Dunskey Castle

Dunskey is a twelfth-century tower house on a promontory half a mile south of Portpatrick, in the Rhinns of Wigtownshire, its only landward approach cut by a rock-cut ditch 15 metres wide and 2.5 metres deep. In 1291 the nearby Wigtown Castle lay in the hands of Edward I of England, who committed it to Walter de Corry, laird of Dunskey, and later conferred it on the Scottish king John Balliol; by 10 October 1303 Corry was dead and his lands had been taken into the English king's hands. Among the twenty-six Wigtownshire names on the Ragman Rolls compiled at Berwick-upon-Tweed on 28 August 1296 was Thomas de Kithehilt, of the Adair line of Kinhilt later seated here.

In 1456 Gilbert Kennedy, 1st Lord Kennedy of Dunure, obtained the ward of Kinhilt with Dunskey, and the next year Rolland Adair had sasine of Kildonan, otherwise Portree. The wardship record is a tangle: by 1486, Rolland dead and his son William apparently still under age, the ward of Kilhelt, Portree, Kildonan and Drummore had gone about 1468 to an Alexander Bruce, who held it in error for eighteen years.

In 1488 William Adair of Dunskey and Kinhilt, with McCulloch of Ardwell in Stoneykirk, was attacked by the sheriff Quentin Agnew of Lochnaw and his band of men; pursued before the Lords of Council, Agnew had to pay in 1489 for the goods taken. About the same year the tower was partially burnt by Sir Alexander M'Culloch of Myrtoun.

The burning is set out in a complaint of 29 August 1496, in which William Adair and Archibald McCulloch of Ardwell alleged that Sir Alexander and Uchtred McDowell of Garthland, with their accomplices, "assegit the place of DUNSKAY" and "rasit fyre and byrnt the sammyn". The damage was itemised: 40 pounds of household gear, another 20 for the burning of Adair's house, four horses and barked hides, and from Archibald McCulloch and his folk cattle, sheep and sixteen horses and mares. Behind it lay a charge, which the complainers denied, of art and part in the slaughter of Dionyse of Hamilton in the town of Wigtown. A pardon followed for McCulloch on 3 March 1499, with respites for the burning granted to four other men.

William Adair was killed at Flodden in September 1513, and his son Ninian Adair of Kinhilt took sasine of the estate. Ninian is said to have rebuilt Dunskey on a more magnificent scale than ever, and to have ended the feud with the MacDowells by marrying Janet McDowell of the house of Garthland. The hall was rebuilt about 1520, 36 feet by 17 feet; the Adairs had raised the Castle of St John at Stranraer about 1510. Ninian had little time in the new work: by 1520–21 the wardship of his lands had passed to Gilbert Kennedy, 2nd Earl of Cassilis, and Lord Maxwell, his heir being under age, and in 1523 that son William is named as heir.

Timothy Pont's map of about 1580–90 shows Dunskay with two watchtowers on the cliff edge fronting the sea; the remains of one, 7 metres square, survive. In February 1620 it was acquired by Hugh Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of the Ards, who extended the castle with a Gallery leading off the Hall and vaults beneath it. Work was still running twelve years on, when his wife Sara Maxwell wrote to him on 24 August 1632: "It seameth ye ar causing your workmen goe on both in your building and theikine of your Gallerie att Dunskay."

The Viscount was heavily mortgaged from the long upkeep of his troops. His lands were apprised from him on 1 August 1650 for payment of 2,000 pounds Scots, and by a deed of 15 June 1653 the three-merk land of Marrock with the castle, tower and fortalice of Dunskey went to John Shaw of Greenock. The castle came to the Blairs, ministers at Portpatrick: John Blair had acted as the Viscount's agent and foreclosed on a mortgage covering the whole Montgomery property in Galloway. On 11 September 1672 Blair and his wife Jean Agnew had their lands ratified as the barony of Dunskey; by 1684 the laird had moved to nearby Killantringan and the castle was in ruin, some fifty years after the gallery was added.

Francis Grose's drawing of the 1790s shows the ruined foundations and the sea-wall on the south, with the Irish coast across the water. The three-storey L-plan tower, 30 by 14.3 metres, is now a roofless shell. It has been a scheduled monument since 9 November 1938, and was a filming location for Kidnapped (1951), from Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, for Hunted (1952) and for Double X: The Name of the Game (1992). The owner restricts public access.