Comlongon Castle

Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray, granted the lands of Comlongon in the early 14th century to his nephew William de Moravia, ancestor of the Murrays of Cockpool. The site lies a kilometre west of Clarencefield and some ten kilometres south-east of Dumfries, in Dumfries and Galloway.

Comlongon was built to replace the family's earlier castle of Cockpool, which survives only as earthworks at Cockpool Farm to the south-west.

Who raised the tower house is not settled. Its construction has been attributed to Cuthbert of Cockpool, who died in 1493, in the later part of the 15th century. Against that, a licence to build was granted to his son John Murray, who died about 1527, in around 1500 — which led Alastair Maxwell-Irving to suggest it was built in the first decade of the 16th century. What is certain is that the tower was standing by 1508, when it is named in the documents creating the Barony of Cockpool for John Murray.

The red sandstone tower has been described as "exceptionally complete": roughly 15 by 13 metres and 18 metres high to its corbelled parapet, set on a stone plinth to carry it on what was a marshy site. The original yett, an iron lattice gate, still stands in front of the door, and beyond it walls up to 4.1 metres thick enclose a vaulted cellar with its own well. Those walls are riddled with twelve mural chambers, a guardroom with a cell beyond it and a trapdoor down to an unlit dungeon; the chambers reduce the strength of the tower, which has had to be reinforced to bear the weight of its roof.

The first-floor hall is dominated by a large fireplace with the Royal Arms of Scotland carved above it, and beside it an aumbry with a carved cinquefoil surround that attests to the relative wealth of the Murrays. The western parapet had been roofed over to make a gallery with crow-stepped gables before 1624, the date of a surviving inventory, and the upper storeys had been subdivided by the same time.

Descendants of the Murrays were created Viscounts Stormont in 1621 and Earls of Mansfield in 1776, and Comlongon remained part of the Earl's estate until 1984. A walled courtyard and a ditch, possibly a moat, once ringed the tower; both were removed in the early 18th century when a mansion house was added to its east side.

That 18th-century house was replaced in 1900 by the present Scottish Baronial mansion, designed by the local architects John M. Bowie and James Barbour, which echoes the crowsteps and corbels of the tower and keeps 18th-century interior work inside it. Castle and tower house are category A listed buildings, designated on 4 November 1971.

From 1939 until 1952 the mansion served as a children's home run by Barnardo's. After a spell of occasional use the Earl sold Comlongon to Tony Ptolomey, who refurbished both tower house and mansion as a hotel. Run by a partnership, it was a popular wedding venue until April 2019, when the business entered administration after being assessed a payment of almost £40,000 the previous year to a former employee ruled to have been unfairly dismissed. Weddings and accommodation booked beyond that date were cancelled, and the castle's future was left uncertain.