Dundee Castle was one of the English strongholds that Wallace had besieged but not taken in 1297. By 1312 Bruce had built sufficient military strength to reduce it. Dundee was the main port of eastern Scotland and its loss to Bruce effectively ended English commercial and military access to the Tay estuary. As with his other castle captures, Bruce demolished the fortifications. The systematic castle-demolition policy was controversial among Bruces followers but strategically sound: it prevented any English attempt to rebuild from fortified bases.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in Britain — drawing on Domesday records, scheduled monuments, Victorian OS maps, geological data and archaeological archives to tell the full story of a place.
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