Seagate Castle

Seagate Castle stands in Irvine, North Ayrshire, beside the River Irvine. It is the last survivor of Irvine’s old civil and ecclesiastical buildings, a fortified town house built first in wood before 1184 and rebuilt in stone during the 1360s. The castle overlooks the oldest street in town, once the main route to the old harbour at Seagatefoot, now silted and abandoned. Its triangular north-west tower may contain fragments of the twelfth-century stronghold called ‘Irewin’. The entrance doorway is a fine example of Scottish Renaissance Gothic, with ornate moulded windows and an arched pend. The building was later used as a dower house by the Montgomery clan. The castle’s history is tied to powerful families and royal grants. Irvine became a Royal Burgh in 1372 under King Robert II, and the castle passed through the de Morville, Balliol, and Stewart families before coming to the Eglintons in 1366. Hugh the third Earl of Eglinton remodelled it around 1565 as a showpiece mansion. A constable managed the castle on behalf of the lord, with records naming Philip de Horssey and Thomas de Vauce among those who held the post. The castle’s armorial panel once displayed the joined arms of Montgomerie and Drummond. Visitors today find a substantial ruin with vaulted ground-floor rooms, a kitchen with a large fireplace and serving hatch, and two guardrooms each with a single door. The courtyard retains part of its curtain wall and subsidiary buildings. The upper floors were reached via a round tower, now partly intact, with fine fireplaces and moulded windows. The ornate entrance off Seagate shows Romanesque mouldings similar to those at Kilwinning Abbey and Blairquhan Castle. After being unroofed in the 18th century, the castle became a haunt for smugglers and thieves, leaving traces of illicit stills in the kitchen hearth.