Qualla: Ardgowan Castle

Ardgowan Castle: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit dave souza, CC BY-SA 4.0. In April 1304, King Edward I of England wrote a thank-you letter to Robert Bruce. The future King of Scots, then still nominally Edward's ally, had helped seize a castle near Inverkip on the Firth of Clyde - and had then been put to work hauling the captured siege engines north for the English assault on Stirling Castle. Edward's note referred specifically to the problem of finding 'a waggon fit to carry the frame' of 'the great engine of Inverkip.' The castle the great engine had broken open was Inverkip - what we now call Ardgowan Castle. Two years later, Bruce had switched sides, and his supporters were besieging the same walls.

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Image: dave souza | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ardgowan Castle: A Promontory and a Watchtower

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit dave souza, CC BY-SA 4.0. The site sits on a promontory of a raised beach, jutting out at a height of about 60 feet above coastal flats, with steep slopes or cliffs falling away on each side of the point. It is a natural fortress. A wooden watchtower probably stood here long before the stone tower house, ...

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Image: dave souza | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ardgowan Castle: Inverkip in the Wars of Scottish Independence

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thomas Nugent, CC BY-SA 2.0. Inverkip Castle features in what came to be called the First War of Scottish Independence. In 1301, King Edward I sent two armies into Scotland with the plan that they would meet at Inverkip. His own force struck through the east. His son Edward, Prince of Wales, led a western ar...

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Image: Thomas Nugent | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ardgowan Castle: Escape by Sea

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thomas Nugent, CC BY-SA 2.0. John Barbour's The Brus, the great 14th-century epic of Bruce's wars, records that when Sir James Douglas defeated Sir Philip Mowbray in 1307, Sir Philip abandoned his troops and rode alone to Inverkip Castle. The poem says: 'Sync throu the Largis, him allane / Till Ennerkip the ...

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Image: Thomas Nugent | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ardgowan Castle: From Stewarts to Shaw Stewarts

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1403, King Robert III - Bruce's great-grandson - granted the lands of Ardgowan to his natural son, Sir John Stewart. The Stewart family built the late-15th-century tower house that still stands, perched on the south edge of the promontory above the cliff. In 1667, Archibald St...

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Image: Colin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ardgowan Castle: A Ruin in a Garden

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thomas Nugent, CC BY-SA 2.0. Today the tower house stands as a controlled ruin, its three storeys mostly roofless, walls weathered to lichen-grey, perched on the cliff above the coastal flats. Ardgowan House and its gardens host weddings and events; the castle is part of the scenery but not part of the tour....

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Image: Thomas Nugent | CC BY-SA 2.0