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Turnberry Castle
TURNBERRY-CASTLE, a celebrated ruin on the
coast of
the parish of Kirkoswald, 6 miles north of the town of Girvan,
Ayrshire. When or by whom it was
built, is altogether uncertain. It seems to have been
one of the castles of the old Gaelic Lords of Galloway:
and, when the Gallowegian dominions became divided into
the part which continues to bear their name, and the
part which has been integrated with Ayrshire, it
appears to have been adopted as the principal seat of
the Earls of Carrick. In 1274 Martha, Countess of
Carrick, resided here at the epoch of her marriage with
Robert Bruce of Annandale. On the 20th of September,
1286, it was the scene of the first recorded
association or assembly of Scottish nobles, —one which
had for its object to support the title of the
competitor Bruce to the Crown. In 1300 it was held by
an English garrison under Earl Percy; and some years
after, while it still continued in the possession of
the English, King Robert Bruce stormed it, drove out
the garrison, and obliged them to retire to Ayr. It
received such damage in the storming as to be virtually
destroyed; and it does not appear to have ever
afterwards been inhabited. A kiln-fire lighted in the
neighbourhood was once mistaken by Bruce for a
preconcerted signal, and brought him prematurely over
from Arran to attempt the deliverance of his country
and the rescue of his Crown. The castle has suffered so
severely from the action of sea and weather, and the
ruthlessness of dilapidators, as to have little
remaining but its lower vaults and cellars; but from
indications which are furnished by these, by some
vestiges of a drawbridge, and by the extent of rock
which seems to have been included in the site, it
appears to have been a fortress of great capaciousness
and strength. It occupies a small promontory, so as to
be washed on three sides by the sea; and, on the land
side, it overlooks a rich plain of upwards of 600
acres. Its site commands a full prospect of all the
lower frith of the Clyde. Grose has preserved a view of
the ruins as they existed when he wrote.
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