Barholm Castle

History is but a series of stories, and Barholm Castle has many of these. (One tale, told to me by former owner David Hannay, involved a pig from the farmyard making its way up the spiral staircase of the ruined tower and becoming stuck - sadly, there was not a happy ending.) Unravelling a narrative with a single thread has been impossible, but there are various stories that shine a light on what the past may have held. I have tried to impose some order on the somewhat chaotic, contradictory and possibly fanciful writings of the historians who have looked into Barholm Castle and the Barholm McCullochs.

The early history of Barholm Castle, including whether it existed before the sixteenth century, is mysterious, and its history after it became a ruin is lacking in any kind of detail. The meaning of the name Barholm is also uncertain. In Gaelic, barr, meaning top or height, is usually applied to hills of modest height. Holm in old Norse is a piece of land partly surrounded by streams or a stream. So 'a piece of land on a hill with a stream nearby' is plausible as an origin descriptor for Barholm, if not particularly special or specific. We do know something of the owners of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and we know a lot about the ownership changes and plans in the second half of the twentieth century. We also know much about the building itself, although there are questions and mysteries remaining that may never be solved.

The Building

Barholm Castle, or Tower, is mentioned in most local history books and books about castles. While it is clear that many authors are simply repeating what has been previously published - the same sentences crop up again and again - some accounts are contradictory. Although most authors write in an authoritative tone, few give their sources. J.E. Russell, in his very thorough History of Gatehouse and District, claims that the tower had been standing since the late 1400s, but gives no details of its early owners or builders. The RCAHMS Inventory of 1914 claims that Barholm dates from the early years of the seventeenth century 'judging by the details'. However, when Professor Charles McKean visited Barholm in 2010, he was of the opinion that the building was much older than sixteenth century, because of the thickness of the ground-floor walls (about 8 feet thick). The thick ground-floor walls may indicate that this part of the building is of at least fifteenth-century origin, although it might simply be that the ground-floor walls are so robust because the tower is built on bedrock and foundations of any sort were thus impossible. (It is worth noting, however, that the walls of Ailsa Craig Castle, which dates from the sixteenth century, are only 1.5 feet thick and that tower is also built on bedrock.)

According to Alastair Maxwell-Irving,

The earliest record of Barholm is in 1472, when Walter Porter of Blaiket wadset the £5 lands of Barholm, under reversion, to Donald Maclellan of Gelston. The Porters subsequently assigned their interest to David McCulloch, junior, in Conchieton, a grandson of James McCulloch of Cardoness, and it was presumably this David, now of 'Laggan-Mullen', who in 1541 sold Conchieton to one John McCulloch and his wife, the contract being signed 'at Barholm' - the first evidence of a building there. John McCulloch in Barholm finally redeemed the wadset in 1563, and a month later was granted a charter of Barholm by Thomas McCulloch of Cardoness. This was followed in 1570 by sasine being given to John in liferent, and to his son, James, in feu. Having thus secured their ownership, it was presumably at this time that the old 'house' was enlarged and improved, with the stair wing being added. (Maxwell-Irving 2014, p. 151)

Andrew Morton identifies another sixteenth-century mention of the name of McCulloch in connection with the lands of Barholm. This was in a contract dated 1 November 1528, concerning the redeeming of the 'Five pound land of Barholm' entered into between Thomas McClelland of Gelston and David McCulloch. The implication is that a building was extant at this point, or at least planned, but it was not until 1565, in a Charter dated 22 July, that John McCulloch (I) is described as 'of Barholm', a style of address that usually meant belonging to a house of that name.

The first recorded mention of Barholm as a building, apart from its appearance in Timothy Pont's map of c. 1590, is in the Rev. Andrew Symson's A Large Description of Galloway of 1684, where 'Barhoom' is listed in the appendix among the 'considerable houses' of the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, which include Kardonesse Castle, Rusko Castle, Bardarach, Karsluith, Kassincary, Lairg Castle and Gairliss, the residence of the Earl of Galloway.

Barholm Castle presents as a very typical L-shaped sixteenth-century Scottish tower house, with a stair tower containing a spiral (or turnpike) staircase and one or two rooms on each of four storeys, accessed from the stair.

Timothy Pont's map of Galloway, Gallovidae Pars Media, made at the end of the sixteenth century. 'Barhoom' can be seen in between the castles of Kardeness (Cardoness) to the east and Karsluyith (Carsluith) to the west. Rusko Castle is depicted to the north-east, although Pont's maps do not lie directly on a north-south axis.

That is what MacGibbon and Ross assumed it to be when they visited c. 1880 and that is how it was described on the Canmore site prior to 2000. However, Alastair Maxwell-Irving was correct when he wrote: 'The architectural history of Barholm castle is more complex than it would first appear, and at times hard to explain' (Maxwell-Irving 2014, p. 151). He believed that the main house was originally a square tower with the entrance on the east side at first-floor level, and the stair tower wing was a sixteenth-century add-on. This explanation has plausibility, because of the (likely) precedent at nearby Carsluith Castle, and also because at first sight it seems obvious that the first-floor door in the east wall should have been the original main entrance, with tusking above to show that some form of structure, such as an external staircase and/or balcony, had been built out - or intended to be built out - above it. This door would have overlooked the valley below, along which the road would have passed before the Robert Adam bridge was built across the Barholm Burn in the 1780s. Barholm Castle may not have been built for defence, but nonetheless it would have been useful for the inhabitants to see who was crossing the land in front of their property. Maxwell-Irving reports that Carsluith Castle, only a couple of miles away, had its stair tower added in 1568, and Andrew Wood, owner of Balbegno near Fettercairn, added a stair tower in 1569.

However, the team of archaeologists who studied the standing architecture of Barholm Castle from 2000 to 2004 disagree. Their report points out that:

If the stair jamb was a later addition to the structure, it would be expected that there would be a recognisable scar where some of the existing masonry was removed to allow the jamb to be tied into the structure - such a feature is entirely absent. In addition to this, there is no evidence in the interior of the stair jamb that it has been forced into the existing tower, in short, the stair jamb is part of the original build.

(Unpublished Archaeology report by Kirkdale Archaeology)

Discounting the idea that Barholm was originally a 'hall house' with later additions, the archaeologists instead proposed that the first phase of construction took place around 1580 - but give no evidence for their choice of date - at which point Barholm was built not to its final full elevation but as a three-storey tower house with a stair jamb of equivalent height. One argument against this theory is that shorter, squatter L-shaped laird's houses such as this did not tend to be built until the seventeenth century, unless they were in towns - for example, Barscobe Castle near New Galloway. Sixteenth-century towers very much prioritised height and verticality. The ground floor, hall and second-floor chambers were, the archaeologists suggest, built much as they are now. Then in the second phase the height of the main roof of the building was altered in order to provide a further, higher level of private apartments, with the addition of the cap house and platform at the top. Heightening tower houses was not a common means of extending the accommodation: horizontal wings were usually added rather than roofs raised. The Castle of St John in Stranraer was altered upwards and outwards in the seventeenth century, but for a very specific purpose, to fit it for use as the town jail.

The infilled door at first-floor level on the east side can be clearly seen here.

The stair tower and east side before restoration.

Although the absence of 'scarring' showing a join between the stair jamb and the wall on the east side might mean that both were built at once, we are inclined to question this as negative evidence. When we have had extensive repairs done on collapsed sections of the drystone dykes by experienced dykers, it is very difficult to see where the joins have once been. Equally, however, there are very clear signs in places where earlier dykers have filled in a section by crudely jamming stones into the gap. The amount of scarring...