IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Lyoncross Road, GLASGOW, G53 5UR

The viewpoint for this picture was the top of Crookston Castle, and the view is towards South Cardonald. The main road that is prominent at the centre of the image is Lyoncross Road. The line of distant towerblocks to the right of centre is located at Moss Heights Avenue. The area of woodland filling the middle distance in the right-hand side of the image is Crookston Wood.

The viewpoint for this picture was the top of Crookston Castle, and the view is towards the Pollok and Corkerhill areas of Glasgow. The main road visible at the bottom of the image is Lyoncross Road; between this road and the unseen Potterhill Road (higher up the slope) are two rows of houses. Between Potterhill Road and Barnbeth Road (higher up again) are another two rows of houses. There are no houses on the far side of Barnbeth Road, but Crookston Wood begins there; this wood can be seen in the photo.

Looking to Lyoncross Road from beside the footbridge over the Levern Water.

This tower is the only part of the castle which still survives to its original height.

This room, in the north-eastern tower of Crookston Castle, is immediately above the one shown in Image, and the view direction is the same: the steps in that picture lead to the opening at the lower left corner of the present picture. The north-eastern tower is the only one that survives to its full height, and there is one more storey above this one. The castle would originally have been more symmetrical (see Image), but other towers have been destroyed. The barred window on the right is the lower of the two that can be seen, one above the other, high up on the left-hand side in a picture of Image When there were floors in the central part of the castle, this "window" would have been a doorway. For the next room up, see Image

This room in the north-eastern tower is reached by means of a spiral staircase (Image) from the doorway that is visible to the right of the fireplace in a view of Image There are another two storeys above this one; those rooms are superficially similar to this one, and they are reached by climbing sets of metal rungs, as the picture shows. For the next floor up, see Image From the topmost room (which is two storeys above the one in the present picture), more rungs lead to the rooftop. (On my last visit, I was allowed to ascend the castle after I had made it clear that I had no objection to climbing ladders in cramped spaces in near darkness; more light gets into the building now.)

The picture was taken within what remains of the Great Hall, now roofless; its fireplace is a prominent feature: Image The doorway to the right of the fireplace leads to a spiral staircase (Image), which in turn leads to the Lord's Bedchamber (Image); from there, modern metal rungs give access to another two storeys above that one (Image and Image – the barred windows of those rooms can be seen in the present picture), and finally to the rooftop; its fence can be seen at the upper left corner of the picture. Those rooms and the rooftop (Image) are parts of the north-eastern tower, the only one of the towers to survive to its full height; compare Image For a view from the fenced-off area at the top-left corner of the present picture, see Image The place from which the present picture was taken can be seen in that view. Click on the end-note title for other pictures of the castle.

This room, in the north-eastern tower of Crookston Castle, is immediately above the one shown in Image This final set of rungs leads to the rooftop: Image Out of shot to the right is a window (originally a doorway): Image

For the room, see Image This window is, with respect to that picture, out of shot to the right. It is also the higher of the two barred openings that can be seen high on the left in a picture of Image I have called it a window (it now overlooks a sheer drop above the Great Hall), but it would originally have been a doorway leading onto a floor (now long gone) in the centre of the castle.

A late twelfth-century timber castle with a defensive ringwork was built here by Robert de Croc (see the end-note); the ringwork is still clearly visible, and its course can be followed around the ruins of the later stone castle. For example, in this picture, the outer and inner banks of the defensive ditch are visible behind the fence, crossing the image from left to right; see also: Image – Image – Image This first effort at a photograph of the castle did not turn out as well as I had hoped, but later visits produced better results: Image and Image Click on the end-note title for more pictures of the castle, including some interior views. The position of a causeway across the ringwork can still be discerned at the site; it is close to a lodge which lies just a short distance to the west of the castle: Image In the fifteenth century, the Stewarts of Darnley built the stone castle whose ruins now occupy the site; its north-eastern tower remains intact, and the top can be reached by means of metal ladders (although the castle was not open to the public when this picture was taken, I was kindly given permission to briefly explore the structure). For another contributor's view of the castle, see http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/87398 For a view of the remains of the hall of the castle, on an upper floor, see: Image Much damage was done to the castle when it was besieged by James IV in 1489; some of the towers were destroyed in the resulting bombardment. The castle was finally abandoned in the late sixteenth century. Crookston Castle is the second-oldest building in Glasgow (after the Cathedral). Archaeological excavations have suggested that there may have been a late Iron Age circular enclosure on the same hill – see "Archaeology Around Glasgow" by Susan Hothersall; note that the WoSAS entry for the castle includes the relevant part of that text, as well as some additional material: http://www.wosas.net/wosas_site.php?id=8890 A notable tree called the Crookston Yew used to stand near the castle (see page 28 of the first volume of "Annals of the Andersonian Naturalists' Society"). In 1710, it was said that "hard by the castle is to be seen that noble monument, the ew-tree, called 'The Tree of Crockstoun', of so large a truck and well spread in its branches that 'tis seen at several miles' distance from the grounds where it stands". By the end of that century, it had decayed, and its remains were removed in 1817 by Sir John Maxwell of Pollok. In the 1890s, it was noted that "two scions of the Crookston Yew exist, at Nether Pollok and at the entrance to the Glasgow Botanic Gardens".