Archaeology Notes

Event ID 720157

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/720157

NT64SW 6 6456 4375.

(NT 6456 4375) Gordon Castle (NR) (Supposed Site of)

OS 6"map, Berwickshire, 2nd ed.,(1908).

A little to the N of the village of Gordon is an eminence pointed out as the spot on which the ancestors of the Duke of Gordon had their residence. A moat or ditch may still be traced, but is now covered with plantations.

New Statistical Account (NSA, J Paterson) 1845; RCAHMS 1915.

The reputed site of Gordon Castle. No trace of a moat which surrounded the site can be traced.

Name Book 1858.

This site is on a long, fairly high, ridge. The 'ditch', traceable on the E side of the site, in a plantation, is the ditch of an old tree bank. No remains of a castle are to be found.

Visited by OS(JD) 24 May 1955.

"I have always understood that the site of the Gordon castle (Recardus de Gordon, mentioned 1165, the estate remaining with the family till Sir James Seton succeeded in 1580 - see NT64SW 5) was in the field on the west side of the road just north of Gordon station. The fields on the other side of the road are called the castle parks."

M Lyal 1962

There are no visible remains at the supposed site of this castle.

RCAHMS 1980, visited 1979.

Gordon Castle is said to have been sited on a knoll which lies about 150m W of the now disused Gordon station. The earthworks referred to in earlier accounts, but of which there are now no surface remains, were probably those of an oval fort, whose W side is visible as cropmarks on aerial photographs.

Visited by RCAHMS (JRS/RJCM) 30 September 1993.