Baldoon Castle

Galloway: About 1.5 miles south and west of Wigtown, on minor roads east of A746, just south of the River Bladnoch, at Baldoon Mains.

Ruin or site   NX 426536   OS: 83   DG8 9AG

Little remains of Baldoon Castle, except some walling and the entrance gate piers, which date from the middle of the 17th century.
  ‘Baldun’ is prominently marked on Blaeu’s map of the west part of Galloway.
  Baldoon was held by the Dunbars from the 1530s. David Dunbar of Baldoon was one of those charged with ‘implementing an act for putting the acts against runaways and deficients to execution’ in 1644. The property had passed to the Hamiltons of Baldoon by 1695, and the manor place of Baldoon is mentioned in a ratification of 1705.
  The castle is said to be haunted. In 1669 Janet Dalrymple of Carscreugh was in love with Archibald Rutherford, son of Lord Rutherford, but he was poor and her parents were against their marriage. They chose Sir David Dunbar of Baldoon, and persuaded Janet to marry him. All was not well, however, although there are different versions of what happened next. Janet was either murdered on her wedding night, after having tried to slay her new husband, or died insane soon afterwards. Her ghost is said to be seen here on the anniversary of her death, 12 September. Sir Walter Scott’s Bride of Lammermuir (and then Donizetti’s opera) were inspired by the events here.
  Dunbar recovered sufficiently to marry a daughter of the Montgomery Earl of Eglinton.