Publication Account

Date 1978

Event ID 1018041

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1018041

The castle at Rutherglen was granted to Queen Joanna as part of her dowry in 1221 (CDS, i, 808). It was garrisoned by the English during the Wars of Independence and was kept in good repair until after the battle of Langside in 1568, when it was burnt on the orders of the Regent Moray. One of the principal towers was refurbished and it became the seat of the Hamiltons of Elistoun. The castle and gardens were described as being in a state of disorder in 1710 (Wilson, 1936, 10). Ure explained that on the decline of the Hamilton family at the end of the seventeenth century, the 'house was left to fall to ruins by frequent dilapidations, and was soon levelled with the ground' (1793, 28). Foundation stones measuring five feet (1. 5m) in length by four feet (1. 2m) in breadth were removed in 1759. Subsequently, they were built into a dyke adjoining the burgh but by the middle of the last century all trace of them had disappeared (Macdonald, 1854, 90). The castle occupied a site in King Street, nearly at the point where it is intersected by Castle Street in a square measuring from the Salvation Army Hall to Castle Street northward to the south side of the railway embankment, while the grounds 'abutted on the Kirkyard, the Main Street, Rutherglen Green and included the whole of Alleybank' (Shearer, 1922, 73). No vestiges of Rutherglen castle are to be observed above ground level.

Information from ‘Historic Rutherglen: The Archaeological Implications of Development’ (1978).