Hi everyone, welcome again to another Teacher Joseph podcast.
Today I’m in a Scottish village called Lochwinnoch and you can see here around me there’s a beautiful lake with some birds and some mountains. It’s very tranquil.
Tranquil is a great word to describe this and the lake extends to behind me. Yes, it’s a lovely area. And right here to my left is Peel Castle and these are the remains of an ancient castle that stood here.
Now, when I was a boy, my parents lived here. I spent the first few years of my life in this village and this castle was rumoured…… It was spoken about…… but no one could get to it because the lake, the loch as it’s called, was much higher and this thing was completely submerged in the water.
These days, they’ve built a nature park around here. And they’ve made access to this castle. Now, you can’t go in it because it’s quite dangerous, of course. You have to stand on the board here but you can see it’s an ancient castle and when I was a little boy growing up, there were a lot of rumours about this castle. You couldn’t get to it unless you had a boat. And even then, You couldn’t get anywhere near it because it was completely submerged and overgrown. Just the top parts used to stick out from the water and the rumours were about the man who lived here. They said that he was a warlock, a male witch.
I’m not sure where that came from, probably because he lived here during the great witch trials of Scotland. His name was Lord Ringan Semple. I think his actual name was David. I’ll need to check on that and his family owned this whole estate, the great Lord Semple. It was one of his descendants that lived here.
The family used this place as a defence during some of the wars they had, and latterly they say it’s was occupied by Ringan Semple. There’s still a lot of references to him around this village of Lochwinnoch. I’ll put it in the notes so you can see it. I know that there’s gates to the estate way up at the top there, referred to as the Warlock Gates. They’re still called that today and there’s other references as well around the village to the family.
In fact, this lake, known locally as a loch in the Scottish dialect, is known as the Castle Semple Loch. And of course, the word Lochwinnoch is the lake of Winnoch. who supposedly was the saint who founded this town. So it’s beautiful to finally see this. When I was a boy, I remember my parents talking a lot about this place, but there was no way you could get to it. It was submerged. So it’s amazing being here today, of course, covered in health and safety notices, telling you not to go anywhere near it.
And let’s have a look and see what we can learn about the Peel Tower. Well, it says here, let’s see, What can you see and what is it? The Peel of Lochwinnoch is a ruin with a bloody history dating back to the 16th century, when the Peel landscape….. while the Peel landscape has changed over the years, the tower has remained a stoic fortress overlooking Castle Semple and Aird Meadow Lochs. Yes, because there’s two of them. There’s another one further down. Today, the tower is a ruin echoing the foundations of an impressive fortress built by a man with a controversial legacy, Lord Robert Semple.
Yeah, so he was the first one. And there’s gun holes….. window ornaments….. The building plan, a carved wall, lots of things here. And it says, as I recall, For years, the Peel Tower of Lochwinnoch was hidden and difficult to interpret in its ruined, overgrown state. Work was undertaken in 2022 to clear and consolidate the tower. Some original features of the tower were highlighted, becoming visible to visitors and revealing its splendor.
There’s a timeline there, lots of additional information if you’re interested and behind me, you’ll probably hear the railway. Well, that wasn’t there, certainly, when the semples were here. And the one that was the warlock, rRngan sample, I’ll need to have a look through my history books to find out more about him again. I think he was known as Ringan. I’m sure his name was David. I’ll have to check on that. And there we are, a beautiful old fortress from the 16th century.
Well, that’s it from me. See you all…. Bye.