Landscape influences location of New Cumnock’s Castles

Exert from an article published by the Southern Uplands Partnership – If you are the author please let us know!

There are two castles in the valley of the Afton: one being on the main street, where Comenagh Castle stood, upon what is now known as Castle Hill. The other being situated “up the Glen” and referred to, since the 14th century, as Castle William; William Wallaces stronghold.

No one is sure who built the first fortress on Castle Hill but records tell us that it was a Norman family in the 12th or 13th century. We know for certain that Patrick Dunbar held the Castle here in 1296 as he signed the Ragman Roll: ‘Patric de Comenagh del counte de Are’ . Historians can’t agree on the origin of the name Comenagh which has been lost in the mists of time.

One of the posibilities is –MEETING PLACE– which would be apt as that is what it is today, the place to meet to enter a Gateway to the Uplands.

In the winter of 1296/7 William Wallace recouperated in Comenagh, the seat of the Dunbars, so is this where he met others of the same patriotic thinking and organised his forces? Was it a meeting place in the early 14th century? Dr Watson (Fiona) informed us in her Report into the association of Sir William Wallace with Ayrshire for East Ayrshire Council in 1999, that “The castle also had the dubious honour of being the point at which the dying Edward I, desperate to bring Robert Bruce to book, was forced to turn back into England in 1307 due to his ill health. Edward II also stayed there during his campaign in August 1307. The castle was restocked immediately after Bruce’s skirmish with an English force at Loudoun Hill, suggesting that it was regarded as strategically critical in this period, as the English sought, unsuccessfully, to encircle the Scottish king.”

Comenagh has a very strong religious background stretching back to the 6th century but that’s another story. Come to New Cumnock and make up your own mind.

Today the only fortress on Comenagh’s Castle Hill is the derelict Arthur Memorial Church, built in 1912/13 by the Welsh architect GW Beddoes Rees: his only building in Scotland.

Arthur Memorial Church - Copyright unknown

Castle William at the head of Glen Afton - Copyright Robert Guthrie

Geoff

July 5th, 2010 at 1:47 pm

The piece stated “In the winter of 1296/7 William Wallace recouperated in Comenagh, the seat of the Dunbars” which I take to mean in the lands of Dunbar, not the Castle specifically.
Patrick was not always present (if ever) at Comenagh and we must remember that his wife, up until at least 1296, was Marjorie nee Comyn, who had held Dunbar Castle against her husband in that year. Whether she was still in Scotland, or still alive for that matter, in the winter of ’96 is unclear.

r.guthrie

August 27th, 2009 at 3:42 pm

I don’t think William Wallace would have been a welcome visitor to the Dunbar’s Cumnock Castle in 1296/1297. The Dunbars supported the English cause throughout much of the Wars of Indpendence. Dr Fiona Watson, is one of my favourites of the modern group of new historians (even is she disnae like Blind Harry) but her article on East Ayrshire contains a few points worthy of challenge. The dying Edward I did not reach Cumnock Castle in 1307, indeed I don’t think he made it across the border and died at Burgh on Sands. In any case the visit of his son Edward II to the Cumnock Castle in August 1307 was much more significant. His failure to capture Bruce in the hills of New Cumnock saw him return “homeward to think again” and allowed Bruce to break free from the south-west of Scotland and deal with all his enemies within Scotland and of course almost seven years later he was in a much stonger position to send Edward II homeward to think again after Bannockburn.

The place-name Cumnock is an interesting one and typically many of those studying the name try to identify it with a location near the modern day town of Cumnock. We know that Cumnock Castle, Cumnock Maynes (later Castlemaines) and Cumnock Miln were all situated near to where the Afton Water meets the River Nith, and this locale is most likely the site of the historic settlememt of Cumnock. My own research suggested the name is Gaelic in origin from Gealic commun achadh i.e place of the confluence or the meeting place of the Afton and Nith. http://members.tripod.com/bob_newcumnock/pncumnock/new_cumnockx.html