Archaeology Notes

Event ID 709570

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/709570

NT10NW 4 10173 05372

(NT 1016 0537) Frenchland Tower (NR) (Ruins of)

OS 6" map, (1898-1938)

This tower was inhabited as late as 1720, and in 1857 the walls still stood erect.

Name Book 1857.

Originally a simple keep, this building has been extended at a later time into a mansion of the L-plan. Some of the corbels of the parapet of the original keep have been left in the N gable when the latter was heightened and finished with crow-steps. The door of the enlarged structure was in the re-entering angle of the W wing, which was added in order to contain a good square staircase as far up as the hall and bedrooms on the upper floors. The old keep is 26 ft 8 ins (8.1m) by 21 ft 6 ins (6.6m) wide, and the walls are 3 ft 6 ins (1.1m) thick. It is probably an erection of the 16th century, while the wing, which measures 15 ft 8 ins (4.8m) by 13 ft (4m), and other enlargements have been added in the 17th century.

D MacGibbon and T Ross 1889-92.

Frenchland Tower was originally oblong in plan, unvaulted, with a parapet carried on corbels, and was probably built in the 16th century. At some later period, possibly in the 17th century, the tower was modernised, the parapet was removed, and a high pitched roof substituted. A wing was thrown out on the W, making the tower a mansion of the L-plan type, to contain a staircase wider and more suited to the requirements of the dwelling than the original wheel-stair.

RCAHMS 1920

The remains of this tower are as described. The walls stand generally to the wall-head except on the N side and at the re-entrant angle where there are gaps down to almost ground level.

Visited by OS (RD) 7 December 1971

The French family held land here as tenants of the Bruces in the early 13th century. In the 16th century they built a three-storey tower measuring 8m by 6.3m with a tiny spiral stair squeezed in the SW corner. In the early 17th Robert French added a turret on the W side to contain a wide stair from a new entrance to the hall and a bedroom at third storey level. It was perhaps at the same that the main tower was remodelled without the former open wall-walk and parapet. The side walls have mostly fallen but the gables stand intact.

M Salter 1993.

Ruin of a rubble-built three-storey-and-attic L-plan laird's house, the main block likely to have been constructed in the mid-16th century by the Frenches of Frenchland, its upper part remodelled and the SW jamb added probably early in the 17th century.

J Gifford 1996.

Description:

Tower house built probably in 16th century, jamb added at S end of W wall in 17th century, forming L-plan. All rubble-built with ashlar dressings, some deep corbels at upper level. Roofless, and in poor condition.

Notes:

Scheduled Ancient Monument.

References:

RCAHM INVENTORY, 1920 no. 480.

De-listed September 2009

(Undated) information from Historic Scotland.

Scheduled as 'Frenchland Tower, tower house... the remains of a multi-phase, L-shaped tower-house, probably built in the 16th century.'

Information from Historic Scotland, scheduling document dated 16 March 2010.

Frenchland Tower

(remains of) [NAT]

OS (GIS) MasterMap, April 2010.