Many substantially built stone castles, tower keeps and manors date from Norman times. Experts say that Castleton (Castletoune, Cassiltown or Casseltoun) tower on the north side of the Cathkin Braes was probably 15th century. The Manor or Castle preceding 15th century Mains Castle at Kilbride (between Carmunnock and East Kilbride) was in the possession of the family of The Red Comyn and later it was held by the last of the Lindsays previously of Dunrod at Gourock. At The Peel, meaning a tower (on Waterside Road, a mile outside Carmunnock), the original Castle was about a quarter of a mile west of the present mansion-house whose main part exists from the 17th century.
It is thought that from Henry’s time, the Douglases were the rulers at Cormanoc’s Manor until they had to forfeit their lands. About 1450 the Estate including our village was presented by James II as barony lands to the first Lord Hamilton of the noble family who were lords of Dalserf and Cadzow, and it remained theirs throughout the troublesome times that followed the Reformation. In fact the last part of the Hamiltons’ barony lands (or properties) at Carmunnock was held by them until as late as about 1710.
From the 17th century, the church’s committee made up of heritors not only paid the minister’s stipend and schoolmaster’s salary but bore the cost and was responsible for the care of the church, churchyard, the Manse, its garden, the Glebe lands and the school and schoolmaster’s house.
In addition they looked after the two bridges built with funds raised in house to house collections in 1734 to span the Kittoch Water at Waterbank (Stipends or Stepends Bridge near Philipshill) and on the road - or path - to Busby. This system by heritors continued into our century (1929) as part of the Kirk Session’s or the Parish Council’s work.
The majority of Carmunnock church’s heritors in days gone by were the owners of small estates in or on the boundaries of the parish, or else they owned parish property. It is interesting that some of these estates appear to have belonged to branches of well-known land-owning families such as Hamiltons, Stewarts, Maxwells and Maclaes. As time went on, however, many of the heritors were of lesser status. Church elders who were farmers and small property owners were asked, provided their means were regarded as sufficient, to contribute to the expenses of upkeep, and these heritors were sometimes known as bunnet lairds.
But the district’s overlord the Hamilton Laird who owned the greater acreage and therefore patronized the greatest proportion of the parish’s tithes or rents, was by tradition and right the Patron of our village church, chief among its heritors, whose word was law.
In the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, a branch of the Stewarts (descendants of Walter the Hereditary High Steward of Scotland) lived in a Castle called Castlemilk in Annandale on the banks of the Water of Milk at Kettleholm south of Lockerbie in Dumfriesshire. But this family had acquired land some distance north and in the 15th century they made their seat on this land, at the Castle tower of Castleton or Cassiltown on the north side of the Cathkin Braes in the county of Lanark. In their Borders castle they had held significant power in early times. The name Castlemilk had carried with it considerable importance in the past, but now it became alienated from them when it was made over to John, Lord Maxwell.
The Stewart Lairds’ ancestors of the 14th century had been Sir Alexander Stewart of Darnley and Dreghorn whose two sons, Sir John Stewart d’Aubigney and Sir William Stewart, were killed at the Battle of Orleans in 1429. Whereas Sir William’s next-in-line Sir Matthew Stewart became the first Laird of Castletoune in Lanarkshire, some time earlier Sir John Stewart d’Aubigney had married the heiress of the Lennox family. In the following century Mary Queen of Scots married her second husband Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, heir to the title, elder brother of the 5th and last Earl of Lennox. The Stewarts of Castleton therefore regarded themselves as her close kinsfolk and it was at this time that they changed the spelling of their name to Stuart.
In addition to this, in the 17th century the Stuarts at Castleton gradually took over the surrounding area formerly owned by the Lords Hamilton, thus endowing them with more authority and power. They felt they were indeed rising in the land, surely to be recognised in society. Keen to establish their status among nobility, they now proceeded to retrieve their original title and re-name their seat in Lanarkshire, Castlemilk.
In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries the Lanarkshire Castlemilk Stuarts - their motto Avant meaning Forward - extended and improved their fine mansion-house, incorporating the original Castleton tower. Connected with this family were the Stuarts of Torrance Castle, Kilbride, bought by them c.1665 from the Hamiltons.
Referring back to the early cairns, the largest of these had become known as Queen Mary’s Cairn. Was this the Queen Mary’s Seat marked on present day maps as being close to the Ordnance Survey trig point on the Cathkin Braes overlooking the Stuarts’ great House at Castleton? Or was there another cairn on higher ground to the south associated with the first part of Queen Mary’s journey in May 1568 from Cadzow (Hamilton) Castle to Langside - a cairn possibly on the area between South Cathkin Farm and Easthills?
Queen Mary’s Cairn, said by David Ure to have been about 18 ft tall and 120 ft in diameter, may have been larger than the others because stones had one after another been added to it by people commemorating the Queen - for or opposed to her cause. But in 1793 he also wrote that this and other cairns on the Cathkin Braes seemed “devoted to destruction” because now the stones were being removed for dyke-building and for cottages. Perhaps his words also implied that this particular monument was bound to be endangered as the result of conflicts of religious and political opinion. Bear in mind that the Catholic Queen’s coming from France to Scotland in 1561 had immediately followed the Reformation of the Churches to Protestantism, and loyalties were already divided.
Historians tell us that on that fateful morning of 13th May 1568, the Queen’s army, marching out of Hamilton in the early hours, negotiated its route towards Dumbarton Castle. Continuing west of the Royal Burgh of Rutherglen, still looking for a safe point at which to cross the River Clyde, they were intercepted by Regent Moray’s men at Langside village, and defeated.
It is thought Queen Mary viewed the fighting from a knoll close to Cathcart Castle known as Court Knowe, and afterwards she rested among her friends the Maxwells to escape the crowds spreading round the area, before making her way south. On Court Knowe, high above the east bank of the White Cart Water (at the north end of Linn Park) a thorn tree was originally planted in memory of Mary; but in more recent times Lord Cathcart erected the present granite block with its metal plaque bearing the entwined initials M.R. and the date 1568, replacing his uncle Sir George Cathcart’s memorial to her which is now in the People’s Palace Museum on Glasgow Green.
Hearsay suggests that there were other points from where the Queen watched the fighting, but historians say that stories true and false about her movements in the district abounded then and for many years afterwards. Throughout those few days’ journeying - northwest from Hamilton to Cathcart and some time later leaving for England - inevitably there would be incidences (some probably doubtful) and places named in her memory, thus recording history, but perhaps also creating a few myths!
It’s of note that in addition to the embarrassment her unsettling reign had caused, Mary, who had by now abdicated in favour of her son James VI, escaped from Loch Leven Castle only a matter of days before Langside and was being hunted. She was suspected by many of complicity in the murder the previous year of her husband Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, kinsman of the Castleton Stuarts.
Yet at Castleton a thorn tree was planted in the grounds and, some time later, the Stuarts commissioned artists to create a monument in memory of the Queen: the ceiling of a room in the Castle which they named Queen Mary’s Room, was ornamented with the Royal Coat of Arms of the Stuart Kings of Scotland and those of crowned heads in Europe with whom the Stuarts were connected. This fine ceiling, historians tell us, would be painted in rich reds, purples, royal blue and gold.
But we read in The Old Country Houses of the Old Glasgow Gentry (second edition) published in 1878, that when the authors visited Castlemilk House, the “early blazonings on this noted ceiling had totally disappeared during subsequent alterations and repairs”.