THE CASTELLATED REMAINS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE. 91 
Ist March, 1907. 
Chairman—Dr W. SEMPLE. 
A minute of regret at the death of Mr Robert Murray, 
Honorary Vice-President of the Society, and for many years 
a member of the Council and a Vice-President, was unanimously 
adopted. 
THE CASTELLATED REMAINS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE. By Mr JAMEs 
Lennox, F.S.A.Scot. 
In submitting this paper I give it more as an index or 
preface to so great a subject, and I promise it will not be the last 
of this subject that will be brought under your notice. In pro- 
ducing so imperfect a paper the only excuse I have to offer is 
that I do so to try and focus the photographic efforts of our 
camera section on one of the important antiquarian subjects in 
the county of Dumfries. I select this branch of our work for 
two reasons. Jn the first place it is perhaps the widest, and in 
the second place many of these towers have disappeared from 
natural decay and from the ruthless hand of man within very 
recent years, and we wish a permanent record of what remains 
to-day, both by photograph and also by measurement. Messrs 
M‘Gibbon and Ross in their “ Castellated and Domestic Architec- 
ture of Scotland ’’ have done a colossal work in this direction, 
but from want of local knowledge it was impossible for them to 
produce a complete work for the whole of Scotland, and it re- 
mains for local societies like ours to compile this in papers of a 
tabulated form for ready reference at any future time. In the 
two other counties of Kirkcudbright and Wigtown we have also 
many towers, but we have also ecclesiastical remains of a very 
fine order, whereas in Dumfriesshire we are devoid of ancient 
church architecture, although we at one time had Holywood 
Abbey, Dumfries Monastery, and Canonbie Priory, besides less 
important buildings. In the troublous times of Border war the 
Border Tower sprang up as an absolute necessity for self pre- 
servation as well as for the protection of one’s goods, unless the 
"owner removed into a walled burgh, and thus got protection. 
The church itself could not claim immunity from these Border 
thieves, as these men respected no property if they thought they 
