Auchinvole Castle
Country House (16th Century), Tower House (Medieval)
Site Name Auchinvole Castle
Classification Country House (16th Century), Tower House (Medieval)
Alternative Name(s) Auchinvole House; Auchenvole House
Canmore ID 45880
Site Number NS77NW 15
NGR NS 71386 76899
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/45880
- Council East Dunbartonshire
- Parish Kirkintilloch (Strathkelvin)
- Former Region Strathclyde
- Former District Strathkelvin
- Former County Dunbartonshire
NS77NW 15 7138 7690.
(NS 7138 7690) Tower (NR)
OS 6" map (1968)
Auchenvole Castle (Tranter) or Auchinvole (MacGibbon and Ross) appears to date from the late 16th or early 17th century, with large modern additions. The original building is rather unusual, an L- planned structure with a very tiny stair-turret above third floor level leading to a small watch-chamber. There is one angle-turret on the NW corner, but otherwise the walls are plain. The ground floor is vaulted. There has been considerable alteration, especially to the SW, where the additions have been erected. The building, though still occupied, is not in a very good condition.
Watson asserts that this building occupies the site of an old castle which had a drawbridge and moat.
N Tranter 1963; D MacGibbon and T Ross 1887; T Watson 1894
Auchinvole Castle (Mrs H Alexander, occupier): a Victorian mansion, incorporates a square tower on the E which is in poor structural condition though it has apparently been restored in the past. It is still occupied.
Visited by OS (JLD) 17 February 1954
NMRS REFERENCE:
Kirkintilloch, Auchinvole which was Category B Listed was gutted and partly demolished in 1965. Information from Demolitions catalogue held in RCAHMS library.
Field Visit (May 1977)
Auchenvole NS 713 769 NS77NW 15
An L-plan tower-house of late 16th· or early 17th-century date, said to have been moated, was incorporated in the Victorian mansion of Auchenvole. The building has been demolished.
RCAHMS 1982, visited May 1977
(MacGibbon and Ross 1887-92, iii, 474; Watson 1894, 138-9; Tranter 1962-70, ii, 153)
Publication Account (2006)
Another late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century moated L-plan tower house was erected at Auchenvole (NS 7138 7690), south of the town in the Kelvin valley. It appears to have been built by a family called Stark, whose superiors were the lords Fleming. The property was incorporated into a Victorian mansion but this was demolished in 1977 and no visible remains survive, apart from outbuildings and a dovecot.
Information from ‘The Scottish Burgh Survey, Historic Kilsyth: Archaeology and Development’ (2006).
