Castle Campbell

A historical perspective, drawn from the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: A Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical and Historical, edited by Francis H. Groome and originally published in parts by Thomas C. Jack, Grange Publishing Works, Edinburgh between 1882 and 1885.

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Castle-Campbell, a ruined feudal fortalice in Dollar parish, Clackmannanshire, 1 mile N of Dollar town, by a pleasant pathway, formed in 1865. It crowns a round insulated mound, which seems to have been partly formed by the hand of Nature, and partly finished hy art. W and E are deep wooded ravines, down which run streams, the Burns of Sorrow and Care, that unite just below and form a considerable brook. The mound on the Dollar side is nearly perpendicular, and from the loftier wooded hills behind was formerly disjoined by a ditch, passing down to the bottom of the glen on either side, which rendered the castle inaccessible except by means of a drawbridge, so that it was a place of very great strength. Of unknown antiquity, it formerly was called the Gloume or Castle-Gloom; but passing in 1493 to the Earls of Argyll, it changed its name to Castle-Campbell. In 1645 it was taken and burned by the Marquis of Montrose; and the chief part standing now is the keep, which contains a barrel-vaulted hall, and whose top is gained by a spiral staircase and commands a wide and very noble view. John Knox, in 1556, residing in the castle with the fourth Earl of Argyll, preached and dispensed the Lord's Supper on a greensward sloping from the castle's base to the brink of the neighbouring precipice; and in the hill side is a curious narrow chasm, called Kemp's Score, after a noted freebooter. The estate of Harviestoun, on which Castle Campbell stands, was purchased from the Taits in 1859 by the late Sir Andrew Orr. See Billings' Baronial Antiquities (1852).

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Note: This text has been made available using a process of scanning and optical character recognition. Despite manual checking, some typographical errors may remain. Please remember this description dates from the 1880s; names may have changed, administrative divisions will certainly be different and there are known to be occasional errors of fact in the original text, which we have not corrected because we wish to maintain its integrity. This information is provided subject to our standard disclaimer