Orchardton Tower

Orchardton Tower is unique: it is the only circular laird’s tower house built in late-medieval Scotland. Circular towers, called donjons, were integral to great curtain-walled strongholds of the 1200s such as Bothwell Castle and Dirleton Castle, where they were the focus of the lord’s private accommodation. But after this time they disappeared, to be replaced by exclusively square and rectangular tower houses. 

We do not know why the owner of Orchardton built himself a circular tower house around the mid-1400s. A number of circular towers exist in Ireland, most of them in the south-west, in Clare and Tipperary. However, these are generally dated to the 1500s.