Scotland · Still standing
Closeburn Castle
Closeburn Castle is a privately owned medieval Scottish tower house near the village of Closeburn in Dumfriesshire. Built as a compact rectangular stone tower with ancillary defensive works, it has been continually occupied from the medieval period to the present and retains much of its original tower-house form.
Its prime
1400
Today
Still standing
As it stood in 1400
What Closeburn Castle looked like in its prime.
A tall, rectangular stone tower house roughly 14.5 by 10.5 m, rising about 15 m to a flush parapet; walls of coursed local stone with small vertical slit windows and a few larger arched openings on lower levels. The roofline is flat-topped behind the parapet; there are no projecting corner towers on the tower itself. The tower stands on a low promontory amid trees and gardens, formerly surrounded by a barmkin with round corner towers now removed.
Its story
The story of Closeburn Castle.
Closeburn Castle, a kilometre east of the village of Closeburn in Dumfriesshire, is a tower house probably of the 14th century, possibly older, and one of the oldest continually inhabited houses in Scotland. The Kirkpatrick family were confirmed in the lands of Closeburn by Alexander II in 1232, and held them for over five centuries.
The tower was built on a promontory in a loch, since drained, defended first by a timber palisade and later by a stone-walled barmkin with round towers at the corners. The tower itself rises 15 metres to a flush parapet, with a vaulted basement incorporating a prison, a vaulted hall above, and a first-floor entrance that still retains its iron yett, a defensive gate of metal bars.
The barmkin was presumably demolished to make way for a 17th-century manor, and when the family moved back into the tower in the mid-18th century the upper chambers were subdivided, windows enlarged and crenellations added to the parapet. The Kirkpatricks finally sold Closeburn in 1783 to a local minister, James Stewart-Menteith; the 19th-century additions, including a red sandstone porch, are possibly the work of the architect David Bryce.
Step inside
8 places to explore in 1400.
The record describes 8 distinct spots at Closeburn Castle, including 2 interiors: vaulted basement (prison), vaulted hall on the first floor. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
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Recreate Closeburn Castle with AI to explore it.
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Clans who held Closeburn Castle.
The families that held Closeburn Castle for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
Kirkpatrick
Confirmed in the lands of Closeburn by Alexander II in 1232; the family held the castle until selling it in 1783.
From the archive
Closeburn Castle on paper: the measured plan and period views.
The survey plan and photographs below are the ground truth this page's reconstructions are checked against, drawn and photographed while the castle was still a working garrison. Every image is public-domain or openly licensed, with its source named.
SECTION Fig. 78. — Closeburn Castle. Plan and Section.
1889 · MacGibbon & Ross, vol. 3 (1889)
Public domain
FIRST FLOOR. Fig. 78. — Closeburn Castle. Plan and Section.
1889 · MacGibbon & Ross, vol. 3 (1889)
Public domain
