Liberton Tower

Liberton Tower is a four-storey, square-plan tower house in the Edinburgh suburb of Liberton, on the east side of the Braid Hills.

Liberton Tower
Edinburgh, Scotland
Liberton Tower
Liberton Tower
Coordinates55.9145774°N 3.1773502°W / 55.9145774; -3.1773502
Site history
Built15th century

History

Located in Over or Upper Liberton, it was originally owned by the Dalmahoy family, whose arms appears on a carved panel on the south wall. Records of it being in their possession date back to 1453, but the provenance of the tower before that is not known.[1]

It passed to a branch of the Forrester family of Corstorphine, before being sold to William Little, who was Provost of Edinburgh in 1586 and 1591. Provost Little built the nearby Liberton House, and the castle was abandoned in 1610, being subsequently used for agricultural storage.

Deposits of charcoal as well as smashed pottery suggest that the tower was caught up in the fighting around Edinburgh in 1650, when Cromwell invaded Edinburgh as part of the Third English Civil War.[2] Other evidence to this effect is the removal of the parapets, damage to the tower and the finding of cannonballs in nearby fields.[2]

Design

Liberton Tower provides a good example of a typical noble residence of its period, one of the relatively few that was not substantially altered in later centuries.[3] Featureless except for its small, asymmetrically-arranged windows, it is coated in distinctive yellow harling and has been described as "grim and ponderous".[3] The tower is rectangular in plan, being 34 feet 9 inches (10.59 m) along the east–west axis and 25 feet 9 inches (7.85 m) along the north–south axis.[2]

The 15th century structure is well preserved and was restored in 1994. It is used for holiday lets.[4][5]

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References

Notes
  1. Campbell, Alexander (1802). A journey from Edinburgh through parts of North Britain. A. Strahan. p. 292.
  2. "Edinburgh, Liberton Drive, Liberton Tower". rcahms.gov.uk. Retrieved 10 April 2015.
  3. MacCannell, Daniel (2015). How to Read Scottish Buildings. Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd. p. 15.
  4. Fry, Plantagenet (2005). Castles: England + Scotland + Ireland + Wales. David & Charles. p. 154. ISBN 0-7153-2212-5.
  5. "Liberton Tower". libertontower.com. Retrieved 8 December 2016.

Sources
  • Coventry, Martin (2006). The Castles of Scotland. Birlinn. ISBN 1-84158-449-5.

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