Hume Castle

The ancient seat of Clan Hume (or Home), Hume Castle stands on a rocky crag overlooking the Merse, or Eastern Borders of Scotland. Probably originally an ancient hill fort, the castle dates from 1214, when William, son of the Earl of Dunbar, was granted the lands of Hume, and is an important early example of a rectangular courtyard plan castle, possibly the only one in SE Scotland to have survived Robert the Bruce’s policy of castle-destruction. Hume was a key defensive point in the Merse, the valley of the River Tweed which formed the historic border with England, and the first in a chain of Scottish beacon stances to warn of English invaders. James II and Mary of Geuldres stayed at Hume shortly before the king was killed at the siege of Roxburgh in 1460 and it was captured by the English several times before being finally deserted after Cromwell’s Colonels, Fenwick and Taylor, bombarded it into submission in 1651. The ruined castle was acquired in 1766 by the last Earl of Marchmont, who levelled the interior and rebuilt the upper parts of the walls as a landscape feature or ‘eyecatcher’ visible from his nearby seat of Marchmont House. Having been acquired by the State in 1929, the castle was equipped as a secret resistance headquarters during the Second World War. In 1980 it was declared unsafe and grant aided repairs were carried by the Berwickshire Civic Society, who repopened it to visitors in 1993. On 31 August 2005 it was handed over to the Hume Castle Preservation Trust, a charity administered by the Clan Home Association.

Robin Kent Architecture & Conservation researched the history of the castle, prepared a quinquennial condition report and obtained budget costs for repairs and improvements including improved access for visitors, to ensure this important monument can continue to be enjoyed by Humes and other visitors from all over the world.