| 1017418 |
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From its rocky ridge overlooking the Water of Fleet, Cardoness Castle presents a plain but commanding face to the world. Inside, it contains all the accommodation and amenities that a medieval laird could desire. The tower was built in the last decades of the 15th century, probably by Alexander McCulloch, a close associate of King James IV. The McCulloch family of Myrton and Cardoness were seemingly as tough as their castle and not quite so passive! The tower was their residence until 1622 when the mortgaged estate was acquired by the Gordons of Upper Ardwall, but later members of the family voilently refused to accept the change of ownership. At their hands in 1668 the sick widow of a Gordon laird was dragged outside to die, and in 1697 a member of the same family was shot and fatally wounded. The tower has been uninhabited since the end of the 17th century. [...] |
1986 |
| 1017443 |
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Large and dominant, this Georgian hall church with its Gothic-like spire occupies the site of a medieval burgh church, whose dedication (to St Michael) it inherits. The gatepiers at the entrance to the churchyard are hollow, equipped with halved doors, and served as elders' sentry-boxes. The churchyard itself is well stocked with a variety of funerary monuments, many demonstrating the versatile and tractable qualities of the local red sandstone. Towards the eastern end there is the mausoleum in the form of a rotunda beneath which the remains ofRobert Bums were re-interred in 1815. Nearby, a tall granite obelisk of 1834 marks an area of Covenanters' tombstones, restored in 1873, whose lengthy inscriptions convey the bitter sectarian spirit of the 'Killing Times' in the 17th century. [...] |
1986 |
| 1017446 |
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The four-stage circular tower of this ruinous church is conspicuous in the centre of Portpatrick, and was probably designed to serve both as a belfry and navigational beacon for the early harbour (no. 1). The shell of the church to which it is attached is of an equal-anned crucifonn plan, and is dated on the gable skewput (the lowest stone), 1629; a screen-wall was subsequently built across the western aisle to fonn a T-plan interior. The church was lit by lintelled and mullioned windows in each of the three gables, and above them on the outer walls are spaces for carved panels. Moulded fragments, possibly from a medieval chapel on this site, have been reused in the building fabric. Prior to the current scheme of restoration and consolidation, the tower was repaired in about 1880, and the church last used for worship in 1842 when the present parish church was built. [...] |
1986 |
