Cruggleton Castle ***

Region: Dumfries & Galloway

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Cruggleton Castle cc-by-sa/2.0 - © Billy McCrorie - geograph.org.uk/p/4858791

Description:

Although for some reason I like it a lot, a visit to Cruggleton Castle could very well be a disappointment, as there is really hardly anything left to see. Part of a vault supported on an iron frame....very conspicuously beckons you from afar. The rest....is rubble.

The castle was built in the mid-13^th century by the daughter of Earl Alan, Alena and the Earl of Winchester and shortly afterwards passed to the powerful Comyn´s.

The Wars of Independence made sure that the Comyn´s and English cause were ´temporarily´ lost and it was Edward The Bruce, brother to the king, who made very sure the Comyn´s would never use Cruggleton again.

Many years later the Douglases acquired the estate and the castle´s remains. They undertook the restoration and held onto this stronghold until James II reduced the castle to rubble again.

The fortunes of Cruggleton were like the tide: building up and casting down.

Many sieges were flung against its walls and by 1660 most of the castle was carried away for its materials.

If you do visit you will at least have the satisfaction of standing on a spot that has played a minor but quite violent role in the history of the south west.