Note

Event ID 1138951

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Note

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1138951

In the 16th century Earlstoun belonged to the Sinclairs, passing to the Gordons in the early 17th century, around which time the house was erected, probably on the site of an earlier stronghold. The Gordons sold the estate in the early 1740s, after which the castle was no longer used for lairdly accommodation. The New Statistical Account reported in 1845 that 'With some repair it might be made habitable'. This appears to have been done, as some 50 years later MacGibbon and Ross stated that there were 'people not yet old, who were born in the house'.

Earlstoun Castle is a late 16th/early 17th century L-plan tower-house, with a main block of three storeys and a garret. The stair wing contains the entrance, from which there is access to the barrel vaulted ground-floor chambers, and also the spiral stair leading to the first floor. The upper floors of the main block and the wing are reached by a smaller stair corbelled out externally in the re-entrant angle. The walls, which are relatively thin, are of greywacke rubble with sandstone dressings and the gables have flat skews. There is no evidence that the tower ever had a parapet, and it has no gunloops.

The tower shows evidence of extensive structural alterations, including the windows, which have been enlarged in the main block. These alterations date from the late 17th century, when the interior was reordered. The original fireplace in the first-floor hall was partly built up and partly converted into a window, and the walls of the hall were wainscotted, with fluted pilasters and dentilled cornices, elements of which still survive. The second floor was divided into two rooms by a timber-panelled partition and they were accessed by way of a panelled passageway from the stair, since destroyed.

The castle sits within a group of farm buildings which, although relatively modern in appearance, may contain older fabric. A one-and-a-half storey wing was added to the east gable of the tower sometime before 1655 and now survives as a single wall and grass covered footings. An inscribed marriage stone dated 1655 and with the initials W G and M H for William Gordon and his wife Mary Hope was built into the wing and is now located; under one of the first floor windows of the tower. The wing, which communicated with the tower through slappings at ground and first-floor level, housed a new kitchen and appears to have returned to the south to create a U-shaped complex of buildings.

J Gifford 1996; D MacGibbon and T Ross 1887; A M T Maxwell-Irving 2000; RCAHMS

Information from the HES Castle Conservation Register, 5 July 2022