Qualla: Cruggleton Castle https://qualla.com/cruggleton-castle en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:16 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/s/z/cruggleton-castle-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Cruggleton Castle https://qualla.com/cruggleton-castle Cruggleton Castle: Introduction https://qualla.com/cruggleton-castle/ Photo credit Robert Struthers, CC BY-SA 2.0. An arch. That is all you see now: a stub of barrel-vaulting, three metres tall, planted on the edge of a 40-metre cliff above the Irish Sea. Locals call it simply 'The Arch,' and it is the last visible bone of a fortress that excavations have shown was occupied, in one form or another, from the first century AD until the seventeenth. The shale outcrop at Cruggleton Point has been a sentinel for nearly two thousand years, and the wind that scours it now has been doing so for every one of them.

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Image: Robert Struthers | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/s/z/cruggleton-castle-wp/gcsz-cruggleton-castle-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Cruggleton Castle: Layers in the Shale https://qualla.com/cruggleton-castle/ Photo credit Leslie Barrie, CC BY-SA 2.0. Dig into the ground at Cruggleton and the centuries come apart in neat strata. Archaeologists in the 1970s and 1980s peeled back a late Iron Age hut circle, then a timber hall from the early medieval period. Sometime in the 12th or 13th century, someone raised the rock itself, pi...

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Image: Leslie Barrie | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/s/z/cruggleton-castle-wp/gcsz-cruggleton-castle-layers-in-the-shale.mp3 0:06 2 full Cruggleton Castle: Wallace and the Black Rock of Cree https://qualla.com/cruggleton-castle/ Photo credit Wigtown at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Cruggleton was a prize worth fighting for. In the 1290s John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, had a licence from Edward I to dig lead on the Calf of Man to roof eight towers here, which gives some sense of the castle's scale. According to the blind 15th-century minstrel Harry, the same for...

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Image: Wigtown at English Wikipedia | Public domain

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/s/z/cruggleton-castle-wp/gcsz-cruggleton-castle-wallace-and-the-black-rock-of-cree.mp3 0:06 3 full Cruggleton Castle: Two Royal Bastards and a Siege https://qualla.com/cruggleton-castle/ Photo credit Andrew Taylor, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Reformation broke church lands open and tipped Cruggleton into a sixteenth-century soap opera. Lord Robert Stewart, the commendator of Whithorn Priory and an illegitimate son of James V, claimed the castle. John Fleming, 5th Lord Fleming, disagreed. In 1569 Fleming actually b...

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Image: Andrew Taylor | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/s/z/cruggleton-castle-wp/gcsz-cruggleton-castle-two-royal-bastards-and-a-siege.mp3 0:06 4 full Cruggleton Castle: The Church That Outlived the Castle https://qualla.com/cruggleton-castle/ Photo credit Rosser1954 Roger Griffith, Public domain. About 750 metres west of the ruins stands a survivor. Cruggleton Church was founded in the early 12th century by Fergus, Lord of Galloway, and is the most complete Romanesque church in the area. By the late 19th century it had collapsed into ruin, but William de B M Galloway rest...

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Image: Rosser1954 Roger Griffith | Public domain

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/s/z/cruggleton-castle-wp/gcsz-cruggleton-castle-the-church-that-outlived-the-castle.mp3 0:06 5 full