Field Visit
Date October 1988
Event ID 1082942
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1082942
The estate on which Castle Toward (No. 158) was built in 1820 had belonged since the early 16th century to the Campbells of Auchawilling or Auchavoulin, a cadet line of the Ardkinglas family (en.1). Pont's map of about 1590 (en.2) shows a tower-house with enclosure, similar to the nearby Toward Castle (No. 139), but the existing fragment appears to belong to a house of early or mid 17th-century date. It is uncertain whether this is the building on which James Campbell paid tax for 13 windows in 1799, but it was reduced to its present ruined state by 1870 (en.3*).
The existing remains, situated at the NE angle of the walled garden 130m E of Castle Toward, comprise a two-storeyed side-wall 14.5m long by 1.1m thick and about 6m high, oriented exactly E-w, with the stumps of return walls at E and W. There is no visible evidence of the original width of the building, which is of random rubble with copious dressings of the red sandstone found near Toward Point; traces of wall-plaster survive internally.
The ground floor comprised three transverse barrel-vaulted cellars, 3.1m and 3.5m in span, whose vault-scars and the tuskers of the springing-walls are best preserved in the W half. A further vault at the W, only 1.5m in span, probably belonged to a kitchen fireplace similar to that in the E range of Toward Castle (No. 139), its W wall being only 0.4m thick. This space was lit by a slit-window 0.36m high, and the cellars by single windows measuring 0.5m wide and 0.7m high in the W cellar, and 0.2m by 0.4m in the others. All of these openings have 60mm chamfered surrounds, sockets for vertical iron bars, and splayed embrasures with stepped sills and lintelled roofs. Below the windows of the E and central cellars there are recesses in the inner wall-face, of uncertain purpose. In the E and W cellars there are aumbries, 0.7m wide and 0.9m high.
The upper floor was divided into two rooms by a cross-wall whose tuskers remain 3.2m from the E end-wall. The smaller room was lit by a window with splayed embrasure and a daylight opening 0.6m wide and 1m high, wrought on the jambs and lintel with an 85mm roll and having a glazing groove; lintels with relieving-arches span the window and embrasure. Only the S ingo survives of another window in the E wall of this room. The two windows in the S wall of the larger room were similar, but are 0.8m wide, and the w window, which has lost its lintels, has straight ingoes. There are also two aumbries in this wall. The return of the W end wall preserves the S jamb of another roll-moulded window, presumably lighting a recess formed by the chimney breast above the kitchen fireplace. A small barrel-vaulted cellar was formed at the E end of the ground floor, probably in the early 19th century, and its segmental entrance-arch, in the W wall, was filled in the early20th century with angular tracery. This may have been inspired by the belief that the building was 'a religious house' or an 'ancient chapel’ (en.4).
RCAHMS 1992, visited October 1988
