Herbertshire Castle

Stirling & Clackmannanshire: About 6 miles west and north of Falkirk, west of A872, in Dunipace, just north of River Carron, Herbertshire Castle Park.

Ruin or site   NS 804830   OS: 65   FK6 6LF

Grounds are a public park.

Site of large, altered and extended 16th-century L-plan tower house. The castle was demolished in the 20th century, and nothing remains except some grass-covered banks and undulations. The grounds are now a public park.
  ‘Harbertyshyre’ is marked on Blaeu’s map of Stirlingshire.

Dunipace was held by the Douglases in the 13th and 14th century, but went by marriage to the Sinclairs of Roslin, and a charter of 1474 mentions the ‘lands and barony of Herbertshire with the castle and fortalice thereof’. William Sinclair of Herbertshireis is on record 1583. The property went to Alexander Elphinstone, 1st Earl of Linlithgow, in 1608. 

Herbertshire was sold to the Stirlings in 1632, and John Stirling of Herbertshire in on record in the 1640s, then William Stirling of Herbertshire in the 1660s, George Stirling of Herbertshire in the 1690s. They sold it to William Morehead in 1768, and Herbertshire was acquired by Forbes of Callendar in 1835. The castle was damaged by fire in 1914 and then demolished in the 1950s. The grounds are now Herbertshire Castle Park, also known as Gala Park,
  This is said to have been the birthplace of the Black Douglas, the Good Sir James, who was a friend and captain of Robert the Bruce.