Publication Account

Date 1999

Event ID 1018331

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1018331

There are only two structures in Dumbarton older than Glencairn House. The first, Dumbarton Castle figure 24, reflects the town's traditional role-as a military stronghold. The castle stands apart from the centre of the town, on two volcanic peaks, at the mouth of the River Leven figure 2. Dumbarton Rock, it has been claimed, is the oldest known, continuously recorded, stronghold in Great Britain with occupation from at least AD 460. The oldest structure now standing on the rock, the portcullis arch, dates from the fourteenth century figure 17. A sixteenth-century guardhouse figure 17 and the slightly later Wallace Tower figure 25 (rebuilt in 161 7 on a medieval site and covered, in the late eighteenth century, by the Duke ef York's Battery), represent periods of building work considerably earlier than the majority of structures still standing on the rock.

Unfortunately, little survives even of the medieval castle, and much of what is visible today is of the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century fortifications. Almost continuous use of the Rock over 1,500 years has meant that the most suitable areas for occupation have been built over time and time again. Fortifications, by their very nature, are massively constructed, with deep foundations, and would probably destroy all traces of earlier activity. Nevertheless, the excavations of 197 4--5 and the discovery of two cross-slabs clearly demonstrate the archaeological potential of this site. The castle is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and is in the care of Historic Scotland.

Information from ‘Historic Dumbarton: The Archaeological Implications of Development’ (1999).