Carfrae Bastle is a small ruined

tower house A tower house is a particular type of stone structure, built for defensive purposes as well as habitation. Tower houses began to appear in the Middle Ages, especially in mountainous or limited access areas, in order to command and defend strateg ...

about north of

Lauder The former Royal Burgh of Lauder (, gd, Labhdar) is a town in the Scottish Borders in the Shires of Scotland, historic county of Berwickshire. On the Southern Upland Way, the burgh lies southeast of Edinburgh, on the western edge of the Lamme ...

Scottish Borders The Scottish Borders ( sco, the Mairches, 'the Marches'; gd, Crìochan na h-Alba) is one of 32 council areas of Scotland. It borders the City of Edinburgh, Dumfries and Galloway, East Lothian, Midlothian, South Lanarkshire, West Lothi ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

, near HillhouseCoventry, Martin (1997) ''The Castles of Scotland''. Goblinshead. p.103

History

Carfrae Bastle is of

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

origin. The

bastle Bastel, bastle, or bastille houses are a type of construction found along the Anglo-Scottish border, in the areas formerly plagued by border reivers. They are fortified farmhouses, characterised by security measures against raids. Their name ...

has a strategic position commanding the passes from Upper Lauderdale into

Lothian Lothian (; sco, Lowden, Loudan, -en, -o(u)n; gd, Lodainn ) is a region of the Scottish Lowlands, lying between the southern shore of the Firth of Forth and the Lammermuir Hills and the Moorfoot Hills. The principal settlement is the Sco ...

, by way of Glengelt and Kelphope glens. Carfrae is first mentioned in a charter in which William de Morville, son of

Richard de Morville Richard de Morville (died 1189), Lord of Cunninghame succeeded his father Hugh de Morville (died 1162) as Constable of Scotland and in his Scottish estates and English lands at Bozeat in Northamptonshire, and Rutland, as well as a number of fe ...

, Lord of Lauderdale, grants the lands and barony of Carfrae to Henry St Clair, in around 1196. The barony encompassed much of the eastern part of the parish of Channelkirk.History of Channelkirk, by Rev.Archibald Allen, publ. by James Thin, Edinburgh, 1900; ch.14

Structure

The overgrown remains of

rubble Rubble is broken stone, of irregular size, shape and texture; undressed especially as a filling-in. Rubble naturally found in the soil is known also as 'brash' (compare cornbrash)."Rubble" def. 2., "Brash n. 2. def. 1. ''Oxford English Dictionary ...

masonry stand to first floor height. The structure, by , is divided into two compartments. There is a

vaulted In architecture, a vault (French ''voûte'', from Italian ''volta'') is a self-supporting arched form, usually of stone or brick, serving to cover a space with a ceiling or roof. As in building an arch, a temporary support is needed while ring ...

basement A basement or cellar is one or more floors of a building that are completely or partly below the ground floor. It generally is used as a utility space for a building, where such items as the furnace, water heater, breaker panel or fuse box, ...

while the remains of a round stair-tower stand in the southeast angle.

References

{{coord , 55.786431, N, 2.7959569, W, display=title Castles in the Scottish Borders

History

Structure

See also

References