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Threave
Threave Castle in Galloway is one of the earliest tower house castles in Scotland.
It was built from around the year 1369 by Archibald Douglas, nicknamed Archibald
the Grim, to mark his elevation to the lordship of Galloway.
Self-contained keeps
Tower houses first appeared in the 14th century, and quickly replaced the earlier
fashion in Scotland for curtain wall or enclosure
castles. For the next 300 years, they were the dominant form of castle design
north of the border.
Superficially, they are similar to the keeps of
12th-century England, but they differ in crucial ways. The biggest difference
is that tower houses – especially later examples – tend to be more self-contained
than keeps. Threave, for instance, has a kitchen on its first floor, which would
be a real oddity in a Norman keep.
Likewise, stone-vaulted ceilings are common in tower houses, but rare in keeps.
Entry to a tower house, although commonly on the first floor (as at Threave)
was occasionally by a door at ground-floor level; again, this is unheard of
with keeps. The builders of Scottish tower houses also seem to have liked building
them in remote and unforgiving locations – rocky peninsulas, windswept
hills, on small islands. Threave stands on an island in the middle of the River
Dee.
Nothing but a tower?
Tower houses seem to be self-contained and isolated, and the traditional view
has always been that they were closed-up, inward looking buildings – in
a phrase, 'a tower, and nothing but a tower'.
They appear to endorse the view that Scotland in the late Middle Ages was a
pretty nasty place to live; a time when, in the words of Sir Walter Scott, 'Everybody
was too busy fighting to write anything down'. Incessant violence between the
king and his nobles prompted the latter to lock themselves away in dark forbidding
towers for their own safety and protection.
However, this rather extreme view of Scottish medieval history has recently
been challenged and modified. While violence did occur, for the most part kings
and nobles were working together in the business of governing the kingdom, rather
than fighting each other the whole time. Accordingly, tower houses are now seen
not simply as an indication of increased unrest, but to some degree as a measure
of peace and prosperity. Building on this scale required years of stability
and pots of money.
Grim splendour
As it stands today, Threave looks like an example of the traditional view of Scottish
castles. Not only does it stand alone, grim and forbidding, on its island; it
also has a large and elaborate artillery platform wrapped around its base, to
defend the castle from attack.
However, excavations at the castle in the 1970s revealed that this platform was
thrown up with great haste during a conflict between the Douglases and the Scottish
crown in the 1450s. What's more, it was built over (and using the stone from)
two earlier domestic buildings, which had been put up at the same time as the
tower house itself.
In other words, Threave as it now appears looked nothing like it did when Archibald
the Grim lived there in the late 14th century. Archibald himself may have been
grim, but his castle in the middle of the River Dee must have looked really rather
splendid.
After the fall of the Douglases, the Lordship of Galloway and Threave Castle were
annexed to the crown, which installed a succession of keepers at the castle.
The castle today
In 1526, the Lords Maxwell, whose principal seat was Caerlaverock Castle, were
declared hereditary custodians of Threave Castle and they remained so until
1640 when the castle was finally abandoned during the Civil
War.
In 1948, Threave Castle, along with Threave House and garden, were given to
the National Trust for Scotland by Major AF Gordon DSO, MC. The castle was then
placed under the guardianship of Historic Scotland, which manages it today.
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