Newark Castle, Port Glasgow

George Maxwell built the castle in 1478, on inheriting the Barony of Finlanstone — Finlaystone — in the parish of Kilmacolm. What he raised was a tower house standing inside a barmkin, the walled courtyard that enclosed a Scottish tower and its outbuildings, entered through a large gatehouse. A hall is thought to have stood within the enclosure along with service buildings such as a bakehouse and a brewhouse. Of the outer defensive wall, only fabric from one of the original corner towers survives.

Late in the sixteenth century the castle came to Sir Patrick Maxwell, a powerful friend of James VI who was notorious in his own day for the murder of two members of a rival family and for beating his wife, who left him after bearing sixteen children; he was also in feud with a neighbour, Robert Montgomerie of Skelmorlie. In 1597 Sir Patrick rebuilt on a larger scale, replacing the old hall with a three-storey Renaissance mansion as a new north range. The barmkin wall came down at the same time, all but the north-east tower, which was kept and converted into a doocot — a dovecote, for the pigeons that supplied a household with winter meat.

The mansion's central block sets cellars with small windows beneath a main hall lit by large ones, with further accommodation above. An east wing carrying the principal entrance door links the block to the old tower house, itself adapted to suit, and a short west wing runs to the gatehouse. The detailing is Scottish baronial: crow-stepped gables, and corbelled turrets at the northern corners. At the middle of the north wall a stair turret is carried out on corbels to reach the upper floor.

In 1668 the Glasgow authorities bought eighteen acres, about seven hectares, of the land around the castle from the then laird, Sir George Maxwell, and developed the harbour there into what they named Port Glasgow. The last Maxwell died in 1694, after which the castle passed through a series of owners who did not live in it. One early tenant was a ropemaker, John Gray, who also traded in wild animals — big cats and bears taken off ships visiting the Clyde — and frequently kept them in the castle cellars. Later the cellars and gardens were rented by Charles Williamson, who blocked the way through from the hall to stop the joiner John Gardner, who had the hall, helping himself to the fruit stored below. John Smith recorded in 1895 that the stump of the dule tree, the tree on which a barony's justice was carried out, was still being carefully preserved in the grounds.

The site was chosen for the water. Here the firth narrows from the Firth of Clyde and shifting sandbanks make the passage upriver difficult, so for centuries seagoing ships were unloaded at this point, and Port Glasgow grew up around the castle on either side and to the south. Once dredging opened the Clyde to Glasgow itself the port turned to shipbuilding and the castle ended up ringed by yards. Ferguson Shipbuilders, the last yard on the lower Clyde, still stands immediately west of it; the yards to the east were cleared around the 1980s and the ground landscaped, opening views of the castle and across the Clyde from a new bypass road. Newark Castle came into state care in 1909 and is now a property of Historic Environment Scotland.