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Cornal Tower
Building (Medieval) - (Post Medieval), Lade (Medieval) - (Post Medieval), Mill (Medieval) - (Post Medieval)(Possible), Tower House (16th Century), Track (Medieval) - (Post Medieval)
Site Name Cornal Tower
Classification Building (Medieval) - (Post Medieval), Lade (Medieval) - (Post Medieval), Mill (Medieval) - (Post Medieval)(Possible), Tower House (16th Century), Track (Medieval) - (Post Medieval)
Alternative Name(s) Polcornare; Cornal Burn; Logan
Canmore ID 49731
Site Number NT10SW 1
NGR NT 11194 04391
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/49731
- Council Dumfries And Galloway
- Parish Moffat
- Former Region Dumfries And Galloway
- Former District Annandale And Eskdale
- Former County Dumfries-shire
NT09SW 1 11194 04391
(NT 1119 0439) Cornal Tower (NR) (Remains of)
OS 6" map, (1898-1938).
Location formerly entered as NT 1119 0439.
Cornal Tower was granted early in the 15th century to Carruthers of Mousewald afterwards held by Johnstone of Coreheard, and owned of late times by the Duke of Queensberry.
Name Book 1857.
The ruins of Cornal Tower stand on a plateau on the steep edge of the Cornal Burn. The tower stood at the eastern extremity of the site and has evidently been of 16th century date. Only a portion of the north wall is now left, 12 feet, 6 inches long, 12 feet high, and 5 feet thick. Twenty-nine feet west of the tower is an outbuilding.
RCAHMS 1920.
Generally as described above. The standing section of wall is at the SE corner of the tower, the remainder of which consists of thickly overgrown footings as does the outbuilding which lies to the NW. Name confirmed.
Resurveyed at 1:2500.
Visited by OS (D W R) 30 November 1971.
Cornal Tower [NR] (remains of) [NAT]
OS 1:10,000 map, 1988.
The neck of a wooded promontory (35m long by 20m wide) above the Cornal Burn bears footings of a building (about 14m long by 6.5m wide). One fragment remains standing of a shorter building which has probably formed a tower in the middle of this area.
Cornal belonged to the Carruthers family and later passed to the Douglasses.
M Salter 1993.
Field Visit (4 July 1990)
NT09SW 1 1119 0439
This tower occupies a ridge of wooded ground on the E bank of the Cornal Burn. All that is visible of the tower, which occupies the highest point of the ridge (on the E), is a fragment of its ENE wall (some 14.2m long) which measures 1.5m in thickness by 3.9m in height and is of mortared random rubble construction. From the surviving portion of masonry and slight traces of its broader extent, the tower has apparently measured about 14.2m from NNW to SSE by 8.8m transversely overall.
To the WNW, at right angles to the tower and separated from it by a yard, there are the remains of a rectangular building which measures 14.1m from SW to NE by 6.3m transversely over grass-grown stone wall-footings 0.9m thick.
A track, which is terraced into the slope and in part stone-revetted, gave access to the tower from the SSE. To the W of the tower, in the gully of the Cornal Burn, traces of a lade indicate the possible site of a mill.
'Polcornare' (Cornal) in the estate of Logan is on record in 1512.
Visited by RCAHMS (IMS), 4 July 1990.
(J J Reid 1889).
Listed as tower, lade and mill.
RCAHMS 1997.
Measured Survey (26 March 1991)
RCAHMS surveyed Cornal Tower on 26 March 1991 with plane-table and self-reducing alidade at a scale of 1:500. The plan was redrawn in ink and published at a scale of 1:1000 (RCAHMS 1997, Fig. 231).
