What is recorded here

Giffen Castle was a 40-foot stone tower on a whinstone ridge in North Ayrshire, built in the 15th century and lost to ruin by 1838. It guarded a wide barony where justice, mills and boundary rites still shaped daily life. Its disappearance left behind a name, a sundial and the memory of a tall stone shadow above the farm.

Scotland's National Record of the Historic Environment records Giffen Castle as Tower House (medieval). The official map says its point is accurate as follows: NGR given to the nearest 1m. The record does not by itself mean that the public may enter the place.

Giffen Castle was a medieval tower house, likely built in the 15th or 16th century by a local landholding family, though specific builders or occupants are not recorded. It is remembered as a typical example of a defensive residence from Scotland’s late medieval period.

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