Dumbarton Castle

Dumbarton Castle (Scottish Gaelic: Dùn Breatainn, pronounced [t̪unˈpɾʲɛʰt̪ɪɲ]) has the longest recorded history of any stronghold in Scotland. It overlooks the Scottish town of Dumbarton, and sits on a plug of volcanic basalt known as Dumbarton Rock which is 240 feet (73 m) high.

History

According to the local museum, Dumbarton Rock is a volcanic plug of basalt created 334 million years ago, with the softer exterior of the volcano having weathered away.

Iron Age

At least as far back as the Iron Age, this has been the site of a strategically important settlement as evidenced by archaeological finds.

The people that came to reside there in the era of Roman Britain were known to have traded with the Romans - though these may or may not have been the Picts that dwelled in Dumbarton in the Bronze Age & early-mid Iron Age. However the first written record about a settlement there was marked in a letter Saint Patrick wrote to King Ceretic of Alt Clut in the late 5th century.

Early Medieval Era

David Nash Ford has proposed that Dumbarton was the Cair Brithon ("Fort of the Britons") listed by Nennius among the 28 cities of Sub-Roman Britain. From the fifth century until the ninth, the castle was the centre of the independent Brythonic Kingdom of Strathclyde. Alt Clut or Alcluith (Scottish Gaelic: Alt Chluaidh, pronounced [aɫ̪d̪̊ˈxɫ̪uəj], lit. "Rock of the Clyde"), the Brythonic name for Dumbarton Rock, became a metonym for kingdom. The king of Dumbarton in about AD 570 was Riderch Hael, who features in Welsh and Latin works.

During his reign Merlin was said to have stayed at Alt Clut. The medieval Scalacronica of Sir Thomas Grey records the legend that "Arthur left Hoël of Brittany his nephew sick at Alcluit in Scotland." Hoël made a full recovery, but was besieged in the castle by the Scots and Picts. The story first appeared in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. Amongst lists of three things, in the triads of the Red Book of Hergest, the third "Unrestrained Ravaging" was Aeddan Fradog (the Wily, perhaps Áedán...