Thousands of tower-house style castles were built in Scotland by Scottish nobles between the 14th and 17th centuries. There has been debate over the reasons for this design, which was similar to the stone keeps in England, but from a later period.
Threave Castle – standing on an island in the River Dee, in Galloway – is a typical tower house, built around 1369 onwards by Archibald Douglas. Archaeological evidence shows that there would have been a set of associated buildings next to the tower – an entire community supporting the castle's owner.
There has been debate over whether these dour and strong-looking castles are an indication of great unrest and fighting in Scotland at the time, but Marc leads us to conclude that unrest was far more sporadic than Hollywood would have us believe, and that there must have been long periods of peace and prosperity in order for them to afford to build such grand houses. That said, the Kings James (I to III) were aggressive and used all their power to control any nobles who challenged them. James II effectively destroyed all his challengers' castles apart from Threave, where the Douglas family held firm. What had been a fine home was transformed into a fortress. The buildings next to the castle were torn down and used to build an artillery platform. Despite this, King James won the siege and the Douglas family fled.
At Borthwick Castle we see the biggest and best-preserved tower house in Scotland. Here, in contrast to Threave, all the rooms are inside the tower rather than outside. Stonemason's marks on the stones at Borthwick show us that there were 60 different stonemasons working on its construction and a modern-day stonemason explains how building would have taken place.
Castle Urquhart on the shores of Loch Ness serves to illustrate how tower houses became centres of law enforcement rather than defence.
Finally, we see an example of the much smaller tower houses on the English-Scottish border and hear about the border raids.
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