60 Burghs of Annandale. 



it rises, has been formed by a vast ditch being dug- round 

 all sides except that towards the river. Probably the major 

 part of the material of this ditch was utilised for the central 

 mound, which cannot be under fifty feet in perpendicular 

 height, and whose conical summit must have been of a 

 circumference ample for the base of the defensive house, the 

 palisaded hall forming the first Scottish home of the first 

 Scottish Robert de Brus. Across the ditch, southward from 

 the mound, too, there is along the old scarp of the river an 

 elevated ridge which has some appearance of being in part 

 artificial, and which, with a ditch behind it continued from 

 the mound, conveys a strong suggestion that here was once 

 a base court or site for outwork buildings and defences of 

 the Mote proper. That Mote may well have been formidable 

 in its day, and have been identical with that castellum de 

 Anant which, ^ with the castellum de Loghmaban — described 

 like it as belonging to Robert de Brus — was held on behalf 

 of King William the Lion in the war of 1173-74 with the 

 English King Henry II. Historically the " castle " of the 

 Brus family in Annandale appears on record half a century 

 at least before the appearance of the castle of Dumfries. 

 The town of Annan — one cannot aflfirm it positively, but one 

 can well maintain it as by far the likeliest hypothesis — derived 

 its origin as a town and grew into its relative importance in 

 the 1 2th and 13th centuries under the shield of the Brus 

 castle — the Mote with its w^ooden hall (aula) at first ; 

 followed, perhaps, by a building of stone. When the war of 

 independence broke out Annan to all seeming had no castle. 

 The stronger position of Lochmaben had secured for it a 

 place as the premier stronghold of the later generations of 

 the Brus family in Annandale — a place which was never lost 

 under the royal dynasties of Bruce and Stewart. In helping 



4 Like so many motes elsewhere, that of Annan stood quite 

 close to the parish church. The latter has long been shifted, 

 though the burying-ground, now disused, remains to mark the 

 older site. The church was gifted by Robert de Brus 11. , probably 

 somewhere about 1170, to the monastery of Guisborough, in York- 

 shire, founded by Robert de Brus (father of Robert de Brus I. 

 and grandfather of Robert de Brus II.) about 1119. 



