Rusco Tower, sometimes called Rusco Castle, is a tower house near Gatehouse of Fleet in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. Built around 1500 for Mariota Carson and her husband Robert Gordon, on lands given to them by her father, it was used to incarcerate a number of the Gordons' rivals in the 16th century. After Robert Gordon died and Carson remarried, their eldest son James Gordon seized the tower and imprisoned his mother, fearing that she would make it over to her new husband, Thomas Maclellan of Bombie. Gordon went on to kill Maclellan on the High Street in Edinburgh, while a court case intended to settle the matter was ongoing.
The Gordons sold the tower in the 17th century, and it was inhabited continuously until the late 19th or early 20th century. By the middle of the 20th century the building was uninhabited and had fallen into a state of disrepair. In 1971 it was designated a Category A listed building, and was shortly afterwards purchased and renovated by Graham Carson, a Scottish businessman, who went on to live in it from 1979 until 2006. Carson attempted to discover whether his family was related to the Carsons who originally owned the estate, but was unable to document a connection. It remains in the Carson family, and is still used as a domestic dwelling.
The tower was the subject of a poem, "Rusco Castle, a Tale of the Olden Time", published in 1841.
Name
The building's name is recorded by Historic Environment Scotland as Rusco Tower, but some authors refer to it as Rusco Castle, and it is sometimes spelled Rusko. In 1515, when a charter was signed at the tower, its name was recorded as "Ruschen", and it appears in records of 1575 as "Ruschew".
Description
Rusco Tower is located about north of Gatehouse of Fleet, on a wooded hillside looking down into the valley of the Water of Fleet. It is a rectangular tower house, four storeys high including its attic, with a wall walk inside its parapet. Its overall design is very similar to that of nearby Cardoness Castle, on a slightly smaller scale, and it is possible that it was constructed by the same builder.
Exterior
The external footprint of the tower is rectangular, roughly by , and it is about high. Stone water spouts project from the roof, cannon-shaped to the east frontage, and U-shaped on the other sides. Within the parapet, which is crenellated and supported by chequered corbels, there is a garret, and in the south east corner is a cap-house: a small attic covering the stairway and opening onto the wall walk.
The chamfered windows are small and irregularly placed, and corniced on the upper floors; their projecting lintels, unusual in Scotland, seem to have been intended to cast off rain. In the west and east faces, the ground floor walls are pierced by gunloops, shaped like inverted keyholes, in a style similar to that of Cardoness. The main entrance, on the ground floor of the north wall, has a broad segmental arch, and was formerly a doorway into a (now demolished) 17th-century extension; the less elaborate original entrance remains, in the centre of the east front. Above it is a worn heraldic plaque with two shields: the upper one, supported by a pair of unicorns, bears the Royal Arms of Scotland, while the lower shield shows a quartered coat of arms, probably for Gordon and Carson, although only a G is still discernible.
On the north side of the building, the lower sections of the west and north walls of a 17th-century extension survive. This was already dilapidated by the 19th century, and most of it has since been demolished.
Interior
The tower is noted for its unusual sophistication in the arrangement of small rooms built into the thickness of its walls, which are up to thick in places. Also built into the thickness of the walls is a turnpike stair with a newel, which ascends the full height of the tower. The ground floor, which has an entresol level, is vaulted, and is divided into a number of store rooms and guard rooms, some with gun loops, and one with a trap door dropping down to a windowless dungeon. The entresol is tunnel vaulted, and occupied by a single room with windows in the south and east walls. It is likely that the ground floor was originally used to accommodate horses or cattle, with the entresol providing a sleeping place for servants.