Blanerne Castle

Blanerne Castle is a ruined 16th century tower house which is referred to in a traditional Berwickshire song:

Bunkle, Billie and Blanerne
Three castles strong as airn
Built when Davy was a bairn;
They’ll a’ gang doon
Wi’ Scotland’s croon,
And ilke ane shall be a cairn.

The other castles mentioned are Bunkle Castle and Billie Castle, and the Davy mentioned is David I, which suggests that all three castles were in existence by the late 11th century.

Blanerne was owned by the Blanerne family until it passed by marriage to the Lumsdens in 1329.

Blanerne Castle was destroyed by the Earl of Hertford during the Rough Wooing in 1544, and is now a ruin.

Towards the end of the 16th century James Lumsden, son of John Lumsden of Blanerne, married the heiress of the lands of Airdrie, presumably also a Lumsden, and from them descended the Lumsdens of Innergellie, Airdrie, Strathvithie and Mountquhannie.

It is marked on Moll’s mid-18th century map as Blaneirn, seemingly as an empty fenced plot.

In December 1864 the Lumsdaine heiress, Mary Lilias Lumsdaine, sister of William Lumsdaine of Rennyhill, died and was succeeded by her son, the Reverend Francis Gordon Sandys-Lumsdaine, in Lumsdaine, Blanerne and Innergellie.