page_title: Rusco Tower
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Rusco Tower / Description
caption_attribution_description: English: A line drawing of Rusco Tower, published in 1889 in The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland, Volume 2, by David MacGibbon and Thomas Ross.
context_page_description: Rusco Tower, sometimes called Rusco Castle, is a tower house near Gatehouse of Fleet in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. Built around 1500 for Mariota Carson and her husband Robert Gordon, on lands given to them by her father, it was used to incarcerate a number of the Gordons' rivals in the 16th century. After Robert Gordon died and Carson remarried, their eldest son James Gordon seized the tower and imprisoned his mother, fearing that she would make it over to her new husband, Thomas Maclellan of Bombie. Gordon went on to kill Maclellan on the High Street in Edinburgh, while a court case intended to settle the matter was ongoing.
  The Gordons sold the tower in the 17th century, and it was inhabited continuously until the late 19th or early 20th century. By the middle of the 20th century the building was uninhabited and had fallen into a state of disrepair. In 1971 it was designated a Category A listed building, and was shortly afterwards purchased and renovated by Graham Carson, a Scottish businessman, who went on to live in it from 1979 until 2006.
context_section_description: Rusco Tower is located about 5 kilometres (3 mi) north of Gatehouse of Fleet, on a wooded hillside looking down into the valley of the Water of Fleet. It is a rectangular tower house, four storeys high including its attic, with a wall walk inside its parapet. Its overall design is very similar to that of nearby Cardoness Castle, on a slightly smaller scale, and it is possible that it was constructed by the same builder.
caption: A view of the tower from the south east, published in 1889.
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