On a promontory overlooking the Tay estuary, at Broughty Ferry (Dundee), Broughty Castle locked the access to Dundee. Its fifteenth-century tower was, in the mid-sixteenth, the stake of a major episode of the Anglo-Scottish wars: the 'Rough Wooing'.
The tower of Lord Gray
Licensed in 1454, the tower was raised around 1490 by the 2nd Lord Gray, under a charter of James IV. Its strategic position, commanding the entrance to the Tay, made it a disputed place whenever a conflict threatened Dundee.
The Rough Wooing and the Italian engineer
After the Scottish defeat at Pinkie (1547), during the 'Rough Wooing' (the war waged by England to force the marriage of the infant Mary Stuart to Henry VIII's son), Lord Gray handed the place to the English. They occupied it for two and a half years and strengthened it with the help of the Italian engineer Giovanni di Rossetti — a ditch barring the promontory, raised walls: an early sign of Italian-style bastioned fortification in Scotland. Despite the assault of some 3,000 Scots in 1547, the garrison held until its surrender to a Franco-Scottish force in 1550. (The visible building is largely a Victorian reconstruction of 1861 on the old core.)
Did you know?
In 1547, Broughty was taken 'without a shot being fired': its owner, Lord Gray, had simply sold it to the English. The treachery of one man handed the lock of the Tay to the enemy — and brought an Italian engineer to Scotland to modernise it.
Notes
Broughty Castle lies at Broughty Ferry, Dundee; it houses a museum today. Hours to check against the official sources.
Quiz
- What did Broughty Castle lock?
- The access to Dundee, on the Tay estuary
- Loch Ness
- The Welsh border
- Who fortified the place for the English around 1547?
- The Italian engineer Giovanni di Rossetti
- Robert Smythson
- John Knox
- How did the English take Broughty in 1547?
- Lord Gray sold it to them (without a fight)
- By a long siege
- By the trick of a wooden horse