Invermark Castle

Invermark Castle - Photo © Gwen and James Anderson, 17 Feb. 08

Invermark Castle, Angus Photo © Trish Steel, 4 October 2009

Invermark Castle - Photo © Gwen and James Anderson, 17 Feb. 08

The castle was built around 1526 by the Lindsays and was used as a refuge by the locals when Highland caterans descended on the Glen to steal cattle. It was built to guard the southern end of Deeside. Some of the original slates from the roof of the castle can be seen on the roof of the boathouse on the North shore of Loch Lee and most of the material used to build the church came from the ruined Invermark Castle.

INVERMARK CASTLE, FORFARSHIRE.

This is one of those rudely-built simple keeps whose age it is difficult to tell from their design. It stands at the east end of Loch Lee, on a romantic site amongst the mountains near the head of Glen Esk, some twenty miles north-west from Brechin. A castle is supposed to have occupied the site (which is an important one, and commands the passes into several glens) as early as the fourteenth century, when Sir John de Stryocline, or Stirling, took his title from it, and it is sometimes stated that this is his actual castle. The district afterwards passed into the possession of the Lindsays, and is now the property of the Earl of Dalhousie.

The castle stands upon the top of a bank, well defended by the river, and has the massive walls and rounded angles which often mark the earlier keeps. It is a plain oblong tower, measuring 38 feet 6 inches by 30 feet, with walls varying from 5 feet 6 inches to 7 feet in thickness. The only entrance to the castle is on the first floor, at a height of about 9 feet above the ground. This door is secured with a strong iron yett, which is still in position. Behind the yett was a wooden door with a sliding bar.

It is said that the approach to the door was by a strong stone stair but at a distance of 12 feet from the castle and that a drawbridge was swung between the castle and the stair. There is no appearance of this stair now, and the castle is so completely overgrown with ivy that the connection for the bridge, if such exists, cannot be examined.

Immediately adjoining the door a wheel-stair leads down to the basement floor, which is one large vaulted apartment, with numerous widely-splayed shot-holes. The stair leading upwards to the top of the castle no longer exists. It was in the rounded recess shown on the first floor, and partly projected into the hall and the rooms above. The great hall measures about 29 feet by 20 feet 6 inches, and had two fireplaces, with two garde-robes in the north wall. This floor may have been divided into two apartments the hall and the private room by a partition. This would explain the two fireplaces and the two garde-robes. The rooms are well lighted with three windows, which have stone seats. There were two floors and attics above the hall level. In the lofty chimneys of the north and south fronts are seen some of the windows of the attic floor. A large turret, provided with shot-holes and a narrow slit, is corbelled out on the south-east angle of the tower. Some of these features show that the upper part at least is not very ancient. A fortalice of the Second Period would have been terminated at the top by a bold parapet, well corbelled out, and the gables and chimneys would be raised inside it on the inner edge of the walls. But instead of these features we find the gables and chimneys carried straight up from the face of the walls, and the eaves of the roof projected to the outer face of the side walls, without any parapet at all. The mode in which the rounded corners are brought to the square near the top also points to a late date; and we have seen, at Coxton and elsewhere, that the door was frequently placed on the first floor, even in the seventeenth century.

Reference

The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland by David Macgibbon and Thomas Ross, 1889