Corsbie Castle is a ruined 16th-century

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 west of Gordon,

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 ...

, and north of the

Eden Water Eden Water is a tributary of the River Tweed in the Scottish Borders of Scotland. "Water" is the Lowland Scots term for a small river. The Eden Burn rises to the east of Lauder at Corsbie Moor on Boon Farm. The Eden Water passes Bassendean vill ...

.Coventry, Martin (1997) ''The Castles of Scotland''. Goblinshead. p.125 It was also known as Corsbie Tower. It has been designated as a

scheduled monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and d ...

History

The surviving monument represents the remains of a 16th-century tower house, which property belonged to the Cranstons until the middle of the 17th century.

Structure

The castle formerly had five storeys, and 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, ...

. It is constructed on a raised piece of ground, and is surrounded by a

bog A bog or bogland is a wetland that accumulates peat as a deposit of dead plant materials often mosses, typically sphagnum moss. It is one of the four main types of wetlands. Other names for bogs include mire, mosses, quagmire, and muskeg; a ...

on all sides, the only access being by way of a

causeway A causeway is a track, road or railway on the upper point of an embankment across "a low, or wet place, or piece of water". It can be constructed of earth, masonry, wood, or concrete. One of the earliest known wooden causeways is the Sweet Tra ...

from the north. The castle was oblong, about by ; the average thickness of the walls is . Only the walls to the south and east remain; they rise to . Its rounded angles are constructed of dressed

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...

, while the rest of the masonry is of coursed rubble. There are remains of the

earthworks Earthworks may refer to: Construction *Earthworks (archaeology), human-made constructions that modify the land contour * Earthworks (engineering), civil engineering works created by moving or processing quantities of soil *Earthworks (military), m ...

, comprising the inner and outer banks of a medial ditch; these are best preserved towards the south west of the structure.

References

{{coord , 55.6865, N, 2.6257, W, display=title Castles in Scotland Scheduled monuments in Scotland

History

Structure

See also

References