Eddlewood Castle linked to Mary Queen of Scots found after 450 years
A team of volunteer archaeologists conducting excavations at Chatelherault Country Park in South Lanarkshire in Scotland have uncovered the lost Eddlewood Castle which believed to be linked to Mary Queen of Scots.
The team, associated with Clutha Archaeology Group, have found a cobbled surface, a structure that looks like a drain and pottery artifacts. The castle was reportedly destroyed 450 years ago following the Battle of Langside in 1568, which was fought between the forces representing the queen and the troops acting in the name of her infant son James VI.
In 1567, as part of a palace coup, the one-year-old James VI had been named Scotland's new king, effectively overthrowing his mother. The team believes the discovered castle led to the downfall of the queen. The excavation is part of an effort to uncover Scotland's archaeological heritage.
Sight of the lost castle
Representatives from the archaeology group first began digging in the forestland of Chatelherault Country Park. They were well informed regarding the sight of the hidden fortified complex. The team had leveraged two sources in order to identify and get to the location.
The first one was an estate plan prepared for the Duke of Hamilton in 1776, and the second one was a detailed report from 1889 describing the Battle of Langside. The report indicated the spot where the castle was located. It stated that the castle 'is marked by a mound of rubbish and the fragment of a wall'. The Eddlewood Castle was situated just along the Meikle Burn stream and stood close to the merging of two or more streams.
This information led the volunteers to open three excavation test pits, in order to catch a glimpse of the buried medieval castle . According to them, the last discovery turned out to be the most useful as it helped the experts date the pottery to the 14th or 15th centuries.
Speaking about the excavation, Ailsa Smith, co-founder of Clutha Archaeology Group, said: "As the pottery sherds have been confirmed as medieval, we plan to carry out another excavation in 2025 to explore the site further and hopefully find more artifacts and wall remains. In the meantime, we will continue our archival research to see if we can find earlier historic references to the castle and the Eddlewood estate. We will also follow up a lead from a local resident who told us that the building of the fence around the nearby housing estate disturbed cut stone blocks, which may have formed an outer wall of the castle."
archaeology initiative
