Murder, mayhem and Mons Meg dominate the story of a simple tower house perched on an island in the River Dee near Kirkcudbright. Threave Castle served the “black” Douglases, who used this watery site as a springboard against their rivals, the Stewarts, in the 14th and 15th centuries. Like the typical Scottish tower house, the fortress effectively combined simplicity and durability to pose a formidable threat to all comers.
Archibald the “Grim”, Lord of Galloway and 3rd Earl of Douglas, erected Threave Castle in 1370 on the site of an earth and timber fortification. Archibald, the illegitimate son and sole heir of “good” Sir James Douglas, developed a reputation in Galloway for callous oppression. Isolated from the surrounding landscape, this bleak tower house seems a fitting home for the despised Archibald, but the structure was more elaborate than its exterior suggests.
Rising five stories high, the eight-foot-thick walls solidly protected the Douglases. Each story had a specific purpose. Used for storage, the vaulted base contained the well, a sink and drain, and the dungeon. It may also have housed servants’ quarters. The kitchen level above the basement had a large fireplace, stone sink, recessed window, latrine, and probably provided eating space for servants. A spiral staircase made it easy to move hot meals between the kitchen and the great room, purposefully located upstairs. As a display place for the Laird, the great hall featured an ornate fireplace, three well-lit windows with seats, and an outhouse. An outer gate provided passage between the great hall and the boat docks on the river below. Archibald and his descendants lived on the floor above the great hall, with private apartments that offered shelter and a bedroom when guests proved tiresome. Scant lodgings filled the upper floor.
After the death in 1439 of the powerful 5th Earl of Douglas, also called Archibald, the relationship between the Black Douglases and the Scottish monarchy, which had never been easy, began to crack. In 1440, the two Douglas heirs, William and David, rode to Edinburgh Castle to dine with King James II, who was still in his teens. During the “Dinner of the Black Bull”, the regent kings accused the young Douglases of treason. According to tradition, at the end of the dinner, one of the regents placed a bull’s head before the brothers to symbolize his imminent death. Both were executed in front of the young king.
The blood feud continued. In 1452, the eighth Earl imprisoned a rival, Sir Patrick MacLellan, who was “the Guardian of Bombie” and Sheriff of Galloway. MacLellan’s uncle visited Douglas, who suspected the uncle was carrying a release decree signed by the king. Douglas arranged to have dinner with the uncle before discussing the prisoner’s release. During the meal, he had MacLellan killed, nullifying the royal decree and infuriating King James.
The king soon discovered that Douglas was plotting against him with the Earl of Crawford and the Lord of the Isles, John MacDonald. Supposedly hoping to reconcile the bad blood between them, King James II invited Douglas to dinner at Stirling Castle. When the 8th Earl of Douglas refused to renounce his association with Crawford and MacDonald, the king was furious and stabbed him to death.
In 1455, the king’s army defeated James, 9th Earl of Douglas; and his assembly of 40,000 men, who marched to Stirling Castle to avenge the eighth Earl’s murder. Proceeding to Threave, James II spurned the earl’s offer of the castle as a gift and instead built an artillery wall around the keep. The king then bombarded the sturdy tower house with the legendary Mons Meg (how found in Edinburgh Castle). The Mons Meg was a gigantic cannon presented by the Duke of Burgundy to James II in 1457. Seeing the destruction of several outbuildings and with his laird safely installed in England, the garrison surrendered to the king. Thereafter Threave Castle served as a royal fortress with the Lords Maxwell as hereditary guardians from 1526.
The Black Douglas castle faced its final and most devastating siege in 1640, when a force of Covenanters, Calvinists determined to enforce Protestant rule in Scotland, ravaged the site for 13 weeks. Although left in ruins, the tower house remained strong enough to imprison French prisoners during the Napoleonic Wars.
In 1948 the National Trust for Scotland became custodian and opened a School of Practical Gardening on the castle grounds. Now under the dual care of the National Trust for Scotland and Historic Scotland, Threave Castle is open during the summer for an entrance fee.