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Publication Account
Date 1981
Event ID 1017706
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017706
The motte on which the castle was situated is located on the west side of town, near a fording point in the river {Simpson & Webster, 1972,17) providing excellent protection for an attack coming from Galloway. Bishop Pococke in 1760 observed that 'the site of the house of Robert Bruce, grandfather to King Robert I' is the 'most beautiful situation in town' (Kemp, 1887, 34). The matte he described as an oblong square, defended by a deep fosse to the south, and by a double fosse to the north on which side is the keep' (Kemp, 1887, 84). Rising to an elevation of fifty feet,-the motte measures about nine feet across its level summit by twenty-three feet lengthwise (Ordnance Survey, Record Cards, NY 16 NE 4). As early as the mid-twelfth century the river is alleged to have washed away part of the site of the castle (Pryde, 1965, 37), and even since 1920 the level area of the summit of the matte has been reduced as the result of a change in the course of the River Annan (Ordnance Survey, Record Cards, NY 16 NE 4).
Information from ‘Historic Annan: The Archaeological Implications of Development’, (1981).
