Dunnottar Castle
The fortress and church are set upon a rocky headland on the north-east coast,
about 2 miles south of Stonehaven. It has been thought that the
medieval castle has disappeared, while the surviving buildings are
largely of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. However a close inspection
of the ruins that cover an area of 3½ acres suggests reality is very different.
Portions of the 1990 film Hamlet, starring Mel Gibson and Glenn Close, were shot here.
A chapel at Dunnottar is said to have been founded by St Ninian in the
fifth century, although no trace of this now remains. Possibly
the
earliest reference to the site is found in the Annals of Ulster which
record two sieges of Dun Foither in 681 and 694. The earlier
event has been interpreted as an attack by Brude, the Pictish king of
Fortriu, to extend his power over the north-east coast of Scotland. One
medieval chronicle records that King Donald II of Alba was killed at
Dunnottar during an attack by Vikings in 900. Another states he
died at Forres. King Aethelstan of Wessex led a force into
Scotland in 934, and raided as far north as Dunfoeder according to the
account of Symeon of Durham writing 150 years later. Although
excavation has uncovered no trace of an early occupation, the discovery
of a group of Pictish stones at Dunnicaer, a nearby sea stack, has
prompted speculation that Dun Foither was actually located on
the adjacent headland of Bowduns, just a third of a mile to the north of
the castle.
It is said that during the reign of King William the
Lion (1165–1214) Dunnottar was a centre of administration for
Kincardineshire. However, the laws attributed to William probably
date to the fourteenth century. The castle is mentioned in the Roman de
Fergus, an early thirteenth century Arthurian romance, in which the hero Fergus
must travel to Dinsotre to retrieve a magic shield. This is
interesting, as there is no other solid evidence that a castle existed
here before 1336, although the order of that year implies an earlier
castle had existed. Perhaps a ‘castle' was operational at
Dunnottar when, on 15 May 1276, a church was consecrated at Dunothyr by
Bishop William Wishart of St Andrews. The inventive poet Blind
Harry relates that in 1297, during his highland campaign, William
Wallace burned alive 4,000 captive Englishmen in Dunnottar
church. The fact that Edward I managed to ‘overlook' this
crime both at the time and in 1305 when Wallace was tried seems rather
perverse if he had committed such an act - not to mention the fact that
it is doubtful that 4,000 Englishmen would have been north of the Scottish
sea at that time in any case, plus Edward I didn't take too kindly to
cases of blatant sacrilege. Consequently the story seems unlikely
as it stands, but it is possible that there was a castle here at that
time and it may have changed hands like so many other fortresses during
the troubled time of William Wallace.
It is therefore only in the fourteenth century that Dunnottar
actually enters the pages of recorded history. On 23 March 1336,
King Edward III of England ordered William Sinclair to sail eight ships
to Dunnottar for the purpose of rebuilding and fortifying the
site. Sinclair took with him 160 soldiers, horses, and a corps of
masons and carpenters. On 7 April Thomas Roscelyn was told to
select 6 sailors and a barge and proceed to Dunnotre castle. On
20 and 21 April further orders were issued to hurry the expedition
along. King Edward himself visited on 24 July, but soon after
Thomas was killed while assaulting Aberdeen and the Scottish Regent,
Andrew Moray (d.1338), led a force that captured and burned (brint)
Dunnottar in October and destroyed the surrounding lands. Interestingly this was described as ‘the siege
of the pele of Dunnotre' in the royal records. Perhaps this
implies that the original castle was little more than a pele tower,
probably with only wooden defences. That said, the pele of St
Briavels in the Forest of Dean was almost certainly a stone structure.
Soon afterwards, on 29 March 1346, King David II (d.1371)
granted to William Moravia, fifth earl of Sutherland (d.1370), ‘our
rock of Dunotir within the sheriffdom of Kincardine with free power and
licence to build and construct a castle on the said rock'. Yet it
was some 50 years later, after William Keith had acquired the rock,
that complaints were made about the building of ‘the tower' which
is obviously the one standing today ‘upon the rock'. On 8
March 1392, William and his wife, Margaret Fraser acquired the land and
castle of Dunotyr from William Lindsay of the Byres (d.1414) who had
married their daughter, Christian, before August 1378. This was
on the condition that their eldest son could be sheltered in the castle
during any civil war that might occur! This document shows that
there was a functional castle at Dunnottar in 1392, before any
religious arguments about the site began. This fact is crucial to
understanding the history of the development of the castle.
How the castle had come into the hands of Lindsay
from the earl of Sutherland is not known. Regardless of this, it
seems that William Keith must have been responsible for further
fortifications at the site. This is deduced from papal
correspondence. On 17 August 1395 Pope Benedict XIII wrote to the
bishop of St Andrews setting forth what had occurred. He had
received a petition from Keith complaining that he had been
excommunicated for building a tower on the site of a church and
cemetery. Keith reiterated that the tower was a necessary evil
considering the disturbed nature of the realm and the fact that no
injury had come to the new church or its rector by his actions - a
point that suggests that the church had been moved off the castle site
many years before 1394. Consequently the pope ordered the bishop
to release William from his excommunication if what he said was true
and that compensation had been paid for his using of the rock.
During the sixteenth century the Keiths improved and expanded
Dunnottar where James IV was a visitor in 1504 listening to a child
playing on a monocordis. In 1531 James V (d.1542) exempted the earl's men
from military service ‘in hosts and on raids' on the grounds that
Dunnottar was one of the ‘principall strenthis of our
realme'. During a rebellion of Catholic nobles in 1592, Dunnottar
was captured by a Captain Carr on behalf of the earl of Huntly, but the
castle was restored to Keith just a few weeks later.
In 1581 George Keith succeeded as fifth Earl
Marischal and is said to have begun a large scale reconstruction that
saw the medieval fortress converted into a more comfortable home.
He valued Dunnottar as much for its dramatic situation as for its
security. A ‘palace' comprising a series of ranges around a
quadrangle was commenced on the north-east cliffs, creating luxurious living
quarters with sea views. At this time the chapel was supposedly
restored and incorporated into the quadrangle, while an impressive
towerhouse, known as Benholm's lodging, was constructed to help command
the entrance.
In 1639 William Keith, the seventh Earl Marischal,
came out in support of the Covenanters against King Charles I.
With James Graham, first Marquess of Montrose, he marched against the
Catholic Earl James Gordon of Huntly, the second Viscount Aboyne, and
defeated an attempt by the Royalists to seize Stonehaven using
artillery taken from the castle. Montrose then changed sides,
leaving Keith isolated in Dunnottar when Montrose advanced to the base
of the rock, but did not assault the fortress. Eventually Keith
joined with the Engager faction, who had made a deal with the king, and
led a troop of horse to defeat at the battle of Preston in 1648.
Charles II visited Dunnottar in July 1650, before his crowning at Scone
palace on 1 January 1651. At this event the ‘Honours of
Scotland', the regalia of crown, sword and sceptre, were used, but with
Cromwell's troops in Lothian, the honours could not be returned to
Edinburgh and so were stored in Dunnottar castle. In November
1651 Cromwell's troops then blockaded the castle which contained 69 men
and 42 guns.
By May 1652 the commander of the blockade, Colonel
Thomas Morgan, had taken delivery of the artillery necessary for the
reduction of Dunnottar. During the initial bombardment a dozen
shells were thrown into the ‘great tower' resulting in the deaths
of 7 men. By 24 May the garrison was reduced by sorties and
bombardment to just 35 men. On the strength of this, the men
being utterly exhausted by their ordeal and massively under strength to
hold the fortress, they surrendered on condition that the garrison
could go free after the 8 month long siege. Before surrendering
the Honours were smuggled out of the castle, so the Cromwellians
imprisoned the custodian and his wife in the fortress until the
following year. Much of the castle property was removed at this
time, including twenty-one brass cannons; the chapel was
‘demolished' and the library ‘suffered prejudices'.
At the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, the
Honours were removed from their hiding place at Kinneff church and
returned to the king. In 1685, during the rebellion of the earl
of Argyll against the new King James VII, 167 Covenanters were seized
and held in a cellar at Dunnottar. The prisoners included 122 men
and 45 women associated with the Whigs, an anti-Royalist group within
the Covenanter movement. The tortured survivors of these were
eventually transported to Perth Amboy, New Jersey, as part of a
colonisation scheme devised by George Scot of Pitlochie. The
cellar, located beneath the king's bedroom in the sixteenth century buildings, has
since become known as the Whigs' Vault.
In 1689, during Viscount Dundee's campaign in
support of the deposed James VII, the castle was garrisoned for William
and Mary with the Lord Marischal appointed captain. In the
Jacobite Rising of 1715 George Keith, tenth Earl Marischal, took an
active role with the rebels and then fled to the Continent, eventually
becoming French ambassador for Frederick the Great of Prussia.
Meanwhile, in 1716, his titles and estates, including Dunnottar, were
declared forfeit to the crown.
The seized estates were purchased in 1720 for
£41,172, by the York Buildings Company who dismantled much of the
castle. The castle attracted 52,500 visitors in 2009.
Description
Dunnottar's strategic location allowed its owners to control the
coastal terrace between the North Sea cliffs and the hills of the
Mounth 2 miles inland. The site covers a headland of around
3½ acres. Viewed from the land approach the keep or main
towerhouse of William Keith is the most prominent feature, but not the
main defence.
The approach to the castle is overlooked by ancient
masonry outworks on the Fiddlehead, a promontory to the west. This
guarded the only landward entrance to the site, the easy approach being
blocked by the main gate set in an impressive wall. The round
Romanesque arch in this, 5'6" wide and 9' tall, is set in a 7'6" thick
curtain wall which entirely blocks the easy route of approach.
The gateway had a portcullis in an internal thickening. At a much
later date, after 1772, this gateway was partially blocked up to make a
smaller, rectangular doorway. Some centuries earlier two
rectangular guardrooms were added on either side of the entrance and
Benholm's lodgings, an imposing 5 storey tower (originally only 3
storeys, but subsequently raised in height) with 3 tiers of gun ports
covering the entrance, were added. The old curtain makes up the
rear wall of this irregular tower. Inside the main gate a group
of four gun ports face the entrance. They were operated from
within the long vault beyond, whose rock cut interior would appear to
date back to the age of the curtain wall. From here the entrance
passage turns sharply north and then dog-legs to the east, running underground
through two tunnels to emerge in the main courtyard. Note that
the alignment of the gun ports in Benholm's lodging, facing across the
approach rather than along it, means that they are of limited
efficiency and were probably served by very short range guns loaded
with grape shot rather than solid balls. An inventory of 1612
records that four brass cannons probably served the 4 ports in the
vault. The additions to the defences here are thought to date to
the 1570s due to the survival of a carved coat of arms on which could
once be read part of a date, said to be [?]57[?].
On reaching the rock top, curtain walls once covered
the summit of the approach to N&S, although those to the north are now
just marked by a rampart which made up a later artillery battery.
To the south of the exit from the Romanesque tunnels, is Waterton's lodging.
This, also known as the priest's house, is thought to have been built
around 1574, possibly for the use of William Keith (died 1580), son of
the fourth Earl Marischal. The date is ascertained from a
stone said to have been discovered in 1785 in front of the building
which was inscribed with the date 1374 and the initials D.L. This
date was claimed to be an error for 1574. However as we now know
that the castle was held by the Lindsay family in the late fourteenth century, it
is quite possible that the date was correct, though there is no mention
of any D Lindsay in the records - the father of the William Lindsay who
held the castle being a David who died in 1356.
Waterton's lodging is a small self-contained house,
including a hall and kitchen at ground level, with private chambers
above. It has a projecting spiral stair on the north side and is
named after Thomas Forbes of Waterton, an attendant of the seventh
earl. Its most spectacular feature is the stair tower which
commences on a round base that changes to a square cap house at second
floor level.
West of this tower is the heart of the castle, the
L plan tower keep which, with its little curtain walled bailey, blocks
the access to the masonry fortified Fiddlehead. This in turn
commands and flanks the entrance to the crag through its command of the
entrance curtain wall and Benholm's lodging. Quite clearly the
documentary evidence shows that the keep was the first fortification
‘on' the rock rather than before it, like the entrance curtain
and tunnels are. The tower has a stone-vaulted basement and
originally had three further storeys with a garret above. It
measured 41' by 36' on its longest sides and stood 50' high to its
gable. Its late date may coincide with the thinness of its walls
at only 5'. The tower is entered via a ground floor Romanesque
doorway - all the other openings are rectangular. That said a
pre-restoration photograph of the keep taken from the Fiddlehead shows
that all the windows on that side had gone. It is therefore
possible, indeed likely, that the windows on the other sides are also
modern. The original entrance doorway was defended by a door
without and a yett within. Inside the doorway was a straight
stair leading to a spiral stair on the floor above. This gave
access to the battlements. Standing beside the keep is a
storehouse and a blacksmith's forge with a large chimney. Beyond
are the stables next to the entrance to Fiddlehead.
The ‘inner ward of the keep' was left via a
defensible gateway and curtain walls which continued as a narrow
passageway onto the Fiddlehead itself. In the elbow of this
dog-legged fortification is a narrow, Romanesque postern gate.
This is the traditional site of the entrance made by Wallace in
1297. As the aftermath of this attack is most likely fictional,
it is possible that what was actually remembered is the attack of 1336,
although it is not impossible that the castle was taken from its
Edwardian Scottish garrison in 1297. Further masonry defences are
to be found winding their way around the summit of the crag, especially
to the N&E outside the palace. It is uncertain to what age
these structures belong.
The palace, to the north-east of the headland, was commenced
in the late sixteenth century to provide more suitable accommodation than the
priest's house and keep. It comprises three main wings set out
around a quadrangle roughly 150' by 135'. Seven identical
lodgings are arranged along the west range, each opening onto the
quadrangle and including windows and fireplace. Above the
lodgings the west range comprised a 115' long gallery. Now roofless
it originally had an elaborate oak ceiling and displayed a Roman tablet
taken from the Antonine Wall.
The basement of the north range incorporates kitchens
and stores with a dining room and great chamber above. At ground
floor level is the water gate, between the north and west ranges, which gives
access to the postern on the north cliffs. The east and north ranges are
linked via a rectangular stair. A north-east wing contains the earl's
apartments and includes the king's bedroom in which Charles II
stayed. Below is the Whigs' Vault, a cellar measuring 52' by
15'. This cellar, the prison of 1685, has a large east window as
well as a lower vault accessed via a trapdoor in the floor. The
central area of the palace contains a circular cistern or fish pond 52'
across and 25' deep. A bowling green cum parade ground is located
to the west. At the south-east corner of the quadrangle is the chapel,
supposedly dating back to 1276. The current remains seem to be
mainly sixteenth century, although some of the lower walling and two lancet
windows may be thirteenth century.
A second, presumably early access to the castle
leads up from a rocky cove which could accommodate a small boat to the
north of the castle. From here a steep path leads to a postern or sea gate
on the cliff top, which leads to the castle via the 5' wide water gate
in the palace. Other sea gates are discussed under Dunvegan. Artillery defences, taking the form of earthworks,
surround the north-west corner of the castle, facing inland, and the south-east, facing
seaward. A small sentry box or guard house stands by the eastern
battery, overlooking the coast.
Why not join me at Dunnottar and other Great Scottish Castles this Spring? Information on tours at Scholarly Sojourns.
Copyright©2016
Paul Martin Remfry