Cockburn Tower was a small fortified house in
Berwickshire, Scotland. Now little more than the outline of a foundation, it occupied a site on the southern slope of
Cockburn Law overlooking the
Whiteadder Water
Whiteadder Water is a river in East Lothian and Berwickshire, Scotland. It also flows for a very short distance through Northumberland before joining the River Tweed. In common with the headwaters of the Biel Water it rises on the low hillside ...
.
[Laurence H. Cleat, "Castles of the Cockburns", ''History of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club'', vol. 47, no. 2, 1997, pp. 152-159.] The foundations of the Tower trace a roughly square outline measuring by , according to a survey conducted in 1980.
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History
The land surrounding Cockburn Tower belonged to the powerful Dunbar
Dunbar () is a town on the North Sea coast in East Lothian in the south-east of Scotland, approximately east of Edinburgh and from the Anglo–Scottish border, English border north of Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Dunbar is a former royal burgh, and ...
family in the early 15th century. In 1425 Sir David de Dunbar of Cockburn, brother of the ill-fated 11th and last Earl of Dunbar and March, bestowed this land to his daughter Marjorie/Margaret upon her marriage to Alexander Lindsay, 2nd Earl of Crawford
Alexander Lindsay, 2nd Earl of Crawford (c. 1387–1438/1439) was a Scottish magnate.
Life
He was the son of David Lindsay, 1st Earl of Crawford and Elizabeth Stewart, daughter of King Robert II and Euphemia de Ross. He was knighted at the co ...
. In about 1527, William Cockburn purchased the land from Alexander Lindsay, 4th Earl of Crawford
Alexander Lindsay, 4th Earl of Crawford (1423–1453) was a late medieval Scottish nobleman, and a magnate of the north-east of that country.
Life
Alexander Lindsay was the son of David Lindsay, 3rd Earl of Crawford and Marjory Ogilvie, the daug ...
. William Cockburn was the second son of Sir William Cockburn, Baron of Langton, who fell at the Battle of Flodden
The Battle of Flodden, Flodden Field, or occasionally Branxton or Brainston Moor was fought on 9 September 1513 during the War of the League of Cambrai between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland and resulted in an English victory ...
in 1513. From 1527 until 1698 Cockburn Tower was the seat of the Cockburns of that Ilk.[
It seems quite likely that members of the Cockburn family had occupied the land around Cockburn Law much earlier, likely as vassals of the Dunbars. Genetic evidence has shown that the Cockburns are descended from the same Anglo-Saxon clan as the Earls of Dunbar, and their predecessors, the 11th-century Earls of Northumbria.] However, in 1696 the Tower and surrounding land were auctioned off to pay the debts of Sir James Cockburn of that Ilk, 1st Baronet. It seems that the Tower fell into disuse soon thereafter, and by 1820 it was already a roofless ruin, although significant portions of the walls remained standing.[ It seems likely that much of the stone of Cockburn Tower was used to build the farmhouse and outbuildings of nearby Cockburn Farm.
]
See also
* Cockburn (surname)
Cockburn ( , ) is a Scottish surname that originated in the Borders region of the Scottish Lowlands. In the United States most branches of the same family have adopted the simplified spelling ' Coburn'; other branches have altered the name slight ...
References
External links
*
Ruined castles in the Scottish Borders
{{Scotland-castle-stub