Publication Account
Date 1986
Event ID 1017388
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017388
The sight of this substantial tower-house near the centre of Kirkcudbright often elicits surprise, mainly because It makes absolutely no concessions to the demands of an urban environment, but it is this very quality that provides the key to our understanding of this buliding and the self-esteem of its builder, Sir Thomas MacLellan of Bombie. At the time of the house's completion in about 1582, Thomas was provost of Kirkcudbright, held much property in the town and county, and was shortly to marry, as his second wife, Dame Grissel Maxwell, daughter of the powerful Lord Herries. This house is nothing less than the mark of a wealthy and ambitious burgess-laird, and his monument (1597) inside the nearby Greyfriars Church is of an equally grand and elaborate style. His son, Robert, became 1st Lord Kirkcudbright in 1633, but the family's enthusiasm for the Royalist cause and military adventures, particularly in Ireland, were to cost them dear. During the minority of 4th Lord Kirkcudbright between 1664 and 1669 the estates were seized by the family's creditors, and there was virtually nothing left to support the title.
The rise and fall of the House of MacLellan is reflected in the house itself which may not have seen further use beyond the end of the 17th century. Indeed, there are traditions that Some of the upper-floor rooms had always been in an unfurnished state, but in any case by 1752 the roof and internal fittings were stripped out. Despite its gun-ports, angle-turrets, and a forbidding general mien, this building was essentially a domestic, not a defensive, security-conscious pile. Large windows, plenty of stairs (including a straight-flighted main stair), dry closets in place of open latrines, more than fifteen heated rooms, a well laid-out service basement with a kitchen in the wing and vaulted stores in the main block-these are the points that a late 16th century estate agent would have spotted immediately. But, for all its complex novelty and sophistication, the design follows traditional medieval lines in being centred around a first-floor hall with its adjacent chamber.
It is worth emphasising two of the more significant details. Above the door in the re-entrant angle there is a framed and pedimented set of three panels which contain relief carvings of what was probably the royal arms above those of Sir Thomas MacLellan and of Lord Herries, the latter bearing the initials G(rissel) M(axwell) and the date 1582. Within the great hall, and commensurate with the scale of the whole establishment, is an imposing fireplace which Sir Thomas's banqueting guests could not have failed to notice. He could have noticed them, too, even if he was not present, for cut into the back of the fireplace is a neat spy-hole or 'laird's lug', through which, as one account puts it, 'observation could be maintained on the occupants of the hall'.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Dumfries and Galloway’, (1986).
