Dundonald Castle

A tower house on a hill above the village of Dundonald, between Kilmarnock and Troon, was built for Robert II on his accession to the Scottish throne in 1371, and used as a royal residence by him and by his son Robert III.

Three medieval castles have stood on this site, and something older stood there before any of them.

Evidence suggests a hill fort occupied the hill first, its interior holding a mixture of large timber roundhouses and straight-sided structures, defended by a timber-laced stone rampart. That timber lacing caught fire and burnt with such intensity that the surrounding stonework melted, or vitrified. The firing happened around AD 1000 and seems to mark the end of the fort — about the same date that the British Kingdom of Strathclyde ceased to exist, absorbed into the Kingdom of Scotland.

The place name means fort of Donald, apparently from the British Din Dyfnwal, the personal name Dyfnwal being cognate with the Gaelic Dòmhnall and the English Donald. Which man the fortress was named for is unknown; he may have been any of the numerous kings of Alt Clut, or Strathclyde, who bore the name between the eighth and tenth centuries.

The first medieval castle was built by one of the stewards of the king of Scots, most probably Walter, the first steward, who came to Scotland in 1136. Nothing of it survives above ground.

The second was built in the late thirteenth century by Alexander Stewart, 4th High Steward, predominantly in stone, and would have been one of the grandest baronial residences of its time. The Scots themselves largely destroyed it during the Wars of Scottish Independence in the early fourteenth century: Robert the Bruce’s policy was to slight most castles so they could not be used by an enemy, including places far greater than Dundonald, such as Edinburgh and Roxburgh. A well and the rounded stump of a tower near the present castle are what remain of it.

The third castle is almost everything visible above ground today, including the tower that dominates the hill. Robert Stewart built it, probably to mark his accession as Robert II in 1371. It rose three storeys. The top floor, above a lofty stone vault, was the upper hall — the great hall — for the more private use of the king and his family. The first floor held the lower of the two halls, the laigh hall, used for more public business such as feasting and the holding of the baron court. The ground floor was storage, probably subdivided into cellars for wine, ale, foodstuffs and fuel.

The tower house was extended in the late fourteenth century with additional private chambers and a prison. The outer courtyard — properly the barmkin — was completed, with ancillary buildings set against its wall: stables, bakehouses, brewhouses, a smithy. The castle once had its own chapel, dedicated to Saint Inan.

By 1520 it belonged to the Wallaces of Craigie. James V granted it with its estates to Robert Boyd in 1536, but Boyd could not gain possession, and after a second failed attempt at eviction he ceded control back to the Wallaces. Debt forced them to sell in 1632, by which time they had moved their main residence to Auchens House, built in the 1580s partly with materials taken from Dundonald. The buyer, James Mathieson, sold to Sir William Cochrane in 1638, who also bought Auchens.

Cochrane was created first Earl of Dundonald in 1669 for his support of the Royalist cause in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The Cochranes sold the Dundonald estate in 1726 but kept the ruined castle, and in 1953 the 13th Earl gave it to the state, which began a programme of reconstruction.

Minor archaeological investigation took place in the 1960s, establishing that the rubble base was up to 4 feet deep and rested on bedrock deliberately levelled with stones to form a cobbled surface. The curtain wall of the inner courtyard was shown to have been butted onto the keep and to rest on bedrock without footings, while the keep appears to sit on ashlar footings or underpinnings, a single course projecting in front of the castle wall — part of it pointed with nineteenth-century mortar, probably from the consolidation work of that period. There were no significant finds.

Three main seasons of excavation followed between 1986 and 1988, ahead of a conservation programme, with smaller-scale work continuing to 1993, led by Gordon Ewart of Kirkdale Archaeology.

A visitor centre at the foot of the hill holds a café, a shop and an interpretive exhibition on the castle and its predecessors, with detailed models of the earlier buildings. South Ayrshire Council owns the centre and Historic Scotland the castle, and both are run by the Friends of Dundonald Castle. The castle was made a scheduled monument in 1920, with the schedule updated in 2017.

A ley tunnel is said to run from Seagate Castle in Irvine to Dundonald.