Wallace’s Tower
In March 2026, the Uncovering the Tweed team and together with local participants, undertook a detailed historic building survey of the ruined Wallace’s Tower in the village of Roxburgh. Participants were introduced to a number of historic building recording techniques such as photographic survey, GPS survey, 3D laser scanning, drone survey and analysis of the building’s fabric.
Many thanks to Roxburghe Estates for facilitating access to the site and supporting the work.
History
Wallace’s Tower is a former 16th century tower house in a slightly elevated position close to the River Teviot. It survives to one floor level but would have originally been at least three, maybe four storeys in height. Our investigations and the measured survey, together with the historic maps, have identified that the tower had two extra wings (to the south corner and west corner) making it a possible ‘Z Plan’ tower house. It contains two vaulted chambers with a smaller storage chamber in the south projecting wing. Large holes for bolts seen in the doorway between the two identify that this once held a secure door, and hence the south chamber may have been where the family stored their valuables, to prevent theft during tumultuous times.
So who lived here? Local records state that the in the 1540s, William Ker of Cessford owned the lands to the east of Roxburgh (it was previously held by the Douglases) with an archive document referencing the tower. Other sources state, however, that it was sacked not long after this and may have been a ruin for this long. Curiously, no record of the tower was made in MacGibbon & Ross’s 1890s opus on The Castellated and Domesticated Architecture of Scotland and, to our knowledge, no detailed survey of the tower has been undertaken prior to now. Therefore, we aim to enhance the record of tower houses in the region with our survey.
We are now working on the full report, which we will share here in due course. In the meantime, you can explore the tower digitally through the images and 3D model below.
