Amisfield Tower

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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Amisfield, a village and a mansion in Tinwald parish,Dumfriesshire. The village stands on a head-stream of Lochar Water, near the Dumfries and Lockerbie branch of the Caledonian, under the Tinwald Hills, 4 miles NNE of Dumfries. It has a station on the railway, and a post office under Dumfries. The mansion, standing ½ mile NNW of the village, is partly a modern edifice, partly an old baronial fortalice, one of the most interesting of its kind. It belonged from the 12th century to the Anglo-Norman family of Charteris, of whom Sir Thomas became Lord High Chancellor of Scotland in 1280: Sir John was Warden of the West Marches under James V., and by that king (as ' Gudeman of Ballangeich ') was punished for wrong-doing to a widow: and another Sir John was an active Royalist during the Great Rebellion, as also was his brother Captain Alex. Charteris, beheaded at Edinburgh in 1650. An oak door, curiously carved with ' Samson and the lion, ' and dated 1600, has found its way from Amisfield Castle to the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh. Remains of a little fort, which may have been Roman, are on the Amisfield estate, near the line of a Roman road.

An accompanying 19th C. Ordnance Survey map is available, or use the map tab to the right of this page.

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

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