburgh. He adopted a distinctive style that applied elements of Scottish fortification and Flemish influences to a Renaissance plan like that used at Château d'Ancy-le-Franc. This style can be seen in lord's houses built at Caerlaverlock (1620), Moray House, Edinburgh (1628) and Drumlanrig Castle (1675–89), and was highly influential until the baronial style gave way to the grander English forms associated with Inigo Jones in the later seventeenth century.[28]

Gothic revival [edit]

See also: Gothic revival
Balmoral Castle, re-built for Queen Victoria in the Scots Baronial style.

The revival of the Scots Baronial style was part of the wider Gothic Revival movement.[30] Inveraray Castle, constructed from 1746 with design input from William Adam, displays the incorporation of turrets and is among the first houses in the revived style. Robert Adam's houses in this style include Mellerstain and Wedderburn in Berwickshire and Seton House in East Lothian, but it is most clearly seen at Culzean Castle, Ayrshire, remodelled by Adam from 1777. These were largely conventional Palladian style houses that incorporated some external features of the Scots baronial style.[31]

Important for the adoption of the style in the early nineteenth century was Abbotsford House, the residence the novelist and poet, Sir Walter Scott. Re-built for him from 1816, it became a model for the modern revival of the baronial style. Common features borrowed from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century houses included battlemented gateways, crow-stepped gables, pointed turrets and machicolations. The style was popular across Scotland and was applied to many relatively modest dwellings by architects such as William Burn (1789–1870), David Bryce (1803–76),[32] Edward Blore (1787–1879), Edward Calvert (c. 1847–1914) and Robert Stodart Lorimer (1864–1929) and in urban contexts, including the building of Cockburn Street in Edinburgh (from the 1850s) as well as the National Wallace Monument at Stirling (1859–69).[33] The rebuilding of Balmoral Castle as a baronial palace and its adoption as a royal retreat from 1855-8 confirmed the popularity of the style.[34]

See also [edit]

Notes [edit]

  1. ^ G. G. Simpson and B. Webster, "Charter Evidence and the Distribution of Mottes in Scotland," in R. Liddiard, ed., Anglo-Norman Castles (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003), ISBN 978-0-85115-904-1, p. 225.
  2. ^ C. J. Tabraham, Scotland's Castles (London: Batsford, 2005), ISBN 978-0-7134-8943-9, p. 11.
  3. ^ L. E. Hull, Britain's Medieval Castles (Westport: Praeger, 2006), ISBN 978-0-275-98414-4, p. xxiv.
  4. ^ a b c T. W. West, Discovering Scottish Architecture (Botley: Osprey, 1985), ISBN 0-85263-748-9, p. 21.
  5. ^ C. J. Tabraham, Scotland's Castles (London: Batsford, 2005), ISBN 978-0-7134-8943-9, p. 16.
  6. ^ I. Maxwell, A History of Scotland’s Masonry Construction in P. Wilson, ed., Building with Scottish Stone (Edinburgh: Arcamedia, 2005), ISBN 1-904320-02-3, p. 24.
  7. ^ C. J. Tabraham, Scotland's Castles (London: Batsford, 2005), ISBN 978-0-7134-8943-9, p. 12.
  8. ^ J. S. Hamilton, The Plantagenets: History of a Dynasty (London: Continuum, 2010), ISBN 1-4411-5712-3, p. 116.
  9. ^ D. Cornell, Bannockburn: the Triumph of Robert the Bruce (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), ISBN 0-300-14568-3, p. 124.
  10. ^ T. W. West, Discovering Scottish Architecture (Botley: Osprey, 1985), ISBN 0-85263-748-9, p. 27.
  11. ^ A. Emery, Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales, 1300–1500: Northern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), ISBN 978-0-521-49723-7, p. 26.
  12. ^ G. Stell, "War-damaged Castles: the evidence from Medieval Scotland," in Chateau Gaillard: Actes du colloque international de Graz (Autriche) (Caen, France: Publications du CRAHM, 2000), ISBN 978-2-902685-09-7, p. 278.
  13. ^ S. Reid, Castles and Tower Houses of the Scottish Clans, 1450–1650 (Botley: Osprey, 2006), ISBN 1-84176-962-2, p. 12.
  14. ^ S. Toy, Castles: Their Construction and History (New York: Dover Publications, 1985), ISBN 978-0-486-24898-1, p. 225.
  15. ^ a b S. Reid, Castles and Tower Houses of the Scottish Clans, 1450–1650 (Botley: Osprey, 2006), ISBN 1-84176-962-2, pp. 12 and 46.
  16. ^ S. Toy, Castles: Their Construction and History (New York: Dover Publications, Sidney, 1985), ISBN 978-0-486-24898-1, p. 224.
  17. ^ I. D. Whyte, and K. A. Whyte, The Changing Scottish Landscape, 1500–1800 (London: Routledge, 1991), ISBN 978-0-415-02992-6, p. 76.
  18. ^ M. Glendinning, R. MacInnes and A. MacKechnie, A History of Scottish Architecture: from the Renaissance to the Present Day. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002), ISBN 978-0-7486-0849-2, p. 6.
  19. ^ K. Durham, Strongholds of the Border Reivers: Fortifications of the Anglo-Scottish Border 1296-1603 (Osprey Publishing, 2008), ISBN 1846031974, pp. 29-30.
  20. ^ M. Glendinning, R. MacInnes and A. MacKechnie, A History of Scottish Architecture: From the Renaissance to the Present Day (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), ISBN 0-7486-0849-4, p. 9.
  21. ^ A. Thomas, The Renaissance, in T. M. Devine and J. Wormald, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), ISBN 0-19-162433-0, p. 195.
  22. ^ J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), ISBN 0-7486-0276-3, p. 5.
  23. ^ a b A. Thomas, "The Renaissance", in T. M. Devine and J. Wormald, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), ISBN 0-19-162433-0, p. 189.
  24. ^ R. Maison, "Renaissance and Reformation: the sixteenth century", in J. Wormald, ed., Scotland: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), ISBN 0-19-162243-5, p. 102.
  25. ^ J. E. A. Dawson, Scotland Re-Formed, 1488-1587 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), ISBN 0748614559, p. 120.
  26. ^ D. M. Palliser, The Cambridge Urban History of Britain: 600-1540, Volume 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), ISBN 0-521-44461-6, pp. 391–2.
  27. ^ A. Thomas, "The Renaissance", in T. M. Devine and J. Wormald, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), ISBN 0-19-162433-0, pp. 201–2.
  28. ^ a b c J. Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 1530 to 1830 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 9th edn., 1993), ISBN 0-300-05886-1, pp. 502–11.
  29. ^ J. Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 1530 to 1830 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 9th edn., 1993), ISBN 0-300-05886-1, p. 502.
  30. ^ A. Jackson, The Two Unions: Ireland, Scotland, and the Survival of the United Kingdom, 1707–2007 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), ISBN 0-19-959399-X, p. 152.
  31. ^ I. D. Whyte and K. A. Whyte, The Changing Scottish Landscape, 1500–1800 (London: Taylor & Francis, 1991), ISBN 0-415-02992-9, p. 100.
  32. ^ L. Hull, Britain's Medieval Castles (London: Greenwood, 2006), ISBN 0-275-98414-1, p. 154.
  33. ^ M. Glendinning, R. MacInnes and A. MacKechnie, A History of Scottish Architecture: from the Renaissance to the Present Day, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002), ISBN 978-0-7486-0849-2, pp. 276–85.
  34. ^ H.-R. Hitchcock, Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 4th edn., 1989), ISBN 0-300-05320-7, p. 146.
Eras
Forms
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