Pollock Castle

Pollock Castle stands on the western edge of Newton Mearns in East Renfrewshire, just beyond the M77 motorway. The site first appears on 16th-century maps by Timothy Pont and Joan Blaeu, where it is named Pook. Sir Robert Pollok rebuilt the castle between 1686 and 1694, adding an east wing and formal gardens with pavilions. William Roy’s 18th-century map shows the castle and its lands in detail. A fire in 1882 led to a Scots Baronial reconstruction in 1886, which survived until World War II. During the war the British Army took over most of the castle, leaving one wing in Pollok family hands. After Miss Fergusson Pollok abandoned the property in 1944, the building fell into decay and was demolished in 1952. By 1970 only the gatehouses, stables and gardener’s cottage remained, along with foundations and a few wall fragments. In the 1970s the ruins were cleared and a prefabricated house built on the site. The prefabricated house was removed in the early 1990s and the castle rebuilt in 2003 in the Scottish Adam style. Original foundations and part of a five-metre-high north wall still support the new house. The gatehouses and outbuildings have been restored as private homes. Visitors can walk the estate and see the surviving sections of the old walls and steps.