The castle was built by Herbert, Lord Maxwell, under a royal warrant issued in 1449, and remained with the family until the fifth Lord was required by James VI to deliver it up to the crown. It was sold to Sir George Maxwell of Nether Mearns in the middle of the seventeenth century, and later passed to the Shaw-Stewart family. In 1971 the remaining stories of the tower were converted to a link between two Church of Scotland buildings.