16/10/2026
Taken from the book: Highways & Byways in Galloway & Carrick.
Illustrations by Hugh Thomson
Loch Doon Castle
During the wars of the fourteenth century the stronghold was besieged by the English, who, having failed to take it by assault, proposed to flood it by raising the waters of the loch. At the point where the river begins they built a barrier of earth and stones, and for additional security lined it with raw hides. As the water crept up the castle walls one of the besieged soldiers, named MacNab, volunteered to cut the dam. In the dark of midnight he slipped into the water with a large " bonnet sword" folded in his cap, swam down the middle of the loch, and reached the embankment unnoticed. He broke it at several points, but before he could escape, the pent-up waters swept away the obstruction and him along with it, so that he was battered to death as the liberated flood raged through the Ness Glen. It is said that, in recognition of the service he had ren- dered his country, a grant of land was conferred on his son. It still bears the name of Macnabston, and is now a part of the farm of Beoch. (According to another version it was the reward of a traitor who yielded the castle to the English when it was held for Bruce by Sir Christopher de Seton after the battle of Methyen.)
It may have been just after this incident that the defenders of the castle landed on the Carrick shore of the loch and, meeting the English on a moorland height, which is still called the Brucean Hill, defeated them.
A discovery made in 1826 may take one back to a much earlier century than that of the War of Independence. In the dry summer of that year some fishers observed several canoes lying on the bottom near the Castle Island. These were raised from there immemorial resting place and were found to have been hollowed out if oak trees.
