Buittle Castle
Buittle Castle, also known historically as Botle or Botel Castle, is a Motte and Bailey site in Galloway, south-west Scotland with significant early and medieval history comprising a significant ruined Norman style Motte, and several extant buildings and gardens, including the later residential building in the form of the Tower House, on the historic Bailey.
An area of prehistoric pasture land has yielded a number of lithics, and there is post-hole and pottery evidence of an early roundhouse on this level.
[9] It appears that sometime around the turn of the 11th century the raised areas of ground were moated and a timber Motte and Bailey fortress was established.
With the construction of this timber fortification and the large complex of buildings which sprung up around it, we see the proper beginnings of the Castle, which was to later be fortified in stone.
1200 eventually comprised the residential Motte (some 100 x 150 feet), where the Lords of Galloway had their private chambers as well as the major reception rooms necessary for the running of a semi-sovereign demesne, the Inner Bailey with its two-storey Keep, Chapel of Ease, and associated buildings, and the Outer Bailey, likely comprising workshops and servants dwellings, stabling, etc.
[13] It was likely under her auspices that the Chapel of Ease, now no longer extant, was built at Buittle, and it must be either this establishment or her promulgation of the Statutes of Balliol College, annotated 'apud Botel', which is connected to the discovery of a Papal Bulla of Honorius IV during the excavations on the bailey.
It is likely at this time that the fortified, or Barmkin, Courtyard would have been established which is today attached to the Tower House, thereby making a more easily defended central nucleus of buildings.
It would seem that, at this time, James III of Scotland settled the Barony of Buittle on his Queen, Margaret of Denmark, as part of her dowry.
It is likely that, at this time, he closed the tower of Buittle Castle and unroofed it for tax purposes, putting the courtyard's other buildings to agricultural use.
Health, aye unsour'd by care or grief: Inspired I turn'd Fate's sibyl leaf This natal morn; I see thy life is stuff o’ prief, Scarce quite half-worn.’ In 1949 Desmond Herries-Maxwell disponed the lands of Buittle to smallholding dairy farmers the Barrowmans.
It would seem that the tower house with courtyard complex had become known as Buittle Castle at least until the buildings were given over to agricultural use in the 18th century, as witnessed by Grose, Cardonnel, MacGibbon and Ross, et al.[21][22][23] By about 1790 the tower was roofless but in the mid-nineteenth century it was re-roofed to serve as accommodation for farm workers when it became part of the neighbouring Munches estate, during which time the bartizan angle turrets were removed.
The site was sold in 1992 to Jeffrey Burn, an artist, historian and re-enactor, who started the restoration of the historic buildings, largely stripping away the alterations and accretions of the farming period.
The current owners have reverted to the name used by Grose and Cardonnel of Buittle Castle, reflecting the continued occupation and history of the comprehensive site.
In the vaulted undercroft of the tower is a chapel which regularly offers liturgical services according to the medieval Use of Sarum under the auspices of the Autonomous Orthodox Metropolia of North and South America and the British Isles.
