As a prison, it was the pits – with enemies cast down to rot
The murky history of Cardoness Castle shows that it never had particularly friendly inhabitants, reports Claire Daly
If you like your history gruesome, follow in the footsteps of the murderers and vagabonds of the pit prison at Cardoness Castle.
Cardoness Castle, once surrounded by the sea, sits on a strong defensive rocky point at Fleet Bay near Gatehouse of Fleet in Kirkcudbrightshire. It is a castle with a gruesome history and tales of murder abound.
Cardoness Castle was built by the Mcculloch family in the 1470s but its beginnings are shrouded in mystery. The legend goes that a son of the Mccullochs married a daughter of the previous landowner. She was the sole survivor of a tragic accident in which her eight older sisters, her father and her new-born brother drowned in a frozen lake during a celebration of her new brother’s birth.
The castle is known for its pit prison in the bowels of the building and there’s a murder hole over the main door which was designed to deter unwanted visitors.
An upper level of the prison might have been considered cosy with a latrine and small window, compared to the horrible pit prison below, where enemies of the Mccullochs were thrown down to rot.
A pit prison is just what the Mcculloch family needed, because it seems they were always embroiled in disputes with their neighbours.
James Mcculloch was involved in land disputes five times and upset his neighbours when he married his daughter off to a “natural idiot” in a land-grabbing plot.
Alexander Mcculloch was convicted for violence against his neighbours. And Ninian Mcculloch was tried for theft of property from his widowed mother. In fact Cardoness Castle never had friendly inhabitants.
It was a haven for hostile pirates and murderers. Another Alexander Mcculloch, known as Cutlar Mcculloch,led a raid on the Isle of Man in 1530. He was fuelled by revenge because the Manx had attacked Galloway.
He plundered the Isle of Man several times, enriching himself.
However, the Mccullochs’ finances drained in the 1600s and they lost the castle to the nearby Gordon family, their long-standing enemies. In 1668, Alexander Mcculloch dragged John Gordon’s ailing widow out of the castle and tossed her onto a dung heap.
Then, in 1690, Sir Godfrey Mcculloch shot dead William Gordon.
The Mcculloch murderer fled to France but years later he was spotted in Edinburgh and beheaded on the Maiden, the Scottish equivalent of the guillotine.
Today the castle is cared for by Historic Environment Scotland and there are plans to restore some of the extra floors that have been lost. There’s a visitor centre in a converted cottage at the roadside where there’s a model of how the castle would have looked originally.
The pit prison is intact and it is one of the best surviving in a Scottish tower house castle, but the floor that would have separated the two prisons is no longer there.