Portal to the Past

Caldwell Tower, Uplawmoor

Caldwell Tower, which can be viewed from the Neilston Road, stands on the medieval manor of Caldwell and was probably built in the mid 15th century. During the years when the Caldwell estate was forfeited and the head of the Mure family lived in exile due to his part in the Covenanters Pentland Rising of 1666, the old building was either allowed to become ruinous or was deliberately destroyed. When the estate was restored, the exiled laird's daughter and her husband, who was a Mure of Glanderston, built a new residence - the Hall of Caldwell. They used a great deal of stone from the old building but repaired one of the towers, the one we can see today, to mark the site.

Mearns Castle, Mearns

Mearns Castle was built in 1449 for Lord Herbert Maxwell of Caerlaverock who had been granted a licence by King James II, "to build a castle and to surround it and fortify it with walls and ditches, to strengthen it by iron gates and to erect on top of it all warlike apparatus necessary for its defence".

The castle had been built on the site of an older wooden structure built by Roland de Mearns, a knight in the service of the king. The original castle moat has now gone and in modern times it has become part of the Maxwell Mearns Castle Church.

Pollok Castle, Mearns

Pollok Castle was a handsome building in the Scottish baronial style with a splendid castellated tower 56 ft high, rebuilt in 1886 by Mr Fergusson-Pollok following a fire, which destroyed the original castle built about 1700 by Sir Robert Pollok. The Pollok family, one of the most ancient in Scotland, descended from Petrus de Pollok, a benefactor of Paisley Monastery in the reign of Malcolm IV (1153 – 1165). Sir Robert Pollok, a supporter of William III, represented Renfrewshire in Parliament from 1700 to 1722.

The army requisitioned the castle in 1939 when the estate was used as an ammunition dump. The last Pollok remained in the castle until 1954 when it was demolished. Its ancient stones now lie under a runway of Edinburgh airport.