The Hunterston Resting Tree
Unfortunately this Tree comes under miscellaneous as all the other menu options do not apply so this has been added to the Walled Garden section as its closely related.
In the early centuries after the castle was built at Hunterston there was a tree known as the "Resting Tree", it would have been an Ash Tree and possibly the trunk was 16 feet in circumferance and its suggested part of the trubk was carved out to provide a seating area for travellers.
The old coach road passed by the castle on its way north, (the road is commonly known now as the Old Road) and the tree was located where the White Gate now resides.
There is also suggestion that this tree was also a "Dule Tree". The popular opinion is that the Dule tree was common to all baronial residences derived its name from being the doom tree whereon the condemned of the baron's own retainers or his enemies suffered punishment and that it had served the purpose of a gallows and the place of execution.
It is also suggested that a great part of the population of castle based estates were serfs. The serfs were bound to stay on master's land if they left it they were brought back strayed on oxen. They were compelled to do all manner labour for their lord felling timber carrying manure repairing roads and the like.
Whatever they their lord could take at his pleasure. He could kill them like cattle, they were his property as much as horses in his stalls. He had the power of pit and gallows over them that is of drowning women and men in testimony of which the dule tree or tree sorrow where poor men came to grief by a rope stood near by the castle walls.
There is very little if not non existant information about the Hunterston Resting tree, so although the above may or may not be true, it could be entirely possible.
In the early centuries after the castle was built at Hunterston there was a tree known as the "Resting Tree", it would have been an Ash Tree and possibly the trunk was 16 feet in circumferance and its suggested part of the trubk was carved out to provide a seating area for travellers.
The old coach road passed by the castle on its way north, (the road is commonly known now as the Old Road) and the tree was located where the White Gate now resides.
There is also suggestion that this tree was also a "Dule Tree". The popular opinion is that the Dule tree was common to all baronial residences derived its name from being the doom tree whereon the condemned of the baron's own retainers or his enemies suffered punishment and that it had served the purpose of a gallows and the place of execution.
It is also suggested that a great part of the population of castle based estates were serfs. The serfs were bound to stay on master's land if they left it they were brought back strayed on oxen. They were compelled to do all manner labour for their lord felling timber carrying manure repairing roads and the like.
Whatever they their lord could take at his pleasure. He could kill them like cattle, they were his property as much as horses in his stalls. He had the power of pit and gallows over them that is of drowning women and men in testimony of which the dule tree or tree sorrow where poor men came to grief by a rope stood near by the castle walls.
There is very little if not non existant information about the Hunterston Resting tree, so although the above may or may not be true, it could be entirely possible.
