Castle of St John

The Castle of St John is a rectangular tower from the 16th century within the town of Stranraer. It is operated as a museum and is open to the public on a seasonal basis. There are no traces of a courtyard or outbuildings today, although it probably had these originally, and extensive alterations have made any internal arrangement from the old tower impossible to identify.

The castle was built by the Adair family in 1511 and was named after the chapel of St John which they had also built – in fact on occasion the castle was referred to as the castle of Chapel. Stranraer was created a burgh of barony for the Adairs, with the castle as the principal messuage, but it all passed to the Kennedy family by marriage in 1608 before being used as a garrison in the Jacobite period. By the 19th century it had been abandoned and was sold to the town council to use as a jail. Since the cessation of this use, the castle has been restored to permit the museum to work.

Official page on local authority website

HES Canmore database entry