The Hume Castle Preservation Trust has purchased a plot of land adjacent to the castle below which an aerial survey has shown the existence of buildings and walls that supported the people who lived at the castle.

Gos Home who has been leading our efforts to secure this land has provided the following information

“Plot 8 adjoins our existing 6 acres to its south and this neatly joins up the rest of the land on which stood the homes of the villagers. We now know that many of those houses still stand to an unknown height along with gardens, wells adjoining roadways or paths. The village is thought to have had a much larger population than today’s village perhaps as many as 800 compared with today at just 40.

After Cromwell’s Colonels in 1651 under Col. Fenwick destroyed Home castle as it then was and Home village it lay as ruins until the then Earl of Home sold the land to Hugh Hume, the Earl of Marchmont in 1790. He carried out a restoration of the castle as a folly and helped create today’s village of Hume. The spelling changed.

The further restoration of the Castle and the sale of land surrounding it to Clan Home took place early this century and the recent discovery by Dr Piers Dixon by using drone photography that the original village still lies beneath the grass has sparked off these exciting fresh developments. The acquisition of Plot 8 will enable proper excavation to start for the first time in 365 years.”

The next steps in progressing this project will be to secure monies to fund the excavation of this land. A long-term objective is to facilitate an information and education centre where visitors to the Castle can learn about the Castle, the families that owned and worked the area and the various historical events surrounding their lives in those earlier times.

Below is a parcel boundary map showing the location of parcel 8.

An aerial view of the Castle can be accessed via

http://www.clan-home.org/aerial-video-of-hume-castle/