Mauchline Castle

Mauchline Castle stands in the small town of Mauchline, East Ayrshire, as a fifteenth-century rectangular tower house. Once part of a monastic farming estate linked to Melrose Abbey, it is now protected as a category A listed building. The tower’s name also recalls Abbot Andrew Hunter, whose arms appear on the first-floor vault boss. Huw Campbell of Loudoun later became Bailie of Barony and added square-headed windows in the early sixteenth century. By the eighteenth century the lawyer Gavin Hamilton, a friend of Robert Burns, lived here as a tenant of Lord Loudoun. Burns is said to have written part of his work and to have married Jean Armour in the castle. The castle’s history includes royal grants and coal mining. James V gave Melrose Abbey’s lands to his son James Stewart, Commendator of Kelso and Melrose, who stayed at Mauchline Castle. William Hamilton of Sanquhar managed the estate and its coal mines nearby. In the nineteenth century the building was repaired, yet by 1980 it was described as decaying. The thick red-ashlar walls and crowstep gables still mark the tower’s medieval form. Inside, the entrance at ground level leads up a turnpike stair to four main storeys and an attic. The first-floor hall is rib-vaulted with stone window seats and overlooks a vaulted basement of two dim chambers. A double garderobe chute in the north gable is an unusual feature. The hall’s boss bears Abbot Hunter’s arms, dating the structure to his abbacy between about 1444 and 1471.