Historical Background

Documentary Evidence

Documentary evidence shows Hume to have been a settled village with a church dating from at least the 12th Century when the parish church, dedicated to St Nicholas, was confirmed by the Diocesan Bishop, Robert. Artefactual evidence may indicate earlier origins of the church however, with a Celtic bell found in the castle, and a Celtic brass basin from the former christening well at Hume Byres (Gunn 1899). A round headed cross was also once located in the kirkyard, and recorded by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland in 1908, however its location is now unknown. These three objects suggest the possibility of an earlier church, but there is no direct documentary evidence to support this. The village is noted as having been of a much larger extent, believed to have extended between the castle and former church, with the Earls of Home able to raise around 400 armed men from Hume alone (Ordnance Survey Name Books 1856-58).

Hume Castle likely dates to the 13th Century, and can potentially be attributed to William Home, a son of the then Earl of Dunbar (MacGibbon & Ross 1889). The castle was besieged on a number of occasions, but was notably taken in 1547 by Lord Somerset, before returning to the ownership of Lord Hume in 1549. It was finally taken, before its destruction, by Colonel Fenwick in 1650, under the instruction of Oliver Cromwell during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (Ordnance Survey Name Books 1856-58). The castle was the seat of the Lords and Earls of Home until its destruction in the mid Seventeenth Century, after which the Earls of Home relocated to the Hirsel in Coldstream. The castle and village passed into the ownership of the Earl of Marchmont in the 18th Century, with Sir HughCampbell Hume assuming ownership in the late 1700s, and being responsible for the reconstruction and present guise of the castle constructed upon the ruins of the former structure (MacGibbon & Ross 1889).

Hume parish church merged with that of Stitchill in 1640, with the church for both parishes then being located in Stitchill. No church now stands at the location of Hume parish church, but a glebe, property of the Minister of Hume and Stitchill Parish, was located adjacent to the former church and its burying ground. The date of the destruction of the church is unknown (ibid), although it is feasible that the church was destroyed at the same time as the destruction of the castle. The Pest Knowe is located at the south east corner of the kirkyard, and is believed to be the burial place of plague victims, however, excavations in the 19th Century indicated that this mound may have been formed by some of the debris of the church (Gunn 1899).

Cartographic Evidence (All maps consulted can be found on the National Library of Scotland Website here)

The first depiction of Hume dates to the 1572 imprint produced by Thomaso Porcacchi. The map depicts a large building, possibly a castle, labeled as ‘Hummes’. Similar is shown on the 1578 imprint by John Leslie, with the only difference the slight change in spelling to ‘Hume’.

The first definitive depiction of Hume Castle comes with the 1595 imprints by Gerhard Mercator, with the castle listed and labeled, but a distinct spelling change to ‘Howyn’. Similar depictions remain through to Thomas Jenner’s imprint of 1644, with the only change being a different spelling of ‘Howin’ depicted on John Speed’s (1610), Willem Blaeu’s (1635), and Jenner’s itself.

By the time of Joan Blaeu’s imprint of 1654, Hume and its environs are depicted much more prominently within the landscape of Berwickshire, with Hume Castle positioned prominently on a rocky outcrop, with ‘Hoometown’ depicted on a lower outcrop, and a church ‘k’ depicted to the south west of the castle, and north of ‘Hoomebyres’, the location of the parish church of Hume. This represents the first depiction of the church.

Jan Jansson’s imprint of 1659 depicts ‘Hoom’ in a similar vein to those prior to Blaeu’s 1654 imprint, and its isn’t until Moll’s imprint of 1745 that we again see both the castle and church depicted, with the castle now indicate as ‘Hoome or Hume’. Interestingly, whilst Moll died in 1732, this map wasn’t published until 1745, however, both the publication and death of Moll occurred at least three quarters of a century after the apparent destruction of the castle and church, and prior to the late 18th Century reconstruction.

Roy’s map of the Lowlands of Scotland (1752-55) is the first to show the village of ‘Hume’ in any real detail, with the buildings within the village seen to be surrounding the castle on the east, north, and west sides. The village extends further to the west, and a road or track is depicted running from the south west of the castle and village towards ‘Humebyres’. The village is surrounded by agricultural land, and an enclosed area is shown to the east of the depicted track, however there is no indication of the church.

By 1771, Andrew Armstrong’s imprint shows the village of ‘Hume’ with a similar extent to that depicted on Roy’s map. The castle is shown prominently on a hilltop, and indicated as being owned by the Earl of Marchmont. Unlike the Roy map, Armstrong’s shows the church, labeled as ‘Kirk in ruins’, the first map to depict the ruinous remains.

Imprints of the late 18th and early 19th centuries all show ‘Hume’ in a very similar way, with John Blackadder (1797), John Ainslie (1821), and John Thomson (1821) all showing the village on the north side of a depicted castle. Sharp and Fowler’s map from 1826 is the first to show ‘Hume Castle in ruins’. Crawford and Brooke’s imprint from 1854 changes the spelling of both the castle and village to ‘Home’, and now indicates the village to be significantly reduced, with buildings only present on the north side of the road adjacent to the north of the castle.

The level of detail increases significantly by the time of the Ordnance Survey in the late 1850s, with the First Edition of 1859 depicting the castle as being in ruins, but with the outline of the reconstructed castle as it stands today and a well, shown on the castle interior. The village of Hume is indicated by a row of buildings to the north side of the road adjacent to the north of the castle, with a ‘Smithy’ and ‘School’ indicated. The track first indicated on Roy’s map, is shown running to the south west with ‘Bow Butts’ indicated in a field to the north. At the location of the church, the kirkyard is indicated as being walled, as is the ‘Glebe’ to the east and south of the kirkyard, with the glebe and kirkyard creating an ‘L’ shaped area. The outline of the church is shown and noted as ‘hume Church (Site of)’, with a roofed building ‘Earl’s Aisle’ shown on the north side of the former church. In the south east corner of the kirkyard, a mound called the ‘Pest Knowe’ is indicated. A further roofed building is shown at the north west on the exterior of the kirkyard and adjacent to a marked well.

By the Second Edition of 1899, the only significant changes are to be seen at the kirkyard, with the previously marked well now noted as the ‘Priest’s Well’, and the building adjacent no longer present. The Glebe is also no longer noted, with the land formerly represented by this now being separated into two fields. The information remains the same by the Third Edition of 1908, with the only further changes to be seen to the north and south of the track leading from the castle to the kirkyard, with two sheepfolds shown to the north and south of the track near to the location of the former ‘Bow Butts’.

Previous work

In the mid 1800s, excavations were carried out by Lady John Scott at the location of the ‘Pest Knowe’, in the south east corner of the Kirkyard. The excavations were an attempt to uncover remains of plague victims from Hume in the 17th Century, believed to have been buried in that part of the Kirkyard. The excavations revealed no traces of human remains (OS Name Book, 1856-58).

The castle and its immediate environs were surveyed in 1987 as part of the Border Burghs Archaeology Project (BBAP). The BBAP was set up in July 1983, under the direction of Piers Dixon, by the sponsors, the Borders Architects Group, with funding from the Manpower Services Commission, and aimed to excavate, survey, and record a series of sites throughout the Borders. At Hume, the fieldwork undertaken in 1987 was principally plane table and field survey, which identified the size of the settlement surrounding the castle. The sites of many houses and ridge and furrow cultivation was mapped, and stretched from the modern village for half a mile to the west on either side of the loaning that leads to the kirkyard. The identified houses in the village did not survive to great height, with mostly only the footings remaining. The survey also identified a series of platforms, terraces, ditches, and cultivation associated with both the earlier castle, and later settlement features.

In 1994 the BFHS completed a survey of all of the memorial inscriptions on the visible gravestones in both Hume and Stitchill kirkyards.

Following a request for assistance from HCPT to interpret the site at Hume, the then Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland commissioned a re-survey of the castle and immediate landscape using a low level aerial survey by an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in 2015. The results produced included a 3D model using various interpretative models, and allowed for several features previously unrecorded to be visualized. The model also allowed for a level of ground truthing to try to identify the sites in the field using traditional survey techniques. The resulting survey indicated the ability of the drone survey to identify sites and features that could not be identified simply using traditional techniques. The resurvey of the field immediately surrounding the castle identified 25 houses and yards along the hollow ways of potential village streets to north and south of the castle rock. On the slopes to the south of the village, two phases of ridge and furrow were revealed, with ramparts and earthworks relating to the castle itself also identified (Cowley et al, 2018).