Sites and Monument Record: Blackness Castle (SMR 416)
Description
A small trench in 1997 showed that a considerable depth of archaeological deposits survive in the area between the central tower and the W curtain wall; the only material left in the whole courtyard.
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Object detail
After the Anglo-Scottish Union in 1707 the castle continued as a garrison and later held prisoners from the Napoleonic War. In 1870 it became a central ammunition store. The courtyard was covered, a cast-iron jetty built and barracks erected outside the castle. It was occupied by the navy in 1916 to supply munitions to Rosyth Naval Dockyard and the fortified islands in the Firth of Forth. A plan of 1916 marks a small trench system overlooking the western approach, accompanied by barbed wire entanglements to the south.
The castle was decommissioned after the First World War and put into state care. The more recent alterations were reversed.
It is built on an igneous sill of black teschenite.
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