Qualla: Seagate Castle

Seagate Castle: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rosser1954 Roger Griffith, Public domain. Walk along Seagate in Irvine, the oldest street in town, and you come abruptly to a wall of weathered red sandstone with an arched doorway whose mouldings would not look out of place at Linlithgow Palace. The roof is gone, the rooms open to the weather, but the carved initials HM and AD survive on a boss above the entrance: Hugh Montgomerie, 3rd Earl of Eglinton, and Agnes Drummond, his second wife. He married her in 1562, expanded this place into something between a castle and a town palace around 1565, and entertained a queen in it the year before he started building. Seagate Castle was already old by then.

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Image: Rosser1954 Roger Griffith | Public domain

Seagate Castle: The Burgh and the Silting Harbour

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rosser1954 Roger Griffith, Public domain. Irvine's earliest record dates to 1163, when the harbour lay at the sea-gait, the route running down from the town to the water's edge. The first castle here, almost certainly a wooden tower on a motte, was built to defend it. Benedict of Peterborough mentions a castle of Hirun i...

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Image: Rosser1954 Roger Griffith | Public domain

Seagate Castle: Mary's Visit, and the Treaty That Was Not Accepted

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger Griffith, Public domain. A plaque at the entrance records that Mary, Queen of Scots stayed here in 1563. The 3rd Earl was a great supporter, and tradition holds he entertained Mary along with her four ladies-in-waiting, the famous Four Marys: Mary Seton, Mary Beaton, Mary Fleming, and Mary Livingston. So...

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Image: Roger Griffith | Public domain

Seagate Castle: Kitchens, Cesspools, and a Dowager's Residence

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rosser1954 Roger Griffith, Public domain. Pass through the vaulted pend and you enter a courtyard with three towers projecting east: two round, one triangular, the asymmetry probably forced by the lie of the land. There was once a guardroom and possibly a prison pit; the kitchen retains its arch, an enormous window, aumb...

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Image: Rosser1954 Roger Griffith | Public domain

Seagate Castle: Why the Roof Came Off, and What Has Been Done Since

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rosser1954 Roger Griffith, Public domain. The castle was inhabited until around 1746. Then Alexander Montgomerie, 10th Earl of Eglinton, took the roof off to use in a church he was building in Ardrossan parish. Roofless buildings do not last well in Scottish rain, and Seagate began its slow ruination. In 1859 the crowds ...

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Image: Rosser1954 Roger Griffith | Public domain