Scotland · Ruin
Newark Castle
Newark Tower (Newark Castle) is a late-medieval Scottish tower house standing on a low prominence in the Yarrow valley near Selkirk. The surviving structure is a multi-storey rectangular keep with remaining sections of a gatehouse and enclosing wall (barmkin). It is a scheduled monument and today survives as a ruin within the grounds of Bowhill House.
Its prime
1503
Today
Ruin
As it stood in 1503
The shape it held in its prime.
A tall, rectangular seven-storey stone tower house of compact footprint, standing alone on a grassy promontory above the Yarrow valley. Thick light-grey rubble walls pierced by small rectangular and slit windows rise to pronounced gabled short-ends; the west gable bears carved royal arms. A low barmkin wall and the stub of a gatehouse enclose a courtyard around the tower. The tower roofline in its prime would show intact pitched roofs behind the crow-stepped/gabled end profiles.
Its story
The story of Newark Castle.
Around 1406 Archibald Douglas, 4th Earl of Douglas and Duke of Touraine, moved his principal residence in the Selkirk Forest from Edibertshiels to this prominence in the valley of the Yarrow Water, three miles west of Selkirk. Forest courts were held at Newark twice yearly, at Beltane and All Hallows, dispensing justice for crimes such as illegal hunting and deforestation.
After the fall of the Black Douglases in 1455 the tower was held by the Crown. Alexander, Lord Home, was keeper of the castle and forest from 1490, and the keys later passed from Margaret to her husband, Lord Methven.
Newark survives as a large ruined tower house in the grounds of Bowhill House — a multi-storey rectangular keep with sections of gatehouse and barmkin wall still standing — and is designated a scheduled monument by Historic Environment Scotland.
Step inside
8 places to explore in 1503.
The record describes 8 distinct spots at Newark Castle — including 1 interior: interior of the keep (vertical sequence of chambers). Create your own photoreal reconstruction and walk through every one — more scenes means more photos, more angles and more rooms of the immersive experience.
Create History
Recreate Newark Castle with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 1503 — a photoreal walk that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
Recreate Castle to Explore →Whose castle
Clans who held Newark Castle.
The families that held Newark Castle for a decade or more across its history — follow a name to its clan.
Principal Selkirk Forest residence of Archibald Douglas, 4th Earl of Douglas, from c.1406 until the fall of the Black Douglases in 1455.
