Greenknowe Tower facts for kids

Greenknowe Tower, seen from the south-west.

Greenknowe Tower is a cool old building from the 1500s. It's a type of castle called a tower house. You can find it near the village of Gordon in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland.

Even though it doesn't have a roof anymore, the stone walls are still in great shape. It's a fantastic example of a tower house built more for living in comfortably than just for fighting. The tower is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, which means it's a very important historical site. Historic Scotland looks after it today.

History of Greenknowe Tower

Who Built Greenknowe Tower?

The land where Greenknowe Tower stands became part of the Seton family's property in the early 1400s. This happened when Alexander Seton married a woman from the Gordon family.

The tower itself was built in 1581 by James Seton. You can still see the date, his initials (IS), and the initials of his wife, Janet Edmonstone (IE), carved above the main door. The castle was built on a small natural hill. This hill was once surrounded by marshy, wet ground, which helped protect it.

Later Owners and Changes

In the 1600s, the tower was sold to the Pringles of Stichill family. They added more parts to the building. They also made the windows bigger because times were less dangerous then. People lived in Greenknowe Tower until the mid-1800s. In 1937, after some repair work, the tower became a state-owned property, meaning the government now takes care of it.

Exploring Greenknowe Tower

The inscription above the door. IS for James Seton, IE for Janet Edmonstone, his wife, with their family symbols, and the date 1581.

What Does the Tower Look Like?

Greenknowe Tower is an L-plan tower. This means it has a main rectangular part and another smaller part sticking out, making it look like the letter 'L'. The main part has four floors, and the smaller stair wing has five floors. The main block is about 10.5 meters long and 7 meters wide. Its walls are thick, about 1.2 meters! The wing sticks out 3.3 meters and is 4.5 meters wide.

Inside the Tower

You enter the tower through a door in the corner where the two parts meet. This door still has its original iron gate, called a yett. Inside, you'll find a vaulted basement. This area was originally split into a kitchen and a storage room (cellar). The kitchen has a large fireplace, a drain for waste water, and a cupboard. There's even a hatch above the kitchen that led up to the main hall. You can still see iron hooks in the ceiling where meat used to hang!

Under the main staircase, there's a small room with a narrow opening for a gun, facing east. The wide spiral staircase leads up to the first floor, where the main hall is. From there, a smaller staircase goes up to the higher floors. This smaller stair is built into a small, round turret that sticks out from the corner.

Rooms and Features

The main hall is on the first floor of the main block. It has a big fireplace and four large windows. There used to be doorways in the north walls of the hall and stair. These led to another part of the building built in the 1600s, but that part is gone now. Above the hall, each floor of the main block had two rooms. The wing had four more rooms, one on top of the other. All these rooms had their own fireplaces.

The tower's walls are made of rough stones (rubble construction). They used local basalt stone with red sandstone for details. The tops of the walls have special stepped shapes called crowstep gables. You can also see small, round turrets, called Bartizans, at the corners of the main block and the wing. The smaller turret on the wing even had openings called machicolations, which were used to drop things on attackers below.

The tower once had beautiful gardens to its west, but nothing of them remains today. There are also foundations of another building to the north-east.

See also

In Spanish: Torre Greenknowe para niños