Scottish and Irish Ancestry

Craignethan Castle

The personal residence of Sir James Hamilton of Finnart. The castle sits on a promontory overlooking the river Avon in Lanarkshire. Surprisingly given Finnart’s wide experience of fortification construction, the site of the castle was very difficult to defend against modern weaponary in particular Cannon, which had come to be used at the beginning of the 16th C. The English ransacked the castle at the time of the Mary Queen of Scots uprising. The castle and it’s lands were subsequently reinstated to Finnart’s cousin, the Duke of Hamilton whose estate (Cadzow Castle later Hamilton Palace) adjoined Craignethan.


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Exterior shot of a Castle