Langholm Castle

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Perhaps fittingly, the forlorn ruins of Langholm Castle are situated in a wooded area inside the modern racecourse, so the sound of hooves tearing up the turf still reverberate by the solitary standing wall.
Because the Border Reivers loved their horse racing and the ‘baa – the precursor to modern football. It’s well documented that prior to a raid a clan chief would either announce a race or a game as a pretext for gathering his riders together.
The Bold Buccleuch arranged a horse race at Langholm where he met the main conspirators that would take part in the infamous rescue of Kinmont Willie from Carlisle Castle.
The Carlisle Bells flat race was first contested in the sixteenth century and is still run today. An original bell, believed to date from around 1580 and the oldest known racing prize in Britain, bares the inscription: ‘The fastest horse this bell to take for my Lady Dacre’s sake.’ It is housed along with another from 1599 in Carlisle’s Guildhall museum.
In 1585 a horse of Humphrey Musgrave’s named ‘Bay Sandforth’ won three bells at a meeting in Liddesdale, which was purchased from him by Mangerton while Kinmont bought a horse of Thomas Carlton’s called ‘Grey Carver,’ in an illegal cross-Border trade.
Langholm Castle is in Eskdale and was built in 1528 as the residence of Johnnie Armstrong of Gilnockie’s brother, Christopher.
The pele, home to the keeper of Annandale, was sadly another that suffered the fate of being demolished after 1603 during the great purge of the Reivers at the hands of King James VI when he became King James I of Britain.

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