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Dunduff Castle

Tower House (Medieval)

Site Name Dunduff Castle

Classification Tower House (Medieval)

Canmore ID 40935

Site Number NS21NE 5

NGR NS 27192 16370

Datum OSGB36 - NGR

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/40935

Ordnance Survey licence number AC0000807262. All rights reserved.
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Administrative Areas

  • Council South Ayrshire
  • Parish Maybole
  • Former Region Strathclyde
  • Former District Kyle And Carrick
  • Former County Ayrshire

Archaeology Notes

NS21NE 5 27192 16370

(NS 2719 1636) Dunduff Castle (NR) (remains of)

OS 6" map (1970)

Abercrummie lists, "Dunduffe, a house on the coast never finished" among the houses of the gentry in Carrick.

W Macfarlane 1907

Dunduff still exists in its unfinished state. It was apparently designed to form an oblong tower of considerable magnitude. The walls are as high as the second storey. The ruins do not seem to be older than the mid-17th century.

J Paterson 1852

Dunduff Castle: A small L-shaped castellated mansion, with a square stair tower in the re-entrant angle on the S. Although in crumbling condition, the walls survive up to the second storey and are 1.5m thick. The basement has been vaulted; two vaults remain. The windows and doors are rectilinear with dressed lintel and jamb stones. These features and the style of construction suggest a late 16th - early 17th century date. Visited by OS (JLD) 13 December 1955

As described by OS (JLD). The castle has a more developed architectural style than similar works along this coast, e.g. Thomaston Castle (NS20NW 1) and Baltersan Castle (NS20NE 1), and could well be of a slightly later date- as stated. The fabric appears to be in a stable condition.

Visited by OS (JRL) 21 July 1977

Activities

Field Visit (8 September 1942)

This site was included within the RCAHMS Emergency Survey (1942-3), an unpublished rescue project. Site descriptions, organised by county, vary from short notes to lengthy and full descriptions and are available to view online with contemporary sketches and photographs. The original typescripts, manuscripts, notebooks and photographs can also be consulted in the RCAHMS Search Room.

Information from RCAHMS (GFG) 10 December 2014.

Field Visit (July 1985)

Dunduff NS 27191637 NS21NE 5

This stepped L-plan tower-house is prominently situated on a rocky knoll 71 0m EN E of Dunduff farmsteading. It was probably begun in the late 16th· or early 17th-century; the plan is advanced for its date but it may never have been completed. The tower measures 13.45m by 12.34m over walls up to 1.45m thick and comprises two principal storeys; the original design must have included at least one additional upper storey. The ground floor was subdivided into three barrel-vaulted rooms of roughly equal size which opened from a lobby entered from the stair-tower (of three storeys) in the re-entrant angle. On the first floor a corridor running the length of the main block provided separate access to a private chamber in the WSW wing. The hall was well appointed with large splayed window embrasures and a fireplace in the WSW wall; joist sockets in the WSW and ENE walls indicate the subsequent insertion of an intermediate floor.

RCAHMS 1985, visited July 1985.

(NSA, v, Ayr, 365; Paterson 1863-6, ii, 384; Macfarlane 1906-8, ii, 19).

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